46. Adelina #2
“I know,” he says. “And he will agree.”
He looks at me one last time. “You will remain in these rooms until I decide otherwise.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” I reply.
He said we were equals. He said I kneel to no one. Yet here I am, under his orders, with his magic restricting me. Stars, I was an idiot.
He turns and leaves. The shadows sealing the doors remain. The bracelet remains.
Sylas hesitates in the doorway, looking at me with something like sorrow and anger tangled together. The queen presses her fingers to her temple and sighs. I lower my eyes before either one can reach me. I move to the window to look out at the garden below.
Kaedryn does not go far. Moments later, another door opens beyond the sitting room, the one leading from the corridor onto the shared upper terrace. Rain blows in for one brief second before the door slams shut behind him.
I flinch.
No one speaks. There is only rain and the muffled sound of his steps beyond the glass, hard and uneven across the terrace. I tell myself not to. Looking is wanting to know where he goes. Wanting to know where he goes means some part of me still believes his leaving matters.
But I look anyway.
Through the rain-streaked balcony doors, I see him cross the upper garden path below my rooms, black cloak snapping behind him, shoulders rigid, shadows crawling at his feet like something barely leashed. He does not walk like a prince now. He walks like a storm given shape.
Sylas says something behind me. I don’t respond. I watch Kaedryn cross the garden instead of following the paved walk.
Straight through the bed beneath the eastern arch.
I stop breathing.
The ice orchids.
Kaedryn’s boot comes down in the middle of them. The soft soil caves beneath the force of his stride. Tiny stems snap under his heel, disappearing into mud and rainwater. A shadow lashes across the bed after him, not aimed, not shaped, only wild, tearing through the loosened earth as he passes.
A small sound slips from me before I muffle it with my hand.
Kaedryn stops at the far edge of the bed. He stands there with his back to us, rain sliding down his cloak, shadows writhing around his boots. He looks down. He sees. His shoulders go still. The shadows freeze. Then they pull back from the torn soil like they understand what they have touched.
He stands there in the rain, staring at the ruined bed where my ice orchids had been trying to grow, and I feel something inside me fold shut, so quietly I barely feel it.
Then he walks away. This time, he stays on the path.
I look away from the garden. From the dark smear of crushed green beneath the rain. From the bracelet of shadow around my wrist. Why haven’t I learned? I open myself, and I hope, and I let people hurt me.
“Adelina,” the queen says quietly.
The sound of my name in her voice nearly breaks something open. I stop it before it can. I cannot afford to break open in this place. I have to learn to survive just like I did in Dravaryn. And for some reason, this hurts far more than my brother’s whip.
“I’m sorry,” I say. The words are steady. Empty. Correct.
Something in the queen’s jaw works. “You do not need to apologize to me.”
Yes, I do. That’s how this works. I make a mistake, I am punished, and I apologize. There are so many people I should apologize to.
To Freya because my actions may have cost her her life.
To Marra and Vera because I don’t know if they still breathe.
To the ice orchids, because even here, even in softer soil, I could not keep one thing alive.
But apology is not enough. It never has been. Apology only survives if obedience follows. So I lower my gaze and fold my hands. The shadow bracelet shifts when my wrists touch, a cool reminder. A living consequence.
Queen Elowyn takes one careful step toward me. My body reacts before thought can intervene. I step back. It is not far. Only enough to put air between us. Only enough that her hand, if she had been reaching, would not touch me.
Her expression changes, the hurt passing quickly beneath something gentler, something that almost makes me feel worse. “I won’t touch you,” she says.
I nod. I should thank her. But if I thank her, something in my voice might shake.
If it shakes, she may move closer. If she moves closer, I may want to lean into her the way I did before, and I can’t do that.
I can’t let myself learn the shape of another woman’s arms and start believing they will still be there when the next threat comes.
I learned that lesson tonight.
Love is leverage. Freya loved me, and now my brother has her. Marra and Vera helped me, and now their names are written in threats. Queen Elowyn has been kind, and if I start needing her kindness, Varek will find a way to make it hurt too.
Kaedryn asked me to trust him. He made me feel something other than pain. Then he bound and marked me in shadows and told me they would know if I stepped out of line. And when he left, his anger crushed the only living thing I’d managed to bring from Dravaryn.
I do not know who is safe. I do not know who is acting. I do not know whether kindness is kindness when it leads to a guarded door.
So I do what I know.
I become still.