30. Adelina
Adelina
Iwake to the sound of the sea and the gentle movement of waves. Beneath me. Around me. A deep, constant rise and fall that moves through the bed before I understand I’m in a bed, through my bones before I remember I still have them.
For a few seconds, I do not open my eyes.
The world sways. Wood creaks somewhere nearby, a low groan beneath the softer slap of water against the hull. Fabric rustles. Glass clinks. A woman murmurs something too quietly for me to understand, and the sound is calm enough that my mind cannot decide whether to trust it or fear it.
Beneath the rosemary and lavender, another scent clings faintly to the blanket. Cedar, rain, and something darker I recognize before I want to.
Kaedryn.
I’m not in the carriage or on the road. I’m not in the forest with black claws locked around my throat, pulling everything dark and frightened out of me like thread from a torn seam.
My eyes fly open.
The ceiling above me is carved wood, polished pale and inlaid with curling green designs that remind me of vines.
A lantern hangs from a hook, its flame shielded by glass, swaying with the ship’s motion.
Silk curtains are tied back around a narrow bed built into the wall, and a round window shows nothing but gray-blue sky and a flash of white water.
I am on a ship.
My hand jerks toward my throat, finding my mother’s necklace beneath the borrowed sleeping gown someone has put me in. Then I bolt upright, desperate to find my satchel.
“Easy,” a woman says beside me, her hand on my shoulder to keep me in the bed. “You are safe, Princess.”
The woman sitting beside the bed is older than Selvara but younger than Freya, with deep brown skin, dark curls pinned at the back of her head, and a healer’s satchel open across her lap.
Her dress is practical but fine, soft green wool with rolled sleeves and a silver clasp shaped like a leaf at her throat.
There is nothing northern about her. She smells faintly of rosemary, lavender, and salt.
One of the prince’s people.
I try to shift. The room tips. My stomach twists. A cold, hollow weakness opens under my ribs, so deep and sudden I almost sink through the bed with it. The woman sets a hand near my shoulder, not touching until I stop moving on my own.
“No quick movements. Not yet.”
My mouth is dry enough that speaking hurts. “Where am I?”
“On the Verdant Star. Crown Prince Kaedryn’s royal ship. We are bound for Elyrion.”
Elyrion. I made it out of Dravaryn again.
But I’m not free.
Memory returns in sharp, broken pieces. The carriage.
The road. Sylas talking about spring. The dizziness at breakfast. The horses screaming.
Varrow eyes shining black. A fallen guard’s sword in my hands.
Kaedryn’s wings closing around me, dark and armored, shielding me from claws and teeth and whatever remained of the creatures trying to feed on my fear.
Then nothing.
“How long?” I ask.
“You have been unconscious since yesterday afternoon. We boarded before nightfall and crossed the climate line at dawn.”
Yesterday. Another gap. My fingers curl in the blanket.
The woman notices. “You were lucky.”
I look at her with a frown.
Her expression is gentle, but not soft enough to be false. “The Varrow had already begun draining you. Another minute, perhaps less, and you might have died. If the drain had gone deeper and left your body alive, your mind might not have returned whole.”
I nod because I have nothing to say.
“Varrow do not merely take strength,” she continues. “They feed on fear, despair, panic, grief, anything wounded enough to give them purchase.”
I stare at her. I should feel something. Terror. Relief. Horror. Instead, there is only exhaustion.
The woman reaches for a small glass vial from the table beside the bed. “Drink this.”
My body locks and my heart takes off. The memory of Selvara forcing the potion down my throat before Varek’s last punishment surfaces.
Her hand stills, the vial resting in her palm rather than pressing toward my mouth. “It is a restorative. Nothing sedating. Smell it.”
I don’t move. She uncorks it herself and holds it where I can catch the scent. Mint. Honey. Something bright and green that makes my mouth water despite the fear.
“Soren brewed the first dose,” she says. “I adjusted this one for the lingering drain.”
He gave me the sleeping draught at the inn. He told me I did not have to take it.
I take this one before I can think too hard.
The healer lets me hold it myself. I drink.
The potion is warm even though the glass was cool, and the heat spreads through my mouth, throat, chest, then lower, filling some of the hollow place the Varrow left behind.
The weakness retreats by degrees, enough that my fingers stop tingling and the edge of the room sharpens into something steadier.
She nods. “Good.”
I pass the empty vial back. “What’s your name?” I ask.
Her expression changes. Less severe. “Maelin. I am one of Queen Elowyn’s healers.”
His mother’s healer.
Maelin reaches beside the bed and lifts a familiar satchel, worn leather and cloth straps, carefully cleaned of mud. “This is yours.”
The breath leaves me. For a second, I cannot move.
Then I reach for it with both hands, dragging it against my chest so quickly that my sore arm protests.
I clutch it anyway. My sketchbook. My mother’s fairy-tale book.
The seeds. The unicorn. The portrait. Freya’s shawl. The vials someone placed inside.
Still here. Still mine.
The relief is so fierce it nearly becomes a sob. I press my mouth together until it passes, but my eyes burn anyway.
Maelin looks away, pretending to fuss with something in her satchel.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Prince Sylas brought it aboard. Prince Kaedryn was insistent that it stay with you.”
Prince Kaedryn. He made sure my satchel was returned to me.
Maelin helps me drink water next, then broth from a small cup. When I finish, she checks the pulse at my wrist, listens to my breathing, and asks questions I answer with as few words as possible.
Dizziness? Some. Pain? Manageable. Nausea? No. Memory? Broken.
She does not push when I go quiet. Maelin has been watching the way I hold my shoulders since I woke, though she has not mentioned it.
Eventually, she gestures toward the folded clothing at the foot of the bed. “I can help you dress if you feel ready. The prince asked that you come above when you are able, but not before.”
He did not order it. I’m not sure what to make of that.
“I can dress myself,” I say.
Maelin’s gaze moves once over my arms, my unsteady hands, the tremor I cannot fully hide. “You may do most of it yourself. I will help only where needed.”
It’s a compromise I do not have the strength to refuse.
The clothes are simpler than court gowns, but finer than anything from the road.
A soft ivory underdress. A pale blue wrap-gown with embroidered cuffs.
A cloak lighter than anything Dravaryn would consider useful, lined in a fabric as soft as breath.
Elyrian clothing. Southern clothing. The thought of putting it on knots in my chest, but my old travel clothes are gone, likely torn or bloodied or too filthy to keep.
I sit on the edge of the bed while Maelin turns her back so I can change out of my undergown and into a clean one. When I lift my arms, pain flashes across my back and down my sides. I inhale too sharply, and the room tilts again.
Maelin turns at once. Her attention sharpens, not with surprise but recognition, though she says nothing.
The fabric slips before I can cover myself completely, and her gaze catches on my bare stomach.
Her face changes. I look down.
Purple-black bruises spread across my lower ribs and abdomen, broad and deep, with no distinct outline left to betray what made them.
I ignore the pain yank the gown over my head. “I fell,” I say. The lie comes out before she asks.
Maelin says nothing. I keep my hands over the bruises, trying to press them back beneath my skin through force alone.
“I fell during the Varrow attack,” I add.
Finally, she reaches into her satchel and removes a small vial, this one filled with golden liquid. She sets it on the bed beside me rather than handing it to me.
“This will help with the pain and inflammation,” she says. “It is not sedating. It is not a truth draught. It will not cloud your mind.”
I swallow hard. “I fell.”
“I heard you, Princess.” Her voice is soft and calm.
“You do not believe me.”
Her expression remains calm. “I believe you are frightened.”
The words strike so gently I almost flinch.
Maelin’s gaze drops briefly to my covered stomach before returning to my face. “The color has faded unevenly, but the deeper tissue has not healed with it. Someone used magic to make the damage less visible without properly mending it.”
My stomach turns colder than the sea outside. “You cannot know that.”
“I am a healer.” Her voice remains level. “I know the difference between a body healing and one being forced to appear healed.”
She does not ask who did it.
That frightens me more than the question would have. Varek said he would hurt Freya if I told anyone what happened.
“You should inform us if you are injured, Princess. Hidden injuries can become dangerous. Especially after a Varrow drain,” Maelin says.
“I’m not injured,” I argue.
Her gaze drops, briefly, to my covered stomach. Then back to my face. “Then the potion will do no harm.”
I stare at it. I do not want it, and yet I want it badly. The bruises ache with each breath, and now that she has seen them, I cannot ignore the deep soreness beneath them. I pick up the vial and drink because refusing would be foolish, and I’m so tired of being foolish in ways that only hurt me.
This potion is sweeter than the first, thick with honey and heat. It settles low in my body, warming the bruised places from the inside until the ache eases by a fraction.
Maelin helps me finish dressing without mentioning the bruises again.
When I am ready, she brushes my hair. I do not ask her to, but I also do not stop her.
She works gently through the tangles, starting at the ends the way Freya always did, and the familiarity of that small kindness makes my eyes burn again.
I stare at the round window until the water beyond it blurs.
“All right,” she says when she finishes. “Can you stand?”
I nod. My knees feel weak, but they hold. The ship sways beneath me, and for one strange moment I wonder whether I’m still dizzy or whether the world is simply moving with the waves.
Maelin seems to read the thought. “Walk with the ship, not against it.”
I have no idea what that means until she leads me out of the cabin and into a narrow passage of polished wood and brass lamps. The floor moves under my boots, a steady rise and fall. If I stiffen against it, my stomach turns. If I let my steps relax, it becomes bearable.
The ship is enormous. That becomes clear as we climb the stairs to the upper decks.
The Verdant Star is nothing like Oren’s practical, onion-reeking cargo boat.
This vessel is wide and elegant, with white sails that catch the wind like moonlit wings and dark green banners snapping from polished masts.
The rails are carved with vines and waves.
The decks gleam despite the salt spray. Elyrian sailors move with practiced ease.
Their uniforms are dark green and blue, and their expressions disciplined but curious when they think I’m not looking.
We must have crossed fully into southern waters because the cold has thinned.
Not tropical like Maralis, but no longer cruel.
The wind carries salt, pine, and something clean, almost sweet.
The sea is deep blue beneath a pale sky, and in the distance, beyond mist and light, I can see a suggestion of green cliffs.
Elyrion.
My new cage has a beautiful shoreline.
Maelin leads me to a covered dining area near the aft deck where a small table has been set for one. Warm bread. Soft cheese. Sliced pears. A bowl of rice with herbs and tender fish. Tea with steam curling above it.
“You should eat,” Maelin says.
I sit because my legs are beginning to tremble. Maelin remains nearby for a moment, then steps back. “I’ll be just outside.”
I eat alone.
It’s not much at first. A piece of pear.
A bite of bread. Then more, because the first restorative has settled enough that my body seems to remember it has been emptied and wants refilling.
The fish is mild. The rice is warm. The tea tastes of honey and lemon, nothing like Dravaryn’s bitter black tea.
I am setting down my cup when footsteps approach. Too many.
My body reacts before thought. Back straight. Hands folded. Face calm. Eyes down.