50. Kaedryn #3
My father reaches my mother and nearly falls to his knees beside her, but Adelina is already there, catching Elowyn as she collapses. Blood spreads across my mother’s gown, too bright and too fast. Black threads crawl outward from the wound beneath the torn silk. Poison or curse, I do not know.
“No!” my father yells.
I drop beside them. “Mother!”
Her eyes flutter. Her breath catches. Then fails.
For one heartbeat, I am standing beside Evander’s funeral bier, listening to silence where my brother’s laugh should have been.
No. Never again.
My shadows reach for the wound, for the poison, but Adelina’s hands press over the blood before I touch her.
The bond detonates. Light explodes from her. It hits me like a wall. I’m thrown backward, skidding across blood-slick stone. A sphere of silver-white fire erupts around Adelina and my mother, so bright the darkness recoils. My shadows slam into it.
“Adelina!” I scream.
She does not hear or she cannot answer. Inside the sphere, she bends over my mother, both hands pressed to the wound, her wedding gown already stained red.
The light pouring from her is nothing like the faint garden magic she was said to possess.
It is vast. Raw. Alive. It surges through the hall with the force of water breaking stone, and every flower in the ceremonial arrangements turns toward her at once.
The starblooms open wide. The vines along the pillars writhe as if waking. The silver bowls tremble, water rising in ribbons above their rims.
My father reaches for the sphere and recoils as the light burns his palm. “Elowyn!”
I step in front of him before he tries again. “Father! Don’t!”
“Move!” he shouts.
“You cannot reach her.”
His eyes are wild. “That is my wife.”
“And mine is in there with her.” The words leave before I think them through.
Wife.
Starbound.
Adelina’s power flares in answer, and through the bond I feel the terrible shape of what she is doing. She is pulling the poison.
No. Worse.
She is taking it.
Pain spears through my chest, not mine, not fully, sharp and black and burning through both of her arms and somehow through mine as well. I stagger.
Sylas catches my shoulder. “What is happening?”
“She is draining herself and pulling the poison.”
Maelin’s voice cuts through the chaos from somewhere to my left. “Kaedryn, get us through!”
“I’m trying.” My shadows claw against the sphere, searching for a weakness, a seam, permission, anything. The light rejects them. It is Adelina’s power sealing the healing space, locking everyone else out because she has decided no one can reach the queen except her.
Because she will spend herself before letting another woman pay for her life.
My hand presses against the sphere. Pain flashes through my palm. I welcome it. “Adelina! Listen to me!”
The light ripples. Inside, her wings rip free.
The sight stops every thought in my head.
Silver-opal wings burst through the back of her gown, too bright, too sudden, shaking with pain as they unfurl behind her.
They are beautiful in the way lightning is beautiful when it strikes too close, all luminous veins and trembling edges, but their movement is wrong, broken.
Something in her wing channels stutters, jerks, catches, and I can feel old pain clamping. Adelina screams. The sound tears through the bond and nearly drops me.
“Let me in!” I say. My voice breaks. “Adelina, let me in!”
She lifts her head. Through the sphere, through blood and light and the silver haze of power, her eyes find mine. I feel her reach toward me. The bond opens.
Terror. Pain. Resolve.
Then my mother’s breath stutters beneath her hands.
Adelina looks down. “No,” she says. “I won’t let her die for me!”
Agony closes around my throat. “She won’t!” I press both hands to the barrier now, and the light burns deeper. “Adelina, listen to me. Just let us in!”
Maelin is on her knees beside the sphere, hands glowing, face pale with horror. “She is giving too much.”
“Then take it from her!” I yell.
“I can’t reach her!” Maelin replies.
My shadows rage around us. Across the hall the fighting still rings, steel and shadow and the guard driving the attackers down one by one.
Merritt and Rowan have the blessing-table assassin pinned.
Good. Let them keep him breathing. Let them keep every bone intact enough for questions.
I will need someone able to speak before I decide how much pain a body can survive.
But that is later. Everything is later except the women inside the sphere. Adelina’s light flares brighter. Blood slips from her nose. Then from one ear.
The bond pulls taut. Too taut, like a cord drawn to breaking.
“No,” I say breathlessly.
Sylas’s hand grips my shoulder harder. “Kaedryn.”
“No!”
Adelina lifts her eyes to mine again. Her face is impossibly calm through the pain, and that calm frightens me more than panic ever could. She has decided. I see it. I feel it.
“So be it,” she murmurs.
“NO!” I slam my shadows into the sphere with everything I have.
Night strikes light. The hall shudders. The sphere holds. Adelina pulls the poison into herself. The scream that leaves her is not human. It tears through the hall, through my bones, through every dark place in me that has ever sworn I would not lose another person because I was too late.
Her wings flare wide, silver-opal and shaking, every edge blazing.
The water from the bowls whips upward in spirals.
Vines burst through the ceremonial arrangements and crawl across the floor toward the sphere, flowering wildly in the heat of her power.
Moonstone chandeliers shake and tingle overhead.
My mother’s body jerks. Adelina pours light into her. I feel it leave her. Too much. Too fast.
“STOP!” The command hits the bond.
She ignores it. The woman who lowered her eyes to survive ignores my command the one time obedience might save her.
My mother gasps. The sound cuts through everything. My father breaks. He says her name and surges forward, but Maelin catches his arm with both hands. “Wait!”
Elowyn’s eyes fly open. She inhales again, ragged and wet, and one hand lifts weakly toward Adelina, trying to comfort the girl who saved her.
Then the sphere collapses. Light snaps inward.
Adelina falls. I reach her before she hits the floor.
Her body lands in my arms, her wings flickering once before folding in a broken shudder against her back.
Blood spills from her nose, her ears, the corner of her mouth.
Her skin is ashen beneath the blood and moonlight, the bridal veil tangled and half hanging in her hair.
I pull it free and let it fall in the puddles of water around us.
I reach for the bond. It’s faint. Terrifyingly faint. Then even that dims.
“Adelina!” I shout, shaking her gently.
Her lashes flutter. Her eyes open a fraction. They find me. I have seen fear in them. Resignation. Hurt. The guarded emptiness I put there with my own hands.
Now there is only exhaustion.
Her lips move. “I’m sorry.” The words are barely more than a breath. Then she goes completely limp.
The bond falls silent.
Something in me breaks.
One second, I’m kneeling in blood with my wife in my arms and my mother gasping alive beside me.
The next, every shadow I possess tears free.
Darkness floods the hall in a violent wave.
The story continues in Book 2, Forged in Frostfire.