22. Adelina
Adelina
The Dravaryn guards close around me. I go quietly. That is what defeat looks like.
They take me through the main doors and into the corridor I have known since childhood. The air smells of smoke, cold stone, beeswax, and the faint floral perfume Selvara favors. Every step carries me farther from Kaedryn’s sight. I wait for him to shout, to follow, or to break protocol.
Nothing.
Behind me, the doors close. The sound settles into my bones. The guards do not speak as they lead me to my rooms. They don’t need to. Their silence has weight. They know. At my chamber doors, one guard knocks.
“Enter,” my brother calls.
Cold floods through me, and my stomach turns.
The door opens. For one impossible moment, my rooms look exactly as they did before I ran. The fire is lit. The rugs lie smooth. The bed curtains are tied back. The vanity gleams. The trapdoor is hidden again beneath the rug, reminding me my freedom was only ever a dream beneath stone.
Varek stands near the hearth. Selvara is already inside.
She must have taken a side passage to arrive before me.
My brother looks at me for a long moment without speaking.
He is dressed for court in black and gold, crown resting against his dark hair, expression controlled enough that anyone else might mistake it for calm.
I know better.
Selvara removes her gloves one finger at a time. “My, my,” she says softly. “You’re in quite the state.”
The door closes behind me, the guards blocking my only exit other than the window.
No Freya. No Kaedryn. No witnesses besides the guards who have seen this all before.
Varek’s eyes move over me slowly, from my damp silver hair to my stained cloak, to the boots that crossed marsh and forest and holy roads before failing at the last step.
“Do you know what you have done?” he finally asks.
My hands fold in front of me. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
His mouth tightens. “No. I do not think you do.”
Selvara walks behind me, and I fight every instinct that tells me to track her movement. “You embarrassed your king. You insulted your betrothed. You endangered the treaty. You stirred unrest among peasants and servants who should know better than to speak your name without permission.”
My stomach drops. So they know. Not everything, perhaps. Not who. Not how deep Freya’s network runs.
But enough.
“Where is Freya?” I ask before fear can stop me.
Varek’s expression sharpens.
Selvara’s smile curves with delight. “She worries for the servant,” the queen says. “After all of this, that is what concerns her.”
My breath trembles.
Varek steps closer. “Freya is being questioned.”
Questioned.
I close my eyes for one heartbeat. I should not have asked. I have given him another blade.
When I open them, my brother is directly in front of me. “You will not speak her name again.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
His hand strikes my face. The force snaps my head to the side, and for a second the room tilts and blurs. I stumble, catching myself before I fall because falling too soon makes things worse.
“Look at me!” Varek yells.
I do. My cheek burns.
His eyes are colder than the sea. “You ran from me. You ran from your duty.”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty.”
“You made a fool of this crown.” His hand closes around my jaw, fingers digging hard enough that pain blooms beneath the bone. “You made a fool of me.”
There is no response that saves me.
Selvara moves to the vanity and lifts something from the silver tray laid there. A thin vial. A coil of dark cord.
My pulse slows in horror.
No!
Varek sees recognition in my face. “Good,” he says softly. “You remember.”
I cannot stop the tremor that moves through me.
The whip hangs on the wall near the dressing screen, its pale length almost pretty in the firelight, silver-threaded and smooth, crafted to leave only faint silver traces that bloom across skin and fade like frost on glass. But Selvara does not take it down yet.
Varek follows my gaze to it. “Your prince stood in my courtyard and made demands. Whole, he said. Unmarked by first light.” His mouth curves. “He will be handed a bride who looks exactly as he asked where it matters. Where I put the rest is mine to decide.”
This will be far worse than anything I have endured before. “Please,” I whisper.
Varek’s expression does not change.
“Please, I’m sorry.” My hands start to shake.
“Oh, I know you are sorry.” Selvara’s voice is light, almost tender. “But you are not yet repentant.”
My brother releases my face and steps back. “Remove the cloak.”
My fingers will not move.
He watches me. “Adelina.”
I force my hands to obey. The cloak falls to the floor.
“Outer tunic.”
I shake my head once before I can stop myself.
Selvara laughs softly. “Still proud, then.”
“No,” I whisper. “Please.”
Varek moves so fast I barely see him before his hand fists in the front of my tunic and jerks me forward. “You begged the southern prince in the street. Do not pretend modesty matters now.”
He cuts the laces with a small blade and yanks the fabric back from my shoulders, leaving my upper back exposed to the cold room. I fold my arms over my chest, shaking so badly I can hardly stand.
Selvara’s eyes move over the healed skin. “No marks,” she says. “So your little cohorts have talented healers.”
I can’t breathe.
Varek turns back to me. “You thought you could run through my kingdom, use my people, turn my servants against me, and come home untouched?”
Home.
The word breaks something. “This is not my home,” I whisper. The words leave me before I know I have chosen them.
Varek goes very still. Selvara’s smile fades.
For one heartbeat, I feel something that is almost pride.
Then Varek’s fist drives into my stomach.
Pain folds me in half. The air leaves me in a broken sound, and I hit my knees before I can stop myself, both arms wrapping around my middle as I gag for breath.
“That,” he says, voice low, “is the last defiant thing you will ever say under my roof.”
After that, everything comes in pieces. My mind begins to splinter under the amount of pain it is being asked to carry.
Rough hands grab me, guards yanking me toward my bed.
The cord, something spelled and dark, binds my wrists to the bedpost while my knees press into the rug.
My brother does not let me stand this time.
He wants me low. He wants me where the floor can rise up and meet me if I collapse.
The cords tighten with each struggle until I stop moving.
Then the vial.
Bitter liquid is forced between my lips, Selvara’s fingers pinching my nose until I swallow. Nothing happens right away. Then my skin turns too sensitive, the air itself sharp against every exposed inch of me.
“It heightens sensation,” she explains. “A poor imitation of what your little flight cost us.”
The whip comes down. He doesn’t ask me to count.
The first strike tears across my back, and the muffled cry that leaves me does not sound human.
The skin does not split. Instead, a faint silver line blooms across my shoulder blade, bright for one breath, then fading while leaving a blistering pain.
The magic digs deeper than before. The potion has opened every nerve and invited the pain in.
Fire rips beneath my shoulder blades, down my spine, around my ribs.
I try not to scream. Then I try only to survive the screaming. At some point, my wings appear without my permission, flaring in a burst of silver light, wild and shaking, trying to shield me the way they tried once before.
Varek’s rage becomes something colder. “Hold them!”
Selvara uses her magic to freeze the base of my wings in place so they cannot fold, cannot vanish, cannot protect me. Pain shoots through the delicate structure, and I sob so hard my body heaves against the cords.
“You wanted to fly,” Varek says. “Then let us remind you who allowed those wings to remain on your back.”
The next strike hits across the base of them. The world goes white. I think I scream Freya’s name. I know I should not. I think I do anyway.
Varek changes weapons. Or changes magic.
I do not see. I only feel the pain shift from burning lines to something deep and crushing, like invisible hands closing around bone.
My ribs. My shoulders. My wrists where the cords bite.
My knees against the rug. My stomach where his fist landed.
My wings, pinned open, trembling violently as Selvara’s magic holds them in place.
No one will come. No one ever comes.
Varek’s voice moves in and out.
Treason.
Embarrassment.
Ungrateful.
Useless.
Selvara’s voice follows, softer.
Hush now.
You brought this on yourself.
You should have stayed where you were cherished.
Cherished.
I laugh. Or choke. The sound brings another blow, this one across my face, and my head snaps back hard enough that stars burst behind my eyes.
The pain drives me back into my body all at once, sharp and total, and there is no shutting it out again. Every nerve announces itself. The rug beneath my knees. The cord at my wrists. The fire’s heat against my exposed back. Too much. All of it at once.
The cord binding me releases without warning.
I fall. There is no grace in it. I hit the floor on my side, wings collapsing in a flicker of silver before they vanish, my body curling around pain that has no place to go.
My arms will not obey. My legs tremble uselessly.
Every breath breaks against something sharp inside my chest.
Varek crouches beside me. His hand grips my hair and pulls my face up enough that I can see him through the blur.
“You will go to your prince tomorrow,” he says.
“You will smile. You will obey. You will marry him, and you will remember with every breath that the only reason you live is because your beauty still benefits this crown.”
His grip tightens until my eyes water. “And you will say nothing. Not to the prince. Not to his men. Not to any soft-eyed soul who leans close and pretends to care. The old woman is still breathing because you still have something left to lose.” His voice drops, quiet and almost kind.
“One word about what happens in these rooms, and she comes back to you in pieces. Do you understand me?”
I understand. That threat reaches me where nothing else can. I would let them break every bone in my body before I let them touch her again. His words blur after that. I cannot hold them. He drops me. My cheek strikes the floor.
Selvara steps closer, her skirts appearing at the edge of my vision like snow. “She will need time before she can be shown,” she says.
“She will have until morning.” Varek looks down at me without emotion.
“Have her face healed. Mend the rest enough that she can stand, walk, and survive the ceremony. Lace her gown high. The prince wanted her whole and unmarked, and that is exactly what he will see when she is returned to him.” Something cold moves behind his eyes.
“What he does not see is no concern of his.”
“Send someone before dawn to make her presentable,” Selvara adds. “And have someone stay through the night. It would be a shame to hand him a corpse.”
They will mend only what the prince might see. The bruises beneath my ribs, the silver still blooming across my back, my back where my wings were held open and struck. All of it is meant to stay. Presentable on the surface. Ruined underneath. That is the whole of the mercy they intend.
Survived, then. Some part of me mourns it.
Their footsteps move away. The door opens. I hear voices. Guards maybe. Then the door closes again, and I’m alone on the floor of my chamber, unable to tell where my body ends and pain begins.
I try to breathe, but I can barely fill my lungs. I try to move my fingers. One twitches against the rug.
I think of Freya’s hands closing over mine. “Go in peace, Adelina Leora.”
I tried. I ran through forests and marshes and holy roads and a sea I had never crossed. But I was not fast enough or strong enough. I’m unworthy of the years she spent building a door beneath my feet.
The darkness creeps in from the edges, soft and slow. I do not fight it. If death waits in that dark, it has to be kinder than this.
I let my eyes close.
And I hope it takes me.