21. Adelina #3
I look at it. Strong. Scarred across the knuckles. The kind of hand that has probably saved men in battle and signed orders that killed others.
I take it because everyone is watching. His fingers close around mine. The pull beneath my ribs stirs. He helps me down, and the moment my boots touch the courtyard stones, ten Dravaryn guards move in.
Kaedryn’s grip tightens. “What is this?” he demands.
One of my brother’s captains bows. “His Majesty requests the princess be taken to her rooms to be prepared for the formal reception tomorrow.”
“She remains with me.” Kaedryn steps slightly in front of me, putting his body between mine and the captain.
The captain does not lift his head. “Forgive me, Your Highness. The betrothal is signed. The transfer is not. Until the rites are spoken, the princess remains a daughter of Dravaryn, in the keeping of her king.” He pauses, perfectly polite. “On Dravaryn ground.”
The words are soft, and they close around the courtyard like a snare.
He is right. I listened to Kaedryn read the contract in the meeting chamber.
Betrothed, not married. Mine until the rites are observed, Varek had said, and the rites belong to tomorrow.
Tonight I am still my brother’s possession, standing on my brother’s stone, surrounded by my brother’s men, and every law in two kingdoms agrees.
“The king was very clear,” the captain adds.
“So am I.”
Power gathers around Kaedryn so quickly the air itself seems to dim. His wings do not appear, but I feel the shadow of them, dark and enormous, pressing at the edge of the courtyard.
Several Dravaryn guards shift back.
And I understand, with the cold clarity of someone who has spent a lifetime reading rooms, exactly what they are doing.
They want him to reach for me. They want the Shadow Prince of Elyrion to tear a Dravaryn princess from her own king’s courtyard, in front of servants and soldiers and whatever eyes Selvara has placed at the windows.
One grab. One drawn blade. That is all it would take to turn an alliance into an insult, to hand Varek a wound he can show the world, to give Zerath the crack it has been waiting for.
Kaedryn crossed the sea to bind two kingdoms against the east. If he takes me tonight, he breaks the very thing he came here to build.
A door opens at the top of the steps, and Selvara appears in white fur, smiling as if this is a family reunion and not an execution delayed by etiquette.
“Your Highness,” she calls, voice carrying sweetly over the courtyard. “Please forgive the confusion. Adelina must be readied. She has been through quite an ordeal. Surely you understand we cannot present her before both courts in this state.”
Mud on my hem. Loose hair. A frightened princess, mishandled by a foreign prince. She is building the story even now, choosing the words the court will repeat tomorrow.
Kaedryn’s hand tightens around mine. “She will be readied under Elyrian supervision.”
“On Dravaryn soil? Before the rites?” Selvara’s smile does not waver. “That is not proper, Your Highness.” She lets it land, then sheathes it again in velvet. “Once she has bathed and dressed, she will be returned to you. You have my word.”
Lie. The word settles in me quiet and certain, and I do not let it show.
Kaedryn looks down at me. “Adelina.”
I lift my eyes to his. He is asking something without saying it. He wants me to object, to hand him the one thing that might let him fight this without starting a war. He wants my voice, here, in front of witnesses.
I look at the guards. At Selvara. At the castle doors. At the windows where servants pretend not to watch.
If I speak now, they will say I’m hysterical.
Unwell. Exhausted by flight. Overwhelmed by shame.
Selvara will mourn my distress in front of everyone, and Varek will wait until the witnesses are gone, and I will endure the same fate, worse for having shamed them twice.
There is no word I can give him that they have not already written an answer for.
So I give Kaedryn the answer I have been trained to give. “I will do as Her Majesty commands.”
His face changes. Not anger. Something harder and quieter. The look of a man who threw his full weight against something and felt it refuse to move.
The captain steps forward.
Kaedryn does not release me. The courtyard balances on the edge of violence, and I feel how badly he wants to choose it. The shadow at the edges of the stone deepens.
Then Sylas speaks behind him, low and urgent. “Not here. Not like this. This is a trap they built, brother. Don’t walk into it.”
The shadow holds one breath longer. Two.
Then Kaedryn turns his head toward Selvara, and when he speaks his voice is almost gentle, which is somehow worse than the power was. “She is returned to me whole, unharmed, and unmarked. I will be counting the hours, Your Majesty, and so will every man I brought across the sea.”
It is not enough to save me tonight.
His fingers loosen from mine, one at a time. Then he releases me.
I take a breath, and I walk toward the stone cage I know so well.