21. Adelina
Adelina
Idisappear somewhere in myself before we cross back into Dravaryn.
The cold returns first, sliding over the boat like a hand closing around my throat.
One breath tastes of warm rain and salt.
The next tastes of iron-gray water and winter.
The shift should startle me. It should make me shiver, make me pull the blanket tighter, make me mourn the impossible softness of Maralis disappearing behind us.
Instead, I sit beneath the canopy and watch the sea darken, knowing only pain awaits me, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.
My body notices things without asking me to care about them.
The rough press of the blanket over my shoulders.
The damp weight of my hair against my cheek.
The sting where wet stone scraped my palms when Kaedryn’s magic dragged me down.
The faint soreness around my wrists from the black, glimmering strands of shadows that wrapped around me.
The fear is buried beneath a stillness that feels almost peaceful if I don’t look at it too closely.
Kaedryn is on the other side of the deck.
He has been silent since he returned from wherever he went below.
His father, maybe. Some royal command. Another careful explanation for why handing me back to my brother is the reasonable thing to do.
The necessary thing. The correct thing. Men with crowns and armies have many words for cruelty when cruelty protects what matters to them.
He does not look at me often. When he does, I feel it, but I keep my eyes down or on the water.
Sylas tries first. He approaches after the boat has been moving north for a while, after the rain thickens and the air grows cold enough that my breath begins to fog again.
He sits on the bench across from me, not too close, his elbows resting on his knees, his expression kinder than his brother’s has ever been.
“Princess,” he says quietly.
I blink once. My hands remain folded in my lap.
He waits patiently. “Adelina,” he tries.
Something moves inside my chest, small and wounded, but I press it down where everything else has gone.
Sylas exhales. “I know you don’t trust us.”
Trust. The word is so strange I almost want to laugh.
I trusted locked doors because at least they were honest about what they were. I trusted Freya because she loved me when there was nothing to gain from it. I trusted the strangers because they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by helping me.
I don’t trust princes.
“I know this looks bad,” Sylas says.
Interesting words for something that feels like standing at the edge of a grave and being told the dirt is only temporary.
He leans forward a little. “My brother is not taking you back to be hurt.”
My fingers tighten once against my skirt. I can’t contain the reaction.
Sylas sees it. His face changes. “Adelina.”
I lower my gaze to my hands. The skin across my knuckles is scraped from the temple road. There is dirt beneath my nails. My fingers look small and useless.
“Can you tell me what you think will happen in Dravaryn?” he asks.
Yes. I can. I can tell him my brother will smile in public because that’s what kings do when witnesses are inconvenient.
I can tell him the queen will touch my cheek and call me dear one, and everyone will pretend that softness means kindness.
I can tell him they will take me away from southern eyes.
A closed door. A familiar chamber. A weapon that leaves silver marks thin as thread, easy to hide beneath a high collar.
I can tell him that when they are finished, someone will wash me, dress me, and return me to Kaedryn like a repaired object.
I will carry what happened out of those rooms dressed in composure and silence, in a face that gives nothing away, and I will feel their hands on my body for weeks.
I can tell him all of it.
But I have told people, and I was beaten worse after.
Then there are flinches. Silence. Perfect obedience. A body trained to survive rooms no one else seemed willing to question.
People saw. They always saw enough.
They simply chose not to act.
I told Kaedryn I couldn’t go back, and yet I’m on my way back into my brother’s hands.
So I say nothing.
Sylas sits with me for another few minutes. Time has become a corridor with no windows. Eventually, he rises.
“I don’t know what happened to you,” he says, voice low. “But I know something did.”
I look at him briefly before he turns and moves away.
He is open in a way Kaedryn is not, his expressions gentler.
For one foolish breath, I want to believe him.
I want to believe this prince is good, that his concern means something solid, that perhaps if I simply keep breathing, someone will stand between me and the door when the time comes.
Life has taught me otherwise.
Good people can stand in hallways. Good people can lower their eyes. Good people can tell themselves they do not have enough proof to interfere.
Freya was the only one who acted. And I don’t know if she is alive.
That thought pierces through the stillness so sharply that I almost make a sound. I look away before anyone can see it.
These Elyrian men have already proved their promises mean nothing.
Selfish.
I cannot protect myself from what waits in Dravaryn. But I won’t give them another knife to hold at my throat.
My hand goes to my neck. My mother’s necklace still hangs, hidden beneath my cloak. Slowly, I reach up beneath my hair and work the clasp at the back of my neck. My mother’s pendant slides into my palm, still warm from my skin. Nara’s voice comes with it. Keep it covered, no matter what happens.
If Selvara sees it, she will take it. If Varek sees it, he will take it and make me watch him do it. They have taken everything else that was ever mine. They will not have this too.
Across the deck, Kaedryn turns to me. I feel the weight of his attention before I see it, that thread beneath my ribs pulling taut at the worst possible moment.
I go still, the chain coiled in my fist, and look at the water as though I have been looking at nothing else. One breath. Two. His gaze moves on.
It is a sturdy thing, my mother’s necklace. The moonstone sits deep in a heavy silver setting, old and solid, made to outlast the woman who wore it and the daughter who came after her. It will not break for being hidden.
So I bend to draw the blanket over my feet, and beneath its cover I ease the chain down into my boot, coiling it small and tucking it along the inside of my sock. The metal bites cold against my skin, but I’m glad of it. As long as I can feel it there, I know it is still mine.
When I straighten, I fold my empty hands in my lap again, and no one on this boat knows I am carrying the last of my mother out of Maralis.
Later, a man named Soren brings food. He sets the plate near me, then kneels far enough away that he does not crowd my space. Bread. Cheese. Fruit I do not recognize from Maralis, bright orange and soft at the center. Water in a silver cup.
“You need to eat,” he says.
I pick up a piece of bread because my body understands appeasement even when my mind is far away. I take two bites. They taste like nothing. I drink three sips of water.
“More,” he says gently.
I take one more bite. It sticks in my throat, and for a terrifying second I think I will choke. I force it down with another sip of water, then set the bread aside.
Soren does not push.
The boat reaches the northern Dravaryn coast near dusk, the first edge of my brother’s kingdom, where black stone docks jut into iron-gray water and the wind cuts hard enough to make every breath feel sharpened.
The sky is already gray, though the hour should still hold light.
Snow falls in thin, bitter flakes that vanish when they hit the wet dock.
The harbor is smaller than the one in the temple city, built of black stone and iron moorings, every line of it hard and familiar in a way that makes my body remember before my mind catches up.
Home.
The word is a lie I have been punished into carrying.
Kaedryn steps onto the dock first, speaking to the captain in clipped instructions. His men follow. Sylas glances back at me. Soren does too. Kellan cannot seem to look directly at my face, and Merritt scans the harbor with a hand near his sword.
I stand when Merritt gestures for me. My legs work. That surprises me a little.
Kaedryn comes back, and I briefly think he means to carry me again. Something in me recoils so hard I must not hide it, because he stops before his hand reaches my arm.
His jaw tightens. “Can you can walk?”
I nod. My first answer since the temple road, and it’s not even a word. Something flickers in his eyes. He steps back and lets me pass.
The riding coach waits beyond the dock gates, black lacquered sides bearing the Dravaryn crest. A pair of guards stand beside it in my brother’s colors, their armor fur-lined against the cold, and their expressions blank.
My stomach turns.
Kaedryn sees the coach at the same time I do. “No,” he says. The word is quiet.
One of the guards bows. “His Majesty sent royal transport for the princess.”
“She travels under Elyrian guard,” Kaedryn snaps.
“She travels inland under Dravaryn crown escort, Your Highness. Those are the king’s orders.”
Kaedryn’s voice drops. “Then tell your king his orders are not the only ones on this dock.”
The guard pales. For one dangerous moment, the air sharpens with the edge of Kaedryn’s power. But I do not hope because power meets power, and while men decide which authority has the sharpest blade, the woman they are arguing over still ends up inside the coach.
Sylas moves closer to his brother. “Kaedryn.”
“I gave instructions,” Kaedryn responds.
The guard bows lower. “And the king said Princess Adelina’s safety is still his responsibility. The road is long, Your Highness. His Majesty expects the princess at the castle by tomorrow evening. The formal audience will begin once she has been made presentable.”
Made presentable.