48. Adelina #2
I keep looking at my reflection because if I look at her, I may break.
“If I run, Kaedryn will hunt. Varek will punish anyone he can reach. Elyrion will blame Dravaryn. Dravaryn will blame Elyrion. Freya will pay. You may pay.” My breath catches.
“Everyone pays. I am the one they are all fighting over. I am willing to bear the cost if it falls on me, but not if others must bear it too.”
The woman’s expression softens in the mirror. “Freedom always has a cost, little flower.”
“Then I cannot allow others to keep paying the price for me.”
Silence. Outside the room, the third bell sounds. Low. Ceremonial. Final.
The woman tucks the last pin into place. “Do you stay because you choose the prince?”
The question cuts deeper than I expect. Kaedryn’s face rises in my mind. Cold fury. Shadows. Possessive words. The ruined orchids. Then his voice, rough and quiet in my chamber.
“I don’t know how to protect what will not speak to me.”
And mine answering before I could stop it. “I don’t know how to speak when every answer hurts.”
His face when I said it. Something in him changed. Maybe too late. But something.
“No,” I whisper. “I stay because every road has teeth, and I cannot bear it if someone else is hurt because of me.”
The woman’s eyes meet mine in the mirror. “Then stay awake,” she says. “Marriage seals one door. It may open another.”
She slips one final pin into the veil, this one shaped like a tiny silver tree with roots no one will notice among the moonstones. “If you ever need the road again, leave a flower beneath the eastern balcony arch.”
My heart turns over. “I thought if I stayed, you would withdraw.”
“Roots withdraw from frost,” she says softly. “They do not die.”
The fourth bell begins to toll.
Once. Twice.
The room seems to hold its breath. I don’t speak. The woman’s eyes lower. The choice is made.
She steps away from me and curtsies. “The veil is secure, Your Majesty.”
Queen Elowyn returns to my side, studying the lace. “Beautiful work.”
The woman bows. “May it hold through every storm.” Her eyes flick to mine for the briefest instant. Then she is gone with the tray of unused pins, moving through the room like any other servant, unseen because she has learned the art of being overlooked.
My knees nearly buckle.
Linnea is there at once, one hand hovering near my elbow. “Princess?”
“I’m fine.” The lie sounds less convincing today.
Elowyn steps closer, concern sharpening her face. “Adelina?”
For one wild moment, I want to tell her. I want to say there was a road and I did not take it. I want to ask whether staying makes me brave or foolish or simply too tired to run. But if I tell her, the network pays. So I swallow every word and let the veil fall softly around my shoulders.
“I am ready,” I say.
Elowyn’s eyes shadow with sorrow. She knows ready is the wrong word and accepts it because I have no better one.
She reaches toward my hand, then stops herself before touching. “I will walk with you to the holding chamber.”
I nod.
The final preparations blur after that. A blessing ribbon. A cup of honeyed water Maelin insists I drink. Linnea checks the hem. Mirelle presses a handkerchief into my palm. Elowyn murmurs something to the ceremonial steward that makes him bow twice and vanish.
Then the doors open.
The corridor outside is lined with silver lanterns and garlands of starbloom lilies. Music drifts from the ceremonial hall, low and haunting, built from strings and windflutes and a deep bell that sounds like the castle itself breathing.
Sylas waits at the end of the corridor. He is dressed properly for once, hunter green and silver, his hair neat and combed, face unusually serious. When he sees me, the irreverent mask slips for half a second.
“Princess,” he says, quiet.
I lower my head. “Prince Sylas.”
He offers his arm, then catches himself and lowers it. Something like anger flashes in his eyes, directed at the bracelet, at his brother, at the whole impossible shape of this day.
“I’m to walk behind you until the joining point,” he says. “I am the Elyrion witness and royal guard, according to the steward. Annoying title, useful position.”
I smile. “I’m glad,” I say.
The honesty surprises us both.
His expression gentles. “So am I.”
Queen Elowyn stands on my other side as we begin the walk to the ceremonial hall.
The corridors grow brighter the closer we come, every window dressed in silver gauze, every arch hung with green and navy ribbons.
Courtiers wait at a distance, bowing as we pass.
I feel their eyes, but they seem less real than the memory of the woman’s whisper.
There is still a road.
The old wren breathes.
Freya is alive. Marra and Vera are safe.
The knowledge does not give me complete peace. It makes me ache. Alive is not safe. Alive is not free. But alive is not gone.
I carry that into the holding chamber, where the great doors stand closed and the music swells beyond them.
Fae weddings do not send the bride down the aisle alone.
Queen Elowyn explained it to me yesterday, though I had copied it from the ritual book twice before she came.
The bride and groom enter from opposite sides and meet at the center of the aisle, before the gathered witnesses.
Neither is given to the other. Neither waits at the altar to receive. They walk the final stretch together.
Together. The word had seemed ceremonial when I read it. Now it feels like a noose tightening around my neck.
A steward adjusts the fall of my veil, then steps away.
Elowyn takes both my hands gently in hers, careful of the shadow bracelet though her eyes harden when she sees it. “Breathe,” she says.
I do.
“You only need to reach the center,” she says. “He will meet you there.” She squeezes my hand before she slips through the door to stand with the king.
My stomach twists.
Kaedryn.
I have not seen him since last night, since I chose to walk beside him rather than take his arm, since he looked at me as if my refusal had hurt and healed something in the same breath.
He is still the man who bound me. Still the man who marked me.
Still the man who stepped through my orchids and walked away.
Still the man who lowered his arm when I would not take it.
All of those truths stand together.
The bell sounds again. The great doors open. Light spills over me.
For one breath, I cannot move.