24. Kaedryn #2
And before I can respond, Varek raises his cup and calls for the hall’s attention. Another toast. Another performance. To unity. To alliance. To the strength of bloodlines and the peace secured through wisdom.
The hall drinks. Adelina lifts her cup because everyone else does. Her hand shakes. A ripple through the stem, there and gone. I might have missed it had I not been waiting for signs that only I seem interested in seeing.
When she lowers the cup, I place my hand over hers on the table. A public gesture. Possessive enough to satisfy the room. Intimate enough to excuse itself.
The moment skin meets skin, the bond gives a stronger tug, a flash too brief to fully read. But in it I catch something cold and deep and buried beneath layers of control.
Pain.
It is gone almost before I register it, muffled again at once, hidden beneath whatever walls she has forced up inside herself. I tighten my fingers. Her eyes widen slightly. And that is when I realize that contact hurts her.
I release her hand at once, covering the movement by reaching for my cup. “Forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” she says.
The hall noise rises again around us. Laughter farther down the table. Courtly conversation. The clink of silver. Musicians beginning a slower piece from the alcove. Across from me, Varek watches the exchange with too much stillness. He knows I see something. He is measuring how much.
So I give him nothing.
I turn to one of his lords and ask a question about winter trade routes.
I answer another about Elyrion’s coastal defenses.
I speak of strategy and shipping and the eastern threat while half my attention remains fixed on the woman beside me who looks like a jewel set on display and somehow less alive than when I bound her on the temple road.
At one point, a servant reaches to refill Adelina’s wine.
She flinches. The servant notices and nearly drops the bottle.
Selvara’s head turns sharply. Adelina recovers at once, murmuring some polite reassurance too low for me to catch.
The servant bows herself nearly in half and retreats in obvious distress.
I catch the girl’s face as she goes pale and vanishes toward the sideboard. Fear again in the servants. I file it away with all the rest.
Later, when the meal reaches its final course and the room has relaxed into the lie of celebration, I look at Adelina closer and wonder how she will endure the journey to Elyrion.
I lean close to Adelina once more. “If you want to delay departure,” I say quietly, “I can insist.”
Her gaze flicks to me. “Why?”
Because you look like you can barely sit upright, I think.
Because something is wrong and I do not yet know how to name it.
Because every time Selvara touches your shoulder, you stop breathing for a second.
Because when I held your hand, pain came through the bond like a blade under ice.
Instead I say, “You’re exhausted.”
She studies me for a second too long. Then, barely above a whisper, she says, “It will not matter. I will endure.”
A weight settles in my chest. She believes outcomes are fixed and my concern changes nothing.
I want to demand that she gives me the truth.
I want to drag Varek from his chair by the throat and ask what the hell he did to her behind closed doors.
Instead, I sit at the head table of a northern feast and listen to music while the princess beside me goes quiet again behind walls I cannot cross.
By the time the final blessing is spoken and the hall begins to empty, I know two things with absolute certainty.
Something happened to Adelina last night.
But I do not have enough proof to act on it.
That knowledge follows me out of the dining hall and into the cold corridor beyond, where servants lower their eyes and nobles murmur farewells and Dravaryn’s stone keeps its secrets behind every shut door.
Adelina pauses at the threshold when Selvara’s ladies come to escort her back to her chambers.
For one heartbeat, I think she might speak.
Her head turns slightly toward me, just enough for the crystal in her hair to catch the torchlight.
Her face remains composed, but her eyes meet mine fully for the first time since entering the audience chamber.
There is no plea in them. No dramatic appeal. Only a terrible, exhausted knowing that she has already measured me and discovered that I am no different from the man currently holding her chains.
Then she lowers her gaze. “Good night, Your Highness,” she says.
Formal. Perfect. Empty.
Before I can answer, Selvara’s hand settles lightly at her back and guides her away. I watch until the corridor swallows them.
Sylas appears at my shoulder. “Well?” he asks.
I do not look at him. “You were right,” I say.
“About what?”
I keep my eyes on the empty hall where Adelina disappeared. “She looks exactly like a woman trying to survive a sentence.”
Sylas is silent for a long moment. Then, quietly, “That bad?”
“Yes,” I say at last. “Worse, possibly.”
Then I turn toward my guest chambers, the taste of helplessness and winter iron bitter on my tongue, already knowing I will not sleep tonight either.