48. Adelina
Adelina
Isleep only because of Maelin’s tonic, but I am awake before the sun rises. I lie there, and I feel nothing besides the ache in my back and the throb in my wings that I cannot call.
But inside, there is nothing. It feels almost merciful.
The attestation and rehearsal were a blur. I played my part, and I stayed by Kaedryn’s side the whole night, though we barely spoke, except when he murmured in my ear that I needed to eat more.
People move around me with careful hands and quiet voices.
Linnea draws back the curtains before dawn, filling the room with pale blue light that makes the walls look colder than they are.
Mirelle hands me a robe, and I move to the bathing chamber to bathe, moving as if someone else is controlling me.
After the bath, Maelin checks my pulse, studies my eyes, and presses a tonic into my hand that tastes of honey, mint, and something bitter underneath. I drink it and focus on keeping myself upright.
I slept in pieces, in shallow scraps that broke apart every time the shadow bracelet pulsed around my wrist.
Today is the day I marry Kaedryn. The thought moves through me without settling. In a few short hours, I will be Kaedryn’s wife and the future queen of Elyrion.
I struggled with the thought last night.
Now, I do what I do best and let my mind drift.
The gown is laced around my ribs and pins are tucked into my hair.
I stand in front of the tall mirror while Linnea and Mirelle fasten the underlayers of the wedding gown over the silk shift I put on after my bath.
The fabric is softer than anything Selvara ever allowed me to wear, white silk and moon-crystal embroidery spilling toward the floor in impossible light.
As I move, the crystals shift from silver to pearl, faint blue, and pale gold beneath the sun.
The bodice is structured but not harsh, the sleeves sheer and embroidered with vines and stars, the skirt layered like moonlit water.
The shadow bracelet rests against my wrist, dark and weightless. It looks wrong against the bridal fabric. I try not to look at it. That only makes me more aware of it. I tug the sleeve over it.
Mirelle’s hands pause at the back of the gown. “Too tight, Your Highness?”
“No.” My voice sounds distant to my own ears. “It’s fine.”
Linnea meets Mirelle’s eyes in the mirror. They think I do not see. I see everything now. Every glance. Every carefully swallowed word. Every time someone looks at the bracelet and looks away again because no one knows what to do with a princess turned prisoner by their prince.
Maelin steps closer, her expression gentle enough to make my throat ache. “You need to eat something before the ceremony.”
“I had tea,” I say.
“Tea is not food.”
“It has honey,” I reply.
“That is a lovely argument and medically useless.”
The smallest flicker of something moves through me. Maelin sees that too, because her face softens, and I lower my eyes before she can be pleased by something so fragile.
Linnea brings a small plate with bread, sliced fruit, and a cup of broth. The smell turns my stomach, but I take the fruit because everyone is waiting and because today is too important for anyone to worry about whether I faint before the vows. The room stays quiet while I chew.
After Maelin leaves to prepare the ceremonial tonics and blessing water, Queen Elowyn comes.
She enters without courtly flourish, dressed in a gown of deep navy, her crown resting lightly among dark braids threaded with silver.
She looks every inch a queen and still somehow like the woman who knelt beside me in the dirt and helped me plant ice orchid seeds.
My chest pulls tight at the thought of the garden. I don’t know what has happened to the crushed bed. I have not looked or asked. Asking is how wanting shows. Wanting is how cruel people find where to cut.
Elowyn stops a few feet from me. Her eyes move over my face, then to the bracelet, where it lingers for one second before returning to my eyes. “You look beautiful, Adelina.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
She steps to the table and lifts a small silver comb from the tray. “May I?”
I look at the comb. Then at her. I nod.
She moves carefully behind me and tucks the comb into the side of my braided crown. Her fingers brush my hair, light as air. The comb is shaped like a starbloom lily with tiny moonstones caught in the petals.
“It belonged to my mother,” she says softly. “She wore it when she married my father. I wore it when I married Rhaegar. It is passed down to brides in the family, and if you have a daughter, you can pass it to her.”
I reach up and touch the comb. “I can’t accept this.”
“You can,” she says. “And you will return it to me afterward if keeping it feels too heavy. But if you will have it, it is a gift.”
I swallow and nod once because anything more and I am sure to fall apart.
The morning passes in pieces after that. A ceremonial steward arrives to confirm the order of the procession. Linnea smooths the veil. Mirelle checks the clasp at my shoulder. Maelin returns and asks me again if I’m dizzy. I say no. It’s not entirely true, but it is close enough.
Then, near the final hour before the ceremony, a woman I do not know enters with a tray of veil pins.
She is older than Linnea, younger than Freya or the queen, with warm brown skin, dark hair pinned under a seamstress’s cap, and hands that look steady enough to thread a needle in a storm.
She wears the pale gray apron of the wedding seamstresses and keeps her eyes lowered as she curtsies.
“For the veil, Your Majesty,” she says to Queen Elowyn. “The seamstress requested the moonstone pins be exchanged. The earlier set catches too strongly in the lace.”
Elowyn glances at the tray, then nods. “Very well.”
The woman moves toward me. She lifts one pin from the tray and turns it slightly toward me. On the underside, where no one else can see, a tiny mark has been scratched into the silver.
The rooted tree with the moon and star.
My breath stops.
The woman’s hands continue to work. “Do not look at me, Princess,” she whispers.
The room tilts. I stare at my own reflection.
At the bridal veil. At the circlet. At the shadow bracelet circling my wrist like a dark truth no gown can hide.
The woman steps behind me, adjusting the fall of the veil.
Her body blocks me from the rest of the room for a few seconds.
Linnea is across the chamber. Mirelle is speaking quietly with Queen Elowyn near the gown stand.
No one sees. No one hears.
“There is still a road,” the woman whispers.
My fingers go cold. The shadow bracelet pulses once around my wrist.
“I can’t,” I breathe.
The woman’s hands do not falter. “We can break the shadow.”
I look at my wrist in the mirror.
Break it. Freedom. Maralis. The sea. A white temple under morning light. No crown. No court. No vows waiting in a hall full of witnesses. No shadow prince standing at the center of my life with fury in his hands and fear behind his eyes.
For one impossible heartbeat, I want it so badly I nearly shout.
The woman’s voice stays quiet. “When the fourth bell sounds, say the clasp is wrong. I will take you behind the screen. There is a service stair beyond the lower robing chamber. Two doors. One old ward. We know the key. By the time they understand, you will be past the eastern kitchens.”
My heart pounds hard enough that I am certain the whole room will hear it. “The guards?”
“Diverted.”
“Kaedryn’s shadows?”
“We can break the bracelet or at least divert it long enough to get you out of here.”
I look at the dark band again. I think of Kaedryn on the stairs, shadows around my wrists, his voice low and fierce.
“You are mine, Adelina.”
“You belong to Varek no more.”
I think of my brother’s bracelet falling onto the table and this one forming in its place.
One command replaced by another.
All week, I have known that if another message came from Varek, Kaedryn would know, and somehow that made me feel safer than any day in my brother’s castle.
That confusion is its own kind of cruelty.
The woman leans closer, pretending to check the veil near my ear. “Two sparrows crossed the western marshes.”
Marra. Vera.
My throat closes.
“The old wren breathes,” she says. “We cannot reach her yet, but she breathes.”
Freya.
The room disappears. For one second, I am back in Dravaryn, small and shaking beneath winter blankets while Freya sits beside my bed and rubs warmth into my fingers.
“Little flower,” she says, though no one else ever calls me anything so soft. “You grow where they swear nothing can.”
“She’s alive?” I whisper.
“She was when word last came two days ago.”
A sob rises so fast I nearly choke on it. I swallow it down. Queen Elowyn glances toward us.
The seamstress lifts a pin and says more clearly, “This one sits better near the braid, Your Highness. It will hold through the procession.”
I nod because I cannot trust my voice. Elowyn’s attention lingers, then shifts back to Mirelle.
The woman lowers her voice again. “Remember, if you want the road, say the clasp is wrong when the fourth bell rings. We will move.”
The offer hangs between us. A door opening. A real one. Not a fantasy. Not a dream born from too little sleep and too much fear. A plan. A road. A network that has risked itself once already and still has not abandoned me.
You are seen.
You are not alone.
I look at my reflection. The bridal gown. The veil. The shadow on my wrist. The queen’s comb in my hair. The face that looks like mine and not mine at all.
“I cannot leave,” I say.
The woman’s hands still for the first time. “Because of the shadow?”
“No.” My voice trembles now, but I force it into shape. “Because people will pay for it.”
“That was always true.”
“I know.” My fingers curl against the dress. “I can’t continue to let other people bleed for my freedom.”
The woman says nothing.