28. Adelina
Adelina
The pain does not vanish with a new day, but it recedes enough that I notice before anything else. I wake in the inn bed with Freya’s shawl still caught in my hand, and the fire reduced to glowing embers. For one quiet moment, I can breathe without immediately measuring how much it costs.
My back aches. My shoulders feel bruised beneath the skin. But the deep, burning lines that kept me awake through my last night in Dravaryn have dulled to something distant, buried under sleep and whatever draught Soren gave me.
I lie still, staring toward the shuttered window, listening to movement in the other room. Low voices. A chair scraping softly. Someone adding wood to the fire. The murmur of men who have already been awake for hours.
For a moment, I let myself pretend the easier pain means something good. Then I remember better.
Pain in my brother’s castle never leaves easily. It will get worse before it leaves completely, especially without Freya. And as this was his most brutal punishment yet, I expect the healing to take longer than a few days.
I sit up slowly, expecting the world to tilt. It does, but only a little, and I hold my breath until the room steadies. The sleeping draught has left my head heavy and my mouth dry, but the blanket is warm around my legs. No one has taken Freya’s shawl from my hand.
But my satchel is missing. I jerk around, looking in the bed for the bag, ignoring the stabbing pains that hit with each movement. Then I put my feet on the ground and they bump something soft.
My bag!
I lift it and begin going through the contents. My stuffed unicorn, the storybook, my seeds, and my sketchbook are where I left them, and relief floods through me.
As I shift the items around, I notice something in the bag that wasn’t there before. My hands shake as I remove the pouch. There is no seal, only a small mark burned into the leather.
A root curling beneath frost.
My pulse trips.
Freya.
It’s not Freya’s hand, not exactly. The mark is older than Freya. Older than the nursery, older than the hidden tunnels beneath the castle, older than every whispered warning that taught me when to lower my eyes.
I pull at the drawstring and look inside. There are several vials and a small scroll. I set both the bag and pouch on the bed so I can unroll the paper.
The road has changed hands, but you have not been abandoned. Do not look for the messenger. Do not ask who placed this in your keeping. The less you know, the less can be taken from you.
The old root still lives.
We have not given you up. The wren has not given you up. You are not alone, no matter whose banner hangs over the road ahead. Use the vials carefully. They are marked below.
Blue wax: for pain. Three drops beneath the tongue. No more than twice in one day. It will dull the body, not the mind.
Green wax: for fever or poisoned blood. Bitter. Take half the vial with water. Save the rest if you can.
White wax: for strength when you must keep moving. Two drops only. It will borrow from tomorrow, so do not take it unless stopping is more dangerous.
Silver wax: for sleep without dreams. One drop in tea. Do not take it if you must wake quickly.
Black wax: smoke veil. Break the vial against stone or wood and turn your face away. It will blind scent, sound, and sight for a short span. Use only if flight is possible. It will not save you if you freeze.
Memorize this and burn the scroll.
Remember what the wren told you. Light does not only reveal. It opens. Trust the root. Trust the water. Trust yourself when no one else will.
What frost cannot kill, it teaches to grow deep.
Hold fast.
I read the note once more and memorize the contents before I look in the pouch. Five vials. I pull the drawstring and stuff the pouch deep in my satchel before rushing to the fire. I hold the scroll to the embers and watch as it turns to ash just as a soft knock comes at the half-open door.
“Princess?” Sylas asks from the other side. “Are you awake?”
I pull the shawl closer over my shoulders. “Yes.”
He pushes the door open only enough to look in, not stepping across the threshold. His hair is brushed back loosely, and he looks like he has been awake for a while.
“We leave within the hour. There is breakfast, and Soren is already threatening people with broth.”
I blink at him.
His mouth curves slightly. “That’s not a joke. He has a bowl. He is armed.”
I can’t help the small smile. It happens, faint and quick, more memory of motion than expression.
Sylas sees it and warms before he can stop himself.
The smile disappears at once.
He seems to understand why because he looks away first. “I’ll send a maid up. Not one from Dravaryn’s court,” he adds quickly. “Someone from our contingent. Soren spoke with her. She can help if you need it.”
“I can dress myself,” I reply quickly.
“I thought you might say that.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because asking is polite.”
The answer is so simple that I do not know what to do with it. He leaves before I have to decide.
I change more slowly than I want before I move to the sitting room.
Breakfast is quieter than it was last night.
I eat because I promised Kaedryn I would, though he doesn’t remind me.
He sits across from me at the small table, dark and controlled, his attention moving between the map Rowan has spread near the hearth and the food on my plate with irritating precision.
He doesn’t say a word to me.
Soren watches me take the last bite of bread and nods once, satisfied enough not to push another bowl toward me. “Better.”
“I’m not a child.” I frown.
“No,” he says mildly. “Children usually argue less.”
Sylas chokes on his tea. Kaedryn’s eyes flick briefly toward his brother, then back to the map. For one strange moment, the room feels almost ordinary. Not safe. Not warm in the way Freya made a room warm. But less sharp. Less full of invisible blades.
Then I stand and move too quickly. I’ve taken three steps when the room drops sideways.
A deep, rapid thud drowns out the other noises in the room.
My own heartbeat, maybe. Or something worse.
The floor seems to tilt beneath my boots, and a wave of weakness moves through me so swiftly my knees soften.
“Adelina!” Kaedryn’s voice breaks through the thundering in my ears.
Shadows wrap around me, and for a second, I think maybe I have passed out. Then Kaedryn is there before I can make sense of anything. His arm wraps around my waist, and I stiffen at the touch.
“I’m fine,” I say. The words come automatically.
His brow furrows. “You nearly passed out.”
“I just stood too quickly.”
Soren steps closer, all healer now. “Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sit down, or I will have Merritt carry the chair to you and make this awkward for everyone.” Soren points.
From near the door, Merritt lifts his brows. “I’m willing.”
Kaedryn guides me the few steps back to the chair, and I sit. Proving I’m not weak would require moving alone, and at the moment that seems unwise.
Soren crouches in front of me and checks my pulse before I can decide whether to object. His fingers are warm around my wrist, professional, careful, but I still have to force my hand not to pull away.
“Dizzy?” he asks.
“A little.”
“Pain?”
“No more than before.”
His eyes narrow, but he lets it pass. “Nausea?”
“No.”
“Vision?”
“Fine now.”
Kaedryn stands just behind him, silent. I look at the floor rather than at him.
Soren releases my wrist. “Likely exhaustion and the sleeping draught lingering. Travel will not help. And not knowing what caused your pain is not helping.”
“We have to move,” I say.
“I did not say we shouldn’t,” Soren replies.
“I can travel,” I say. “And the source of my pain is my own matter.”
I fold my hands in my lap because they have begun to tremble, and I do not want either of them to see. “I can travel.”
Soren studies me for another heartbeat, then rises. “You need to drink water throughout the day. If it happens again, tell me.”
“I will.”
I won’t. But he seems to know that too.
We leave soon after. The roads begin to soften from mountains to hills.
The snow thins, giving way to wet stone and winter-browned grass.
Black pines still line the road, dense and watchful, but the air carries salt now.
Somewhere ahead lies the port where we will cross toward Elyrion, where Dravaryn’s cold will finally ease and the southern climate line will bring us into Kaedryn’s world.
His kingdom.
My future.
I try not to think about that. It’s easier to watch the road and let my mind drift to the place of no thoughts.
Sylas talks for a while, because apparently silence offends him on a personal level.
He tells me the port is not as grand as the capital harbor, but safer for royal transfers because the cliffs protect it from northern storms. He tells me Elyrian ships use sails threaded with wind-calling silk, and Rowan makes a comment from the outer bench that Sylas is overselling the romance of being seasick.
Kellan laughs. Merritt says anyone who gets seasick should never have been trusted with wings in the first place.
I listen. I even answer once or twice.
But the farther we travel, the stranger my body feels.
A hollowness under my ribs blooms. A weakness in my limbs comes and goes like shadows crossing the sun.
At first, I think it’s hunger, though I ate.
Then I think it’s fear, though fear is so familiar to me that I know its shape, and this is not quite it.
It feels like something inside me is loosening. Unthreading.
I press my hand briefly to my stomach, hidden beneath the edge of my cloak. Kaedryn notices anyway.
He sighs and rolls his eyes. “If something is wrong, then silence is only hurting you. I grow tired of watching you hide whatever is wrong.”
“Stop watching me then,” I say before I can stop myself. I slam my mouth shut.
Idiot!
Sylas goes silent. Kaedryn’s gaze sharpens. For one awful heartbeat, I wait for the hand that will surely strike me.
Instead, he says, “Stop giving me reasons to.”