34. Kaedryn #2
My chair hits the floor behind me as I move.
Shadows explode across the breakfast room, racing ahead beneath the doors, up the stairwell, along the walls, faster than my body can follow.
Sylas is at my side in a breath. Soren curses and shoves past Kellan.
Rowan abandons Alric so quickly the estate captain stumbles into the wall.
Merritt draws steel before we reach the corridor.
Another sound comes from above. A man shouting. Then something crashes.
Adelina!
I don’t remember taking the stairs. One moment I’m in the breakfast room. The next I’m on the upper floor, my shadows slamming into the corridor ahead of me, swallowing the estate guards stationed outside her suite and pinning them against the walls hard enough that one chokes.
The door to Adelina’s rooms stands slightly open. My shadows tear through it first. I follow.
The sitting room is a ruin of overturned furniture, shattered porcelain, and spilled tea. A chair lies on its side. One of the curtains has been ripped halfway down. Maelin stands near the bedchamber entrance with one hand raised, green-white magic blazing from her palm, her face white with fury.
On the floor near the bed, an estate guard writhes with a knife buried in his side.
And Adelina stands several feet away from him, pressed back against the wall beside the dressing screen.
She is holding herself upright by force alone, one hand clamped around the torn shoulder of her nightdress, the other raised defensively.
Her hair has come loose from its braid. Her breathing is so fast I can hear it across the room.
Her eyes are huge and hollow with terror, fixed on the blood spreading beneath the man on the floor.
There is blood on her hand.
My vision narrows until the entire world becomes that blood. “Adelina.”
She flinches so hard her shoulders hit the wall. I stop moving. My shadows do not. They flood the room, covering the floor, the walls, the bed, the bleeding guard, the open door, every possible exit and every threat. One coil wraps around the guard’s throat before I consciously command it.
He gags.
“Prince Kaedryn!” Soren snaps behind me.
His voice sounds distant. The guard’s eyes bulge. He tries to speak. My shadows tighten.
“Kaedryn.” Sylas this time. “Not yet.”
We need him alive. Adelina is watching. Killing him in front of her may satisfy the ugliest part of me and destroy something in her I have no right to touch.
I release my shadows enough for the guard to suck in a wet breath.
Maelin’s voice cuts through the room. “I found him holding the princess down.”
My shadows darken. Adelina’s breathing breaks.
“He said Captain Alric sent him,” Maelin continues, fury shaking beneath the healer’s calm. “He said he needed to verify her readiness for travel.”
The guard groans, blood seeping around the knife in his side.
Merritt steps in, sees the scene, and goes colder than I have ever seen him.
I look at the guard. “Verify?”
He wheezes. “Orders.”
My shadow snaps around his mouth before he can say anything else. I take one step toward him.
Adelina makes a sound behind me, a small, strangled breath. I stop at once. She is looking at me now, but not only at me. At my shadows. At the room swallowed in dark. At the guard choking beneath them. At the doorway blocked by men and violence and command.
At another dangerous man standing between her and escape. I force the shadows back by inches.
“Soren,” I say, and my voice does not sound like mine. “Keep him alive.”
The guard sobs behind the shadow over his mouth.
Soren moves, grim and fast, dropping beside him and pressing one glowing hand around the wound. “Merritt, help me restrain him.”
Merritt’s smile is small and ugly. “Gladly.”
I look to Maelin. “Adelina?”
Maelin turns toward the princess, slow enough not to startle her. “She stabbed him when he grabbed her.”
Grabbed her. Adelina presses harder against the wall.
The torn shoulder of her nightdress slips lower, and she snatches it back up with shaking fingers, her face draining further.
My shadows surge in answer, and this time I send them upward, not toward her, but between her and every male eye in the room.
Darkness falls like a curtain, shielding her from the guard, from Merritt, from Soren.
She gasps. I stop the shadows before they close too tightly.
“They are not touching you,” I say, though my voice is rough enough that I do not know if it helps. “Only shielding.”
Her eyes lift to mine through the dim. She does not answer.
Maelin shoots me a look that says she will handle this, and for once, I let her.
“Princess,” Maelin says softly. “You are safe now. The guard is down. No one will let him near you again.”
Adelina’s mouth moves. Nothing comes out. Then her knees give.
I cross the room before thought can catch up, faster than shadow, faster than reason. Her body folds, and I catch her before she reaches the floor, one arm sliding beneath her shoulders, the other around her waist, mindful of the places that might hurt even as panic tears through me.
She goes rigid the instant my hands touch her. The bond comes awake in the same breath. It has been quiet since the dining cabin on the ship, wary, half-asleep, but the moment my hands close around her it floods me with sensation that is not mine.
It’s hers.
Her fear. Her braced muscles. The certainty, bone-deep and absolute, that the next thing to happen to her will be pain. She is waiting for me to hurt her.
The realization nearly stops my heart.
“It’s me,” I say, low and fast. “I won’t hurt you. I have you.” I let my shadows fall.
Her fingers clutch the gown against her chest, but her eyes are not on me. They are still fixed somewhere over my shoulder, toward the man bleeding on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
The room seems to stop.
Sylas’s expression twists. “No.”
“He grabbed me, and I grabbed the knife from his belt. I did not mean to hurt him. I’m sorry.” The words tumble out before her voice breaks, small and raw.
She is apologizing. The man is bleeding on the floor because he entered her room and put his hands on her, and she is apologizing.
Something inside me goes silent.
Dangerously so.
I lower with her because she cannot stand, easing her down only as far as the edge of the bed rather than the floor.
She trembles in my arms, every breath shallow and fractured, and I keep my hold loose enough that she can pull away if she finds the strength, though every instinct in me screams to wrap her in shadows and flesh and never let anything touch her again.
“Adelina,” I say, forcing each word to stay even. “You did nothing wrong.”
Her eyes flick to mine, terrified and disbelieving.
“You defended yourself. That is not a crime in this kingdom,” I explain.
A tremor runs through her. She does not believe me. Of course she doesn’t.
Maelin steps closer, holding a robe she must have snatched from the bed. “Princess, may I help cover you?”
Adelina looks down, only now remembering the torn fabric. Her face goes red then white. She nods once.
I shift enough for Maelin to wrap the robe around her, blocking the sightlines with her body. My hands remain at Adelina’s back and side, supporting rather than restraining, though she is shaking so badly I’m not sure if she can tell the difference.
“May I check your wrist?” Maelin asks.
Adelina looks at me. Not Maelin. Me.
Because I’m the one holding her. Because my permission still feels larger than hers.
That thought cuts. “You can answer her,” I say, and hate how clumsy it sounds.
Her gaze drops. After a moment, she gives a tiny nod.
Maelin takes her wrist and examines the reddened marks there. Her face hardens, then smooths into healer calm so quickly I almost miss it. Sylas does not miss it. Neither does Soren, though he remains beside the guard with one hand pressed to the wound with murder in his eyes.
The guard tries to moan. My shadows silence him without cutting off his breath.
“Where is Alric?” I ask.
Rowan appears in the doorway, dragging the estate captain by the arm. Alric’s face is chalk white. He takes one look at the guard on the floor, then at Adelina trembling against me, then at the shadows crawling up the walls. “Your Highness, I can explain.”
My shadows hit him before I move. They slam him back against the doorframe and hold him there, boots barely touching the floor. Adelina flinches in my arms. I release him enough that he drops to his knees instead of hanging.
“Explain,” I say.
Alric coughs, one hand pressed to his throat. “The message from the North said certain assurances were required before final transfer. I thought it referred to documentation. I sent a guard to ask whether the princess was prepared to be escorted.”
Merritt looks up from tying the guard. “And he entered her bedchamber and touched her?”
Alric’s eyes dart to the bleeding man. “I did not order that.”
The guard tries to speak through pain.
Soren presses harder near the wound. “Careful. Dying would be inconvenient.”
Adelina turns her face slightly into the robe, and the movement draws me back to her with brutal force. Her breathing has changed. Faster. Too shallow.
“Adelina,” I murmur. “Look at me.”
She tries. I feel the effort it costs her, her whole body bracing before her eyes lift.
“The guard is down. Alric is restrained. No one else from this house will come near you.”
Her lips tremble. “I’m sorry,” she says again.