32. Kaedryn
Kaedryn
Iavoid her for the rest of the crossing.
There is no nobility in it. No strategy.
No carefully considered distance meant to give Adelina room to breathe after the disaster I made of the dining cabin.
I avoid her because every time I think of going to her door, I see her on her knees with her head bowed and her hands pressed to the floor as if she was waiting for a blow. I see her flinch at my voice.
I hear her voice, small and shaking.
“F-forgive me, Your Highness. I will do b-better. Please forgive me.”
My stomach turns every time.
So I keep to the upper deck, to the maps, to reports from the captain, to the grim work of counting the cost of the Varrow attack. Two of my guards dead. Three wounded badly enough they needed healer’s attention. Another horse gone. One carriage splintered beyond use and abandoned on the road.
The dead are not Rowan, Soren, Kellan, or Merritt, but that does not make the loss lighter. They were still mine. Men who took my orders. Men who trusted me to lead them through a northern road and onto a southern ship alive.
And I failed them too.
Merritt brought me what little he had on the first morning out.
“The candle sellers I told you about, at the shrine south of the inn. I reached them before we sailed. Paid what they wanted, and more.”
“And?”
“Nothing certain. The old route still runs, so whoever carried messages before Varek’s purge is still out there.
But no one would say where Freya is being held, or whether the two maids went with her.
” He grimaced. “The woman I spoke to would only promise to put the question down the line and send word once we make port. It moves slow when the crown is listening.”
I made a promise to Adelina, and all I have to show for it is a stranger’s word that she will ask quietly.
“Pay whatever they ask,” I told him. “When word comes, it comes to me first.”
He left me with it, and the not-knowing settled in beside the rest of the day’s debts.
The sea rolls beneath the Verdant Star, steady and blue beneath the pale southern sky.
Elyrion’s coast grows clearer by the hour, green cliffs rising from the water, forests thick along the ridge lines, waterfalls spilling white down stone into the sea.
The air is warmer here, damp with salt and pine instead of Dravaryn’s iron cold.
Behind us, the northern climate line has already vanished into distance, but I feel it like a bruise.
Dravaryn does not let go easily.
Neither, apparently, do I.
By late afternoon, Sylas finds me near the forward rail. He does not speak at first. That is how I know the conversation will be unpleasant.
I keep my gaze on the water. “Say it.”
“You’re making that your favorite phrase.”
“You keep arriving with something to say.”
He leans against the rail beside me, looking out toward the coast rather than at me. “She has not left her room.”
I know. I asked Maelin once. Then Soren. Then a steward who looked terrified to be in the middle of whatever this is. Still, I say, “She’s recovering.”
“She’s hiding.” The words land cleanly because they are true.
I grip the rail. “From me.”
“Yes.” There is no accusation in Sylas’s voice.
The wind pulls at the loose strands of his hair, and for a few moments all I hear is sailcloth snapping overhead and the low calls of the crew. Then he says, “Maelin told Soren about the bruises.”
My attention cuts to him. “What bruises?”
Sylas finally looks at me. “On her stomach. Lower ribs too, from what Maelin saw. Deep. Older than the Varrow attack.”
My hand tightens so hard on the rail the wood creaks.
“She claimed she fell when the Varrow attacked,” he continues.
“She did fall.”
“Not like that.”
The sea seems to rise and drop too quickly beneath my feet, though the ship has barely shifted.
Bruises hidden beneath Elyrian clothing. Everything I saw in the carriage, the way she held herself, makes perfect sense.
“I asked her at the ceremony if she was hurt, and she lied,” I say.
Sylas studies my face, then exhales. “That’s it?”
“What would you like me to say?”
“I would like you to say you understand now why she froze. Why she kneels. Why she looks at raised voices like they are hands already reaching for her.”
“I understand just fine.”
“No, you saw enough yesterday. Understanding is proving slower.”
The words hit, and my temper rises because it is easier than grief. Easier than guilt. Easier than the memory of Adelina kneeling at my feet while I demanded to know why she did not fly.
“I watched her almost die,” I say.
The truth comes out rougher than I intend, dragged from somewhere I have been trying not to look. “The Varrow had her. I felt it. Through the bond. I felt her slipping. Not wounded. Not frightened. Dying.” I swallow against the sudden knot in my throat. “And I did not know what to do with that.”
Sylas’s expression eases, but only by a fraction.
“I barely know her,” I say.
“No.”
“I have known her for days. Days, Sylas. She lies to me. She hides everything. She ran from the contract, reached the temple city, nearly ignited a political crisis, and every answer she gives me is a wall polished until it looks like obedience.” I turn back toward the water, anger and shame twisting together until I can’t separate them.
“Then the Varrow touched her, and for one second I thought I would tear the realm apart if that thing took her from me.”
The wind moves between us. Sylas lets the silence hold.
“I was terrified,” I admit, quieter now. “And then I saw the dead guard and her slipping away. Saw her awake and eating the morning after like the crisis had passed, and I wanted an answer that made any of it make sense.”
“So you made her the answer.”
I close my eyes. “Yes.”
I made her fear into irresponsibility because responsibility I understand.
I made her freezing into failure because failure can be corrected.
I made her silence into stubbornness because stubbornness is something I can challenge.
The alternative is that she is wounded in places I cannot see, and I returned her to the hands that did it, even briefly, because politics and law demanded it.
“She dropped to her knees.” My voice turns cold around the memory because heat would break something. “Like I was her brother.”
Sylas turns his face toward me fully. “That’s what truly pissed you off.”
I nod.
“You were angry before,” he says. “You were cruel before. But when she knelt, you looked like someone had put a mirror in front of you and shown you Varek standing in your place.”
There is nothing to deny.
“She is practically your equal in status,” he continues. “More than practically, if Dravaryn succession law is as we were taught.”
My jaw sets. “I know.”
“Then perhaps stop speaking to her like she is a disobedient soldier.”
I look back toward the coast, where Elyrion’s green cliffs are close enough now to show individual trees along the ridges. Home. My kingdom. The place where I understand the rules, where people know my authority and expect my control.
Adelina will enter it afraid of me. The thought sits heavier than any crown.
“I will speak with her when we dock,” I say.
“You could speak with her now.”
“No.” I turn from the rail. “Not while I’m still angry.”
Sylas lets out a humorless breath. “Progress, I suppose.”
I leave before he can say more. He is not wrong.
?
The Verdant Star reaches the southern harbor by midmorning the next day.
The coast of Elyrion rises around us in white stone, deep green forest, and bright water, the harbor carved into the base of cliffs where the castle road begins its long climb inland.
The port is not the royal capital itself, but it belongs to the crown, clean and guarded, its docks built wide enough for royal ships and winged escorts.
White banners snap beside green and blue.
Sunlight breaks through high clouds and turns the sea to glass.
The air smells like home.
Salt. Pine. Rain-soaked stone. River water somewhere beyond the cliffs.
The royal coach waits beyond the harbor terrace, drawn by four pegasi in ceremonial harness.
They stand restless and luminous in the morning light, tall as warhorses but finer, wings folded against sleek bodies, feathers white with faint silver-gray markings along the edges.
Their tack is dark leather and silver fittings, light enough not to hinder flight, strong enough to hold during the climb over the southern ridges.
Adelina is already inside the coach when I arrive.
Someone, likely Maelin, made certain she was settled before I could offer a hand she likely would not take.
She sits with her satchel clutched in her lap, both hands wrapped around the strap.
Her hair is braided simply today, her face pale but composed, her eyes lowered toward the floor.
Maelin must have dressed her in Elyrian blue again, though the cloak around her shoulders is drawn enough that I can see little of it.
The sight of her hands around that satchel cuts through me more sharply than I expect.
She holds it like a shield or a lifeline.
I climb into the coach and take the bench across from her. Sylas follows before the door closes, settling beside me with the deliberate cheer of a man determined to keep two volatile people from ruining a confined space.
Adelina does not look up.
The door shuts. The coach rocks as the pegasi shift in their traces. For a few seconds, there is only the distant call of sailors, the creak of harness, and the rush of water against the harbor wall.
Then Sylas leans forward slightly, peering toward the window. “Have you seen pegasi before, Princess?”
Adelina’s gaze lifts to the window. Another carriage waits beside us with a pair of pegasi.
The lead pair toss their heads as the handler checks the wing lines, their feathers shivering in the coastal wind.
One stretches its wings halfway, the span wide enough to cast a pale shadow across the terrace.