47. Kaedryn
Kaedryn
By the seventh day of Adelina’s confinement, I’ve learned the dangerous comfort of work.
Work does not ask me to think about the look on her face when my shadows closed around her wrists or how she didn’t fight it at all.
Work does not lower its eyes and answer, “Yes, Your Highness,” in a voice so empty it echoes in my head when I try to sleep or whenever the world goes quiet.
Work does not stand behind a rain-streaked balcony door and watch me destroy the only roots she had begun to trust in southern soil.
Work gives me reports, signatures, courier routes, revised guard assignments, interrogations, and a castle full of men who understand orders and execute them with precision. If there is a problem, I find a way to fix it.
I can’t with Adelina. Every time we make progress, I find a way to fuck it up.
Guilt gnaws at me for the way I treated her after finding her on those steps.
But thinking about her being hurt, taken, or killed makes my shadows want to break free and hunt every person who has even thought about hurting her.
I meant what I said when I told her she was mine, and I will protect her even if it means protecting her from herself. So I work. For seven days, I do not go to her.
I try to ignore the bond. I can feel her, her emptiness, but I don’t go to her. My mother does. Maelin does. Linnea and Mirelle remain with her. Sylas comes and goes with the kind of infuriating freedom he grants himself in every wing of the castle.
Reports reach me anyway because everyone in this cursed castle has apparently decided Adelina’s meals, sleep, and silences are now matters of state.
She eats little. She sleeps less. She asks for nothing and barely speaks.
Every report says the same thing in different words, and every word cuts deeper than the last.
Tonight, avoidance ends. The legal attestation and wedding rehearsal are scheduled before sunset, with the rehearsal dinner to follow.
The attestation is standard for royal marriages across kingdoms, especially one tangled in treaty law, sanctuary claims, and Varek’s repeated attempts to blur or cross every boundary he can reach.
Adelina will affirm that she understands the marriage rites, that she enters them under Elyrion protection, and that once the vows are complete, her public allegiance will be joined to this kingdom.
This is normal and necessary.
That is what I tell myself while I stand in my dressing room with my formal coat half-fastened and a security report open on the table beside me, reading the same line for the third time.
We’ve learned nothing more about the dead intruder.
He wore plain clothing, carried nothing, and left no clues.
It was as if he simply appeared on the castle’s grounds, bypassing the wards, the wall, and the guards.
Had it not been for the box Adelina received, and her silent confirmation that the bracelet and dead flower were connected to the man, we would have absolutely nothing.
I set the report down before I tear it in half.
Behind me, Rowan stands near the table, reviewing the security report while Merritt helps me with the clasp at my shoulder. The coat is dark blue, almost black, with silver thread along the cuffs and collar. Court armor, polished into elegance.
“You need to take a breath, my friend,” Merritt says calmly. “You are wound tight.”
Before I can respond, the inner door opens without a knock. Only one person in this castle possesses that much stupidity and confidence in equal measure.
“Sylas,” I say without turning.
“Brother.” His tone tells me he did not come for idle conversation.
Merritt glances at me. “You and Rowan may go, Merritt. Thank you for your help,” I say.
He bows and withdraws with Rowan, though Rowan’s eyes linger on Sylas for half a second longer than necessary. The door closes behind them. Sylas does not move.
I turn back to the mirror and adjust the fall of my sleeve. “You’re late.”
“I’m aware.”
“You look like you dressed during a duel.”
“I almost wish I had.”
My eyes lift to his reflection. He is dressed for court, but badly. His collar is undone, his sash crooked, one cuff unfastened. His hair is still damp from rain, and the expression on his face tells me at once that he did not come for help with the cuff.
He is not smiling. That is when I know this will be tiresome.
“What is it?” I ask.
Sylas steps farther into the room, boots quiet over the dark stone. “You have not seen her in a week.”
My hand stills on the cuff. Then I continue fastening it. “I know how many days it has been.”
“Do you?”
I find his eyes in the mirror.
He does not retreat. “Because from the way you have been burying yourself in reports, interrogations, and guard rotations, I thought perhaps you had forgotten there is a woman behind all this security. The woman who will be your fucking wife tomorrow.”
My shadows stir at the edge of the mirror. “Sylas,” I warn him.
“No.” He takes another step into the room. “You don’t get to use that tone because I’m saying the thing no one else wants to say before you walk into her rooms and pretend tonight is only protocol.”
“It is protocol.”
“It’s also the first time she will have to stand beside you since you bound her, marked her, confined her, and walked away from the orchids you crushed.”
Something pulls hard behind my sternum. “I did not crush them on purpose.”
“I know.” The softness of his answer makes it worse.
“I did not see them.”
“I know.”
“I would not have stepped there if I had. I was just angry that she was put in that situation and refuses to tell us anything.”
“I know.”
“Then why bring it up?” I snap.
“Because she saw you destroy them.” His voice goes rough. “She saw what you did, and you walked away.”
The room goes quiet. The rain against the glass becomes too loud.
I had stopped. I had looked down. I had seen the crushed stems and the torn soil, and I had felt something inside me recoil hard enough that I could not turn back toward Adelina’s window, knowing she was watching.
I knew it looked like I had done it in rage.
And she was already shut down from our confrontation.
So I walked away. I told myself there was nothing to repair in that moment. That going back would only worsen what had already been done. That my anger needed to be removed from her rooms before it caused more damage.
All true. None of it enough.
I pull my coat sleeve straight. “The attestation is required.”
“I did not say it was not,” Sylas replies.
That makes me look back at him. He comes closer, the anger in his face shifting into something sharper than accusation. Worry.
“Mother says Adelina knows the attestation text by heart. She has copied it so many times Linnea had to take the ink away yesterday because her hand was cramping.”
My stomach turns. I keep my face still.
“She studies when she is too tired to keep her eyes open,” he continues.
“She will not ask for different food. She will not ask for the garden. She will not ask about Freya because she thinks every question becomes a weapon. When Mother asked if she wanted the blue robe or the silver one, do you know what she said?”
I say nothing.
Sylas answers anyway. “Whichever pleases you and His Highness.”
The words settle heavily between us. I look toward the window. Beyond the rain-streaked glass, the terraces descend into mist. The garden lies below, too far from here to see the eastern bed clearly.
I see it anyway.
Rain-dark soil. Broken stems. Her face behind the balcony glass.
“She nearly walked into an abduction,” I say. “She burned evidence. She put on Varek’s bracelet and left these walls to meet his agent. If we had been just a few moments later, she would be gone or hurt or dead.”
“Because Varek threatened Freya.”
“Because he knew she would obey him.”
“Because she loves someone he can hurt.”
“And that is precisely why visible ties to Dravaryn remain dangerous.”
Sylas’s eyes flash. “So you cut the tie by cutting her too?”
I turn from him before I say something I will regret. The legal attestation is normal. The rehearsal is normal.
The guards, the wards, the shadow bracelet around Adelina’s wrist. Those are not normal.
Those are mine.
“She has to understand where she stands,” I say. “Tonight affirms that she enters the rites under Elyrion protection. It reminds the court that Varek cannot reach into this castle and pull her strings.”
“And does the shadow around her wrist remind her of that too?”
My shadows flicker up the wall.
Sylas sees he has struck something, and because he is Sylas, he does not stop.
“You called it protection,” he says. “Maybe part of it is. But it is also mistrust made visible, and she knows it. Every time she lifts her hand, she sees proof that you think she might betray you if Varek pulls hard enough.”
My hands curl at my sides. “She did betray my trust.”
Sylas’s expression changes. “She was blackmailed.”
“She hid it and still refuses to tell us what the letter said.”
“She thinks speaking would cost Freya. You saw how he struck the woman when there was a room full of people. I can’t imagine what he does behind closed doors.”
“She destroyed proof.”
“Because Varek told her proof would cost someone else.”
I look at him sharply. He holds my gaze. I do not like the way the words settle because there is truth in them, and truth has always been harder to dismiss than accusation.
“She could have come to me,” I say. “We could help her if she only tells us.”
Sylas’s laugh is quiet and humorless. “You have known her a few weeks, Kaedryn. Varek trained fear into her for years. Why are you surprised she believed him first? She has survived by bowing to fear.”
That lands cleanly. I hate him for the precision of it. I hate myself more because I have asked the same question in darker hours and refused the answer.
“She will adjust with time,” I say.
Sylas stares at me. He gives a short bitter laugh before saying, “Or she will slowly disappear. Or worse.”