45. Adelina #2
Rowan steps from the trees below, dragging a struggling man by the back of his collar with an arm yanked behind his back.
Merritt follows with a blade at the man’s throat.
The stranger’s hood has fallen back, revealing pale hair, Dravaryn coloring, and the hard, frightened eyes of someone who did not expect the trap to close in both directions.
My knees nearly give. They caught him. Kaedryn’s men caught him. Freya will pay for my failure. The thought tears through me. If they caught him, will my brother know? Will Freya pay before dawn? Did the messenger have a way to report? Did I fail before I even reached him?
The man spits something in Dravaryn, and Rowan twists his arm hard enough to make him choke on the rest.
Kaedryn does not look at him. He looks only at me. “Did you think I would not know?” he asks.
My lips part, but no sound comes.
His shadows move toward me.
They slide up the rain-slick stairs in thin black ribbons, silent and fast, spilling over the stone like ink poured from an unseen bowl.
Before I can step back, one coils around my ankle.
I gasp. Another wraps my other leg. Then my wrists.
Then my waist. They are cold and absolute, tightening just enough that my body understands the command before my mind can name it.
The stairs, the rain, the garden, the lamps, all of it vanishes beneath the sudden knowledge that I cannot move.
I cannot lift my foot. I cannot step back. I cannot run. A small sound breaks in my throat. Something flickers across his face, but the shadows do not release me.
“You will not run from this conversation.” His words are calm enough to terrify me.
A decision. A judgment.
The shadows thicken along the stair behind me, swallowing the way back.
Another ribbon stretches down the steps toward the garden gate, barring the path I meant to take.
I’m bound in place between them, not bruised, not struck, not dragged, but held so completely that my body empties itself of resistance.
He has once again used his shadows to restrain me.
Not the sharpest cruelty, not yet. Not the whip. Not the hidden punishments that leave no open wound for anyone to question. This is only the beginning, a reminder that I mistook distance for safety and kindness for something stronger than a man’s temper.
I do not fight. Fighting makes it worse. I only lower my gaze and let my hands go slack inside the shadows.
Kaedryn’s breath catches. His magic pulls taut, then goes quiet, as if some part of him feels the change in me too late. But he does not let me go. He comes closer.
Slowly.
The shadows keep me fixed where I stand, rain sliding cold down my head and neck, beneath the collar of my gown. He stops one step below mine, close enough that I can see the water dripping from his lashes, close enough that his shadow falls over the bracelet my brother sent.
The messenger shouts, “The North may have sold you, Princess, but never forget the South bought you.” The words cut through the rain.
The world around me narrows, and everything goes still except the rain running down my body and the stone steps.
The messenger’s smile widens, twisted and vicious, his eyes dropping to the bracelet around my wrist. “A southern castle. Southern guards. Southern vows waiting.” He laughs once, breathless and ugly. “And still you answered the North’s call like a good little bitch.”
Kaedryn fists his hands and then flexes them.
Rowan wrenches the man’s arm higher, but the messenger only grins through the pain, his eyes fixed on me now.
“She knows,” he says. “Pretty silk. Pretty rooms. Pretty prince. A gilded cage dressed in southern colors is still a cage. You act noble, but you took her choice and bought her.”
Merritt’s blade presses tighter beneath his jaw. “Enough.”
Kaedryn takes one step down the stairs toward the man. The air around him darkens until the lamplight nearest him flickers. “Who sent you?”
The messenger looks at him then, and a satisfied grin moves across his face. He remains silent.
“Answer me!” Kaedryn commands. I feel the power behind it.
“Too late.” The messenger laughs. Then his jaw snaps shut.
Rowan curses and shoves him to the wet stone, one hand clamping around his mouth. Merritt drops beside him, trying to force his jaw open, but black foam is already spilling between the man’s lips. His body jerks once, twice, heels scraping against the rain-slick path.
Kaedryn’s shadows lash across the stones. “Keep him alive!” he snarls.
Rowan presses two fingers to the messenger’s throat, his face grim. Merritt’s hand remains locked at the man’s jaw, but the messenger’s eyes have gone fixed and glassy, staring past all of us into the rain.
“He’s dead,” Rowan says.
Kaedryn spins back to me. “Inside,” he growls.
I cannot move. The absurdity of that nearly makes me laugh.
He has commanded me inside while his own magic holds me still.
For one moment, neither of us speaks. Then his jaw flexes, and the shadows around my ankles loosen.
They withdraw just enough to allow movement, while the ones around my wrists and waist remain.
A leash made of night.
“Inside now,” he says again.
My body obeys before my mind catches up. The shadows guide me up the steps. Kaedryn walks beside me, one hand near my arm but not touching now. That is almost worse, because at least hands belong to a body. At least hands can tremble.
The shadows do not tremble. They only hold. Every step confirms what the terrified part of me already knows.
I was wrong. He is not safer. He is only different.
When we reach my chambers, Linnea is in the sitting room now with Mirelle, both pale and terrified.
They must have raised the alarm. Or maybe he arrived before they could.
I do not know. I do not know anything except that the bracelet is cold around my wrist, Freya may already be screaming because of me, and Kaedryn’s shadows are wrapped around my body.
Linnea sees them and goes white. “Your Highness,” she whispers.
Kaedryn does not look at her. The shadows enter with us. They slide beneath the balcony doors first, sealing the frame in a thin black line. Then the outer doors. Then the windows. No slam. No sound of a lock clicking. Only darkness settling into every exit.
Mirelle presses one hand over her mouth.
The shadows around my wrists release only after the balcony doors close behind us. The ones around my waist vanish last. I almost stumble without them and catch myself against the arm of the chair.
“Sit,” Kaedryn orders me.
I sit in the chair nearest the hearth. The same table. The same open box and the pressed ice orchid sealed beneath glass.
His eyes go to it. Something dark moves through his face. “That came from your brother, didn’t it?” Then his eyes dart to the bracelet.
I look at my hands. The bracelet gleams.
“Take it off.” Again, his command is laced with his magic.
My fingers fumble with the clasp. It takes too long. His shadows lift from the floor. My fingers shake harder. For a second, the shadows hover between us, black and restless, ready to obey whatever command he gives them. Then his shadows unclasp the bracelet and drop it on the desk.
“Where is the message?” Kaedryn questions me.
I say nothing.
“Adelina!”
My throat closes.
His voice hardens. “Where is it?”
I cannot answer because saying it makes the choice real, and fear has silenced my voice.
His shadows shift across the floor, quiet as spilled ink, creeping closer to the hem of my gown. They do not touch me, but the air around my legs cools until gooseflesh rises beneath my damp skirts.
“Your brother’s seal is on the box,” he says, each word measured.
“His bracelet was on your wrist. One of your flowers is lying dead beneath glass. A northern agent just killed himself on my grounds rather than answer a single question.” The shadows at the windows darken, swallowing the rain-streaked glass until the whole room feels smaller.
“So I will ask once more. Where is the message?”
My fingers knot in my lap. I try to swallow, but my throat has gone dry.
Kaedryn takes one step closer. The shadows follow. His eyes flick to my hands, then lift back to my face. “Do not make me ask again.” Something threads through the words. Anger. Power.
It presses against the room, against the fire, against my skin, not entering my mind but tightening the air around me until my body wants to obey before thought can rise to stop it. A command shaped as a question. A prince used to being answered. A man whose shadows have already taken every door.
My eyes burn. My lips part. No sound comes. I cannot admit that I held the only proof of Freya’s danger and destroyed it with my own hands.