31. Adelina
Adelina
The door opens, and Prince Kaedryn steps in. Sylas is behind him, then Soren, Rowan, Kellan, and Merritt. These men are trained for war and know how to stand between a prince and danger. Now, they look at me now like I am the thing none of them know how to handle.
Kaedryn stops when he sees me. For one unguarded breath, something breaks through his expression.
Relief, sharp enough that I almost do not recognize it, and for one impossible second, I think perhaps he is glad I am alive.
Then his gaze moves over me. “You’re awake,” he says. The relief vanishes. His eyes go cold. The air itself seems to thin around him.
Our eyes meet.
Stupid. I know better than to meet anger directly. I lower my eyes again. “Yes, Your Highness.”
His jaw flexes. The title displeases him.
Or perhaps the fact that I am sitting here instead of lying unconscious gives him one more thing to demand from me.
I can’t tell. His anger fills the room too quickly, slipping beneath my skin until my fingers lock together and my heart takes off in a thunderous run.
Soren glances at the table. “You ate.”
“Yes.” My voice shakes slightly.
“Good,” Soren replies.
Kaedryn takes a step closer, and the pull beneath my ribs responds, sending a pulsing pain through my body like something is touching my bruises.
“Why didn’t you fly?” he demands.
I do not understand the question. “What?”
“During the attack.” His voice is controlled, but only because he is forcing it to be. I can hear the pressure beneath every word. “Why didn’t you fly away?”
My mouth goes dry. The Varrow’s hand closes around my throat again in memory. The black eyes. The open mouth. The way it made every fear surface from places I did not know could bleed.
“I…” My gaze flicks to his face, then away. “I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” Kaedryn snaps.
Sylas shifts. “Kaedryn.”
The prince’s eyes do not leave mine. “No. I want an answer.”
My fingers knot together beneath the table. “I couldn’t.”
“You had space,” he argues.
“I-I didn’t know where to go.” Stupid answer, but telling him I can’t call my wings would invite even more questions and possibly ridicule.
“Up!” The word snaps across the room. “Up and away from the creatures that were feeding on you. Any direction would’ve been better than standing there and freezing.”
Heat rushes to my face, then drains so quickly I feel faint. “I tried,” I whisper.
“Did you?”
The words slice through me. Kaedryn moves closer again, and this time the movement feels too much like every other man who has ever crossed the space between us knowing I could not stop him.
His cloak shifts around his boots. His shoulders are rigid.
His wings are not visible, but I feel the threat of them in him, dark and restrained, like a storm held inside skin.
“You are not helpless, Adelina.” His voice is low, which is worse than shouting. “You have wings. You have magic. You had armed men between you and the attack. And still, when a Varrow came for you, you froze until a guard died putting himself in front of you.”
The table seems to tilt beneath my hands.
“I didn’t mean to. I—” I start.
“No. You simply stood there,” he interrupts me.
Something inside me cracks. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“You defend yourself!” he shouts.
My body hears the anger and threat before my mind can reason through it. My shoulders lock, and I stop breathing. I’m back in my chamber with Varek standing behind me, his voice cutting through the air.
“Hold still. Count, Adelina!”
“I-I tried. I have n-never fought one,” I stammer. “I-I have never fought anything. I wasn’t t-trained. I w-wasn’t allowed—”
He cuts me off. “You expect me to believe the princess of Dravaryn, the kingdom of force and discipline, was never taught to defend herself?”
He does not believe it. Why would he? Princes and princesses are trained. Royal children are prepared. Northern blood is expected to be strong, and Dravaryn prides itself on endurance. He cannot imagine a king keeping his sister ornamental, hidden, useful only as beauty, breeding, and bloodline.
He sees a gap where he expects training and fills it with blame.
“I wasn’t,” I whisper.
His eyes narrow, and that small disbelief does more damage than another shout could have. “Or is this another performance?”
“Kaedryn!” Sylas says his name, sharper this time.
But the crown prince is already too angry to hear him.
“The frightened girl. The helpless bride.” His mouth twists around the words, and each one lands like a lash because I know how to survive being called many things, but helpless has always been the one that felt true.
“The perfect little damsel waiting for men to bleed around her before she makes a choice?”
Soren goes still. Kellan looks away. Merritt mutters something low and furious under his breath.
Damsel.
Performance.
As if the Varrow did not have its claws in me. As if my own fear had not become a wound it could drink from. As if I stood there because I wanted someone to die for me.
“I didn’t mean to,” I say, and even I hear how small it sounds. Shame floods through me.
Failure.
Kaedryn’s expression flashes with something, but it is swallowed at once by the fury already burning through him.
“I told myself there had to be more to this. That you had reasons. That your fear meant something deeper than avoidance. But every step of this journey, people are hurt because you run, hide, refuse to answer, and then look at me like I’m the monster for expecting you to face the consequences of your own choices. ”
It all feels familiar. The room closes in, and I am certain that I have failed in a way that will have to be corrected. Punishment is coming, I know. I just don’t know in what form. A fist, a belt, a whip, or a tighter cage?
Kaedryn steps closer. Only one step, but my mind does not know the difference between a step and a blow when the man taking it has power enough to bind me in shadows. Nausea curls in my stomach, and I regret eating. If I threw up during one of my punishments, Varek would make me lie in it.
“You are going to be the future queen of Elyrion,” he says, voice rising again. “You do not get to collapse every time the world asks something of you. You do not get to freeze and make others pay for it. Do you understand me?”
The last words crack through the room.
“Do you understand me?”
Those were the words that almost always came before or after Varek or Selvara struck me.
My body moves before thought. The chair scrapes back hard enough to nearly tip.
I drop from it to my knees, the impact sending pain up through my bruised stomach and across my back.
My hands hit the polished floor. My head bows so fast the room blurs, and I fold into the posture I know better than a prayer.
“I’m s-sorry,” I say, my voice shaking. “F-forgive me, Your Highness. I will do b-better. Please forgive me.”
The ship creaks beneath us, echoing loudly because no one dares to speak.
For one suspended moment, I wait for the next command. For the hand in my hair. For fingers under my chin forcing my face up. For the order to count, or stand, or apologize properly, or stop shaking, or prove that I understand the cost of disobedience.
For pain.
Instead, Kaedryn asks quietly, “What are you doing?”
My throat closes. I can’t answer because I don’t know which answer is safe. His boots move. I see them at the edge of my vision, dark against the polished floor, closer now. I press my palms harder against the wood.
“Get up,” he says. The command is not shouted.
My breath catches. “I-I’m sorry.”
“I said get up!”
I try, but my body won’t cooperate. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that!”
I go silent.
“Adelina!”
His voice changes on my name, but all I hear is a command. All I feel is the floor beneath my knees, the bruises pulling in my stomach, the phantom burn along my back, the certainty that if I rise before he is finished with me, it will be worse.
A low, rough sound leaves him before he shouts, “Damn it, why are you kneeling?”
The question lashes through me almost harder than the accusation.
Why? Because he yelled, stepped toward me, called me selfish and helpless, and my body knows what comes after a powerful man decides I have failed him.
Standing makes me a target. Kneeling means maybe he will be satisfied sooner, that the punishment will not be as severe. The floor is familiar.
My mouth opens, but no sound comes out.
“Answer me!” he demands.
I flinch so hard my shoulders jerk. The movement sends pain flashing through my back, and I can’t stop the small whimper that escapes me.
The room changes. I feel it more than see it. Sylas swears, low and violent. Soren moves, then stops himself. Rowan says Kaedryn’s name in a tone that sounds less like warning and more like a blade being drawn.
Kaedryn goes utterly still. For several heartbeats, no one speaks.
Then he says, “Look at me, Adelina!”
I lift my head because I have been trained to obey, and I know if I don’t, then he will make me, and that is worse. His face is not what I expect. The fury is still there, but something else has broken through it.
His expression goes taut, and the anger returns, but now it has nowhere clean to go. “Get up,” he says again, but the words are rougher. “You do not kneel to me!”
I stare at him, unable to make sense of that.
He is the crown prince. My betrothed. The man who caught me, bound me, returned me, and now rules the road beneath my feet. If he is angry, I kneel. If he commands, I obey. If he is displeased, I apologize before displeasure becomes pain.
His hands curl into fists at his sides. “Stop looking at me like that!”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper again, because the words are the only shield I have left.
His face twists into something I cannot read. “Enough!” The word cracks out of him, and I drop my gaze back to the floor before I can stop myself.
“I can’t do this,” he says, voice low and furious before he leaves. The door slams hard enough to make me jolt.