26. Kaedryn
Kaedryn
I’m fuming in silence, which is not the same as being calm.
Everyone around me knows the difference.
Sylas knows because he keeps glancing at me from the opposite side of the carriage with that look he wears when he’s deciding whether irritating me will improve the situation or get him thrown into a snowbank.
Soren knows because he has checked his healer’s satchel three times in the last hour without needing anything from it.
Rowan, riding outside with the forward guard, knows because he has not made a single dry comment through the open communication slit since we left the castle road.
Kellan and Merritt know because even their horses have kept a wider distance from the carriage wheels.
Adelina doesn’t seem to know. Or she knows and has retreated somewhere too deep to care.
She sits across from me, angled toward the window, hands folded in her lap, her small travel satchel tucked against her boots, the only thing in this carriage she seems willing to claim. Snow streaks past the glass in thin white lines, blurring the black pines and stone slopes beyond.
Though the carriage is warded and warm, the road south from Dravaryn’s capital is brutal, carved through mountain and ice. Every turn of the wheels sends a tremor through the carriage frame.
Every time it does, she hides pain.
That is what enrages me most.
She hides it well enough that a man who doesn’t care to look would see only a tired princess enduring a rough journey. Her shoulders barely shift. Her expression gives nothing. Her hands don’t fly to her side or back. She doesn’t complain.
But I see the way her fingers tighten against each other when the left wheel strikes a rut.
There is a fraction of a second when her breath stops before she forces it out evenly.
She holds herself away from the cushioned back of the seat, clearly finding the strain of sitting upright easier than the cost of resting against it.
Something happened. I know it now with a certainty that no longer feels like suspicion.
And I allowed her to be taken from me.
The thought has been gnawing at me since the courtyard, when Varek kissed Adelina’s brow and whispered something into her ear that made no visible change in her face but made the bond twist in my chest.
“What did he say to you?” I finally ask.
She looks at me and blinks, a small furrow forming in her brow.
“What did your brother whisper to you?” I clarify.
She hesitates before she looks down at her hands. “He said he will miss me.”
A perfect lie. Another safe answer. Another door closed in my face. I leave it, and her gaze drifts out the window once more.
Across from me, Sylas shifts, clearly deciding the silence has grown uncomfortable enough to require intervention. “You’ll like Elyrion better in spring,” he says to Adelina.
Her attention turns from the window to him. It takes half a breath too long. Delayed, as if she has to travel back to the room before she can answer from inside it.
“I have read that spring in Elyrion is beautiful,” she says. Her voice holds the barest tremble.
Sylas smiles, kind without becoming pitying. I give him credit for that. “It is. The forests wake first. The lower valleys turn green before the mountain snow fully melts, and the rivers run so clear you can see the stones all the way down.”
“That sounds lovely.”
“There is a garden terrace below the eastern wing of the castle that looks over the river cliffs. My mother fills it with enough flowers to make visiting diplomats sneeze through negotiations.”
For the first time all morning, something almost moves across Adelina’s face. Her eyes widen in interest. “Your mother tends it?”
“Directs it,” Sylas says, eyes brightening. “There is a difference. Every gardener in Elyrion fears her opinion on roses.”
Her expression changes, and the wall goes back up. “I had a garden.”
Had.
The word is quiet enough that I almost miss it beneath the grind of the wheels.
Sylas does not. “What did you grow?”
“Ice orchids mostly. Moon vine. Silverleaf moss. A few herbs Freya said were stubborn enough to survive my mistakes.”
Freya.
Adelina’s fingers curl once in her lap, betraying more feeling over that name than she has given either my presence or her brother’s farewell.
Sylas’s voice goes low. “Did you bring seeds?”
Her eyes snap to him, guarded so quickly it almost hurts to witness.
He lifts both hands slightly. “I’m not going to take them.”
She studies him, then gives the smallest nod. “A few.”
“Then we will find somewhere for them.”
Her gaze flicks to me. There is something in it I can’t read quickly enough before it disappears. Distrust, perhaps. Or the expectation that I’ll correct my brother for promising anything that has not been approved.
Sylas notices that too and continues speaking, deliberately light.
He tells her about the southern coast, the mountain roads, the library built into the cliffside above the castle, the old observatory my mother loves, the winter storms that roll over the sea and turn the sky green before dawn.
He tells her about our younger cousins stealing peaches from the royal orchard, about the time Rowan fell into the west fountain during a training exercise and blamed faulty stonework for a week, and about the castle hawks that nest in the upper towers every summer and scream at everyone except my mother.
Adelina listens. She does not offer much, but she listens intently.
Every now and then, she will ask a question or offer a comment.
Nothing more than politeness, yet each small response is more than she has given since we left the temple road, and Sylas treats every one like it matters.
Because it does. Because he’s better than I am at making a conversation feel like a bridge instead of an interrogation.
I should be grateful.
Instead, I sit across from them with anger beneath my skin and jealousy so irrational I nearly laugh at myself. She speaks to him because he did not bind her in the street. He did not call her selfish before he carried her back to the boat while the temple bells rang behind her.
Because he is not the man she thinks betrayed her.
The carriage hits a deeper rut. Adelina gasps, then swallows the rest of the sound. She grips her dress and her eyes scrunch shut.
I lean forward before I can stop myself. “Are you hurt?”
Her eyes fly open. Sylas stops speaking. The carriage continues rocking beneath us.
Adelina lowers her gaze. “I’m only tired, Your Highness.”
Lie.
My patience thins, but I keep my voice level. “That was not what I asked.”
“I know.”
The honesty of that nearly silences me. Nearly. “Then answer what I asked.”
She looks up at me, her expression blank like all life was left on the temple road. “If I say yes, will the carriage stop?”
I hold her gaze but don’t respond.
“Will we turn back?” she continues, voice still even. “Will anything change?”
Sylas goes very still beside her. I don’t answer quickly enough.
She gives the faintest nod. “Then I am only tired.”
“If you are injured, Soren can help. We have healers to care for you,” I say.
“Some things are easier to bear than to surrender.”
The words land like a slap, and I deserve every bit of them. I sit back.
Fine. If she’s in pain and refuses to admit it, then she can suffer in her stubbornness.
?
The rest of the afternoon passes under a silence that even Sylas cannot fully mend.
We stop at an inn shortly after nightfall.
I decided before we left Dravaryn’s capital that we would not spend a single night beneath the roof of any family tied to that court, no matter how diplomatically insulting the choice might be.
Inns are not neutral, not truly. Every roof has a price, and I prefer to be the one holding the purse strings.
The inn sits along the southern road where the mountains begin to fold lower, still within Dravaryn but far enough from the capital that the air feels less watched.
It’s one of the better establishments, built of dark timber and stone, with warm lamplight in every window and a stable yard large enough for our escort.
Snow piles along the roofline, and smoke rises thick from the chimneys.
The sign above the door bears a carved stag with silver antlers.
Rowan enters first with Merritt to clear the lower rooms. Kellan checks the stable yard with two guards. Soren stays close to the carriage while Sylas steps down and turns back toward Adelina. I get there first and offer my hand.
She looks at it. I do not move or reach farther. I do not close the distance for her. She hesitates before she places her hand in mine.
It’s cold. Too cold.
I help her down, watching for any change in her face when her boots touch the packed snow. She doesn’t falter, but that means less than it should. Adelina has turned concealment into an art.
Inside, the innkeeper bows so deeply his beard nearly touches his belt. He knows who we are, of course. Everyone along this route knows by now. But he’s wise enough to look at my crest, my men, my expression, and decide discretion is worth more than curiosity.
“The upper rooms are prepared, Your Highness,” he says. “We also have a meal prepared. I’m sure you are all hungry,”
“Yes,” I say. “Meals should be sent upstairs. No servants beyond the landing without permission. My guards will hold the corridor.”
His eyes flick once to Adelina, then back to me. “As you wish.”
The room assigned to us is large by inn standards, with a private sitting area, a bedchamber beyond it, and a smaller adjoining room for attendants or guards.
I have no intention of leaving her in a separate chamber.
Whatever propriety the court wants to clutch at can choke on itself.
Sylas will take the adjoining room. Soren, Rowan, Merritt, and Kellan will rotate watch and use the room across the hall to sleep.
Adelina steps inside and stops just past the threshold. The fire is already lit. A washstand waits near the wall. Fresh linens. A tray with tea. A table set for supper though no food has arrived yet. The bedchamber door stands half-open, showing a bed large enough for two and a screen for dressing.
Her eyes linger on the bed, she fidgets with her hands before she tugs her cloak tighter around herself. I understand at once what she is thinking.
My stomach twists. “You will have the bed to yourself,” I say.
She nods, a reflexive acceptance of an instruction before she steps further into the room.
Sylas enters behind us, then glances between her and me. “Do you need anything, Princess?”
“No, Your Highness,” Adelina murmurs. “Thank you.”
We turn to give her a few minutes alone, but her voice stops both of us. “Your Highness, may I ask for one thing?”
The words are so quiet I almost think I imagined them.
I turn fully toward her. “Yes.”
She keeps her hands clutched in front of her, fingers tight enough that the knuckles pale. Her gaze remains lowered. She seems to lose the words and has to gather them again.
“Freya,” she says. The name is barely more than breath. Then stronger, though not by much. “And Marra and Vera. My maids. I would like to know what happened to them. If they are alive. If they were punished because I ran.”
Every bit of anger in me stills. Because after everything, after being dragged from sanctuary, returned to the brother she fears, likely hurt by him in ways she will not name, and carried toward a kingdom she does not know, this is what finally makes her ask me for something.
Not safety for herself. Not comfort. Not answers about her own future.
Freya and two maids. The people left behind.
Sylas looks away, his jaw set.
I keep my gaze on Adelina. “I will find out.”
Her lashes lift. Surprise, then distrust, then hope she smothers so quickly I nearly miss it, passes her face. “Truly?”
“Yes.”
She swallows. “Thank you.”
I should leave it there, but I don’t. “You will eat a proper dinner.”
Her expression changes at once, closing slightly. “Your Highness?”
“If you want me to find out what happened to Freya, Marra, and Vera, you will eat. Not three bites to appease a healer. Not a sip of water and a lie. A proper dinner.”
Sylas’s eyes cut to me. I ignore him. Adelina watches me with a stillness I’ve come to hate.
“You are bargaining with me?” she questions.
“Yes.”
That seems to surprise her more than any answer might have.
I step closer, stopping before the distance becomes something that might make her uncomfortable. “I will look for them regardless, Adelina. But I need you alive long enough for the answer to matter.”
Her eyes lower again. For a long moment, she says nothing. Then she nods. “I will eat.”
“Good.”