She wore armour like her sister before her, but Adeline’s was a burnished bronze that seemed to gather all the sunlight to her, winking golden light along the deep ridges of engravings that decorated her breastplate; twisting vines and sunbeams spiralling around tiny shining orbs. Her dark curls had been brushed and slicked against her head, gathered at the nape of her neck in a long braid that snaked farther down her back than Kai would allow himself to notice. Without the usual coiling dark cloud to soften the angles of her face, she seemed older, more resilient. Her jaw was set in a hard line, but her eyes, wider and darker than ever, glittered with a familiar roguish light.
She was ready; she was determined. Though the knowledge did nothing to loosen his chest, he hoped it would make it easier to watch as she faced her opponent. But as Kai took in the man bowing to Adeline, his heart gave a painful lurch. This man – for a man he was, no youth like the fresh-faced Gard who had faced Mareda – towered above Adeline, half as broad as she was tall. There was something familiar about the menacing set of his brow. An impression of the man’s quietly wrathful face lingered in some peripheral part of Kai’s mind, though he couldn’t quite grasp at the memory.
“Are they serious?” Ceriwyn breathed. “He’s twice her size, he’llcrushher.”
“Maybe not,” Os said, although even he didn’t sound convinced by his own words. “They could be matched in skill. She could use his size against him - ”
“Kai, hush,” whispered Ceri.
He hadn’t realised he was groaning aloud. Kai buried his face in his hands, but then the Queen called out ‘Begin’, and he sat bolt upright. They bowed to each other, and the brute shot forward before Adeline had fully drawn her sword.
“No!” Ceri cried angrily.
Someone hushed her peevishly, but others were crying out in similar outrage.
Adeline managed to evade him and unsheathe her blade, then immediately squared off her body against his next attack. Kai could see the tense lines of her shoulders and spine as she planted herself firmly in place and used her sword to shield – and then to push him away with an almighty shove. She stumbled a bit beneath the force, but it was enough; the Champion skidded backwards with his own weight as momentum, giving her the space she needed to catch her balance.
Adeline was the one to strike this time. And the next strike. The next too, somehow battering the mountain of a man back and back and back. They turned in a wide circle as they fought, and Kai caught sight of her face; of the sheerfurythat knotted her brows together and pulled her lips back from her teeth in a perversion of her ever-present smile. She wassnarling, raging, almost terrifying to watch. Kai could not say where this fire came from, but he was glad for it, if it kept her upright and unbroken.
Ceri was watching from between her fingers and carefully peeked over her own hand. “Oh Mother Adhlas, she’s actually win –”
“Don’t say it!” Kai hissed. The last thing they needed was for this stroke of luck to turn.
Alun had his hands wrapped so tightly over the forewall of their row that the wood seemed fit to splinter. Ceri reached around Kai and gently dislodged Al’s fingers from the barrier, taking his hand in hers and squeezing it. Kai had the fleeting thought of asking them to kindly remove their hands from his personal space, but he couldn’t spare the seconds it would take to form the words. Not when Adeline was driving the Champion closer and closer to the solid podium upon which the Queen peered down with her face impassive, but her eyes darting back and forth with each exchange of blows.
The Gard had no choice but to press his back to the podium, and block Adeline’s relentless blade. The fight seemed destined to hang in this tense, uncertain pattern, but as Adeline’s temper boiled over she grew sloppier, angrier, her moves less calculated until finally the Champion saw his moment and burst forth in a wave of triumphant rage–and stumbled into thin air as Adeline feinted to one side and circled him. She’d baited him. She’d waited for the light of victory to overtake him, and now she had her sword pressed firmly to the bare nape of his neck.
A discordant gasp rose and echoed throughout the arena as the crowd realised what was happening.
Her lips moved, and though Kai couldn’t hear her, he thought he knew the single word she spoke.
Kneel.
The Champion’s shoulders and chest heaved in great angry stutters, and his broad face was turning a sour shade of purple. But after a long moment, he bent one knee – and then the other – and then held both hands above his head in surrender.
Adeline grinned.
And the crowd erupted.
Ceri shrieked something Kai couldn’t make out over the roaring in his ears, but he let her yank him to his feet and knock the remaining breath from him with a vicious hug. She let go and shoved past him to hug Al. Kai didn’t take his eyes off Adeline, even as she sheathed her sword and helped her opponent to his feet. The Gard glowered as he bowed, but Adeline was the picture of grace as she returned the gesture, every trace of that inexplicable rage burned up into nothing but a small, regal smile.
Across the stadium, Captain Doran got to his feet and entered the arena, trailed by a stone-faced Mareda and an oddly pale Gerard. The Captain clapped his Champion on the shoulder in dismissal, then performed his own bow to Adeline, before taking her by the wrist. He raised her arm high in the air to renewed screams from the audience, sunlight shining victoriously off the coppery links of her chain-mail sleeves. Captain Doran released her, then held his hands up for silence. The cheers and whoops petered out, and the Captain stepped forward, a long grey shadow cast across the bright white ice.
“Congratulations to our beloved Princess Adeline on her triumph in this, the first round of the Queen’s Tourney.” He held his hand up as the cheers rose once more. “Today, the Heirs faced two of our most promising young Gards.”
Ceri scoffed and shot a look at the edge of the arena, where Adeline’s opponent stood quietly glowering. “Promising? How long has he been keeping that promise?”
Doran went on.
“Tomorrow, we will see how they fare against the deadliest members of the Queen’s Forces. Princess Mareda will battle Sir Gerard Leman.”
Gerard smiled grimly at the polite applause. Beside him, Adeline cast a quick glance around the arena, a slight frown tugging at her brow as she looked for someone who wasn’t there. Kai realised a second before she did.
Captain Doran smiled, thin-lipped and tight. His eyes glittered with steely promise.
“And I myself will battle Princess Adeline.”
Chapter 35
