Avette.
He’d never spoken her name aloud, but Adeline knew who she was. Avette was a Princess.ThePrincess, the Goddess-blessed saviour of Eisalaan and Merrow alike.
Kai’s great, lost love.
She watched him closely, but his face didn’t betray any hint of longing, or warmth, or… anything really. He went on.
“What happened between myself and Avette was not quite the fairytale it’s become over time. I don’t want to speak ill of your ancestor, but it’s important that you understand that it wasn’t some grand love story. I suppose I must have thought it was at the time. She was beautiful, and beloved and I’ll admit her attention was more than a little flattering. Add to that the fact that the King had forbidden us from seeing each other, and she became more or less irresistible.” He stopped for breath, seeming to steady himself for whatever came next. He rubbed absentmindedly at the small scars that laced his palm, brows pinching as though they pained him still. “I got swept up in it. She asked something of me, something impossible, and I made it happen. And then she made me regret it.”
“What did she want?”
“A pendant. Not just any pendant. It was laced with the purest magic imaginable, imbued with water from the deepest heart of the Laune. She gave me a small glass vial and had me travel to the depths to fill it. She was going to use it as leverage, a way to bolster her own magic so she could intimidate her father into leaving us be. She told me we could be happy together, and that my people would be safer if the King wasn’t calling for my head on a spike. So I did it, and I almost died doing it – even as a Merrow, at those depths, in those kind of tides, I –”
He trailed off, shuddering, then laughing without a trace of humour.
“And it was all for naught. She didn’t go to the King after all – or maybe she did, since as it turns out I wasn’t entirely privy to her plans. Maybe they’d planned it all together. All I know is that she came to the lake with that pendant around her neck, and the power of the Laune pulsing all around her, and she tried to create a prison to hold us – to hold our magic, and my knowledge of who she was. Only she must have misjudged the pendant’s strength, combined with her own. She created the Frost.”
He looked up from his study of his scarred hands, finally meeting Adeline’s eye. “And I helped her do it.”
Adeline exhaled slowly, trying not to let her relief show.
“Kai, you didn’t know what she was planning.”
She reached across the space between them, trying to take his hand, but he shifted away.
“There’s more. I think – No. I have believed for some time now that the pendant could aid the Thaw, and restore the Laune.”
Adeline tilted her head; she didn’t understand.
“I stopped looking for it before anything ever happened between us,” he said quickly. And then she did understand, though she wished she didn’t. She wished he would stop talking. He went on. “But I know where it is now - Edward has it. I saw it on him, just this morning. I think he’s been using it to strengthen whatever Wielding power he was born with–”
“You were going to complete the Thaw.”
How had her throat gone so dry and tight in a matter of moments?
Kai had been staring at his scarred palm again, and it seemed to take him an age to look up, to meet her eyes. His were tight and dim, the light behind the shocking hazel muted.
“I didn’t think I had a choice, Adeline. I didn’t want to hurt you, or your Kingdom–”
“But youwouldhave. If you’d found it, you would have undone everything that holds Eisalaan together, destroyed the livelihoods of thousands, and thenfucked off into the Lake.”
She didn’t realise her voice had risen until Kai flinched.
“Adeline…”
She stood, needing to not be at his eye level, to put some distance between them. Her chesthurt, panic and heartache assaulting her ribs with every beat of her heart.
“You cast me in your part, do you realise that? Avette used you? You usedme!”
She hated that her voice cracked, hated even more that he had the sheer fucking nerve to shake his head.
“You can’t possibly compare –”
“You did what she did!”
“No. She purposely lied and manipulated me against my own people. I wouldneverhave made you complicit. I never asked you for anything, I made sure of that.”
“No, but you accepted the help I naively fucking offered up, didn’t you?”
