She ignored her, smiling forcefully still, even as heat pricked at the back of her eyes.
“And when you delivered my Blessing Day speech, and the crowd started laughing, you laughed too. Do you remember that? Someone brought you a mirror, and you laughed at that stupid silver moustache, and then you didn’t even wipe it off. You played up to it for a bigger laugh. But you didn’t think it was funny, apparently. By the time they served dessert, Elsie and her mother were gone. You hugged me goodnight – for the first time in years, I might add - and as you held me close, you let me know that they were gone, and that it was all my fault.”
“It wasn’t.”
Adeline caught her breath. It was heaving in and out of her, the rush of it so forceful that she couldn’t help but let her mocking smile slip away.
“Well, I know that now.” She sniffed. She didn’t know when she had started crying; hadn’t realised she still held tears over this, all these years later. “Where did you send them?”
Selma looked down at her knees, two thin peaks beneath her shroud of blankets. She didn’t look like a queen in that moment, or a mother. She didn’t look strong and constant, she looked scared. She looked like a child.
“The Machull Mountains. Edward has a cousin there, a Marquess. He had just inherited an estate and needed staff. He’s a kind man, and generous. I won’t pretend that’s why I did it. I knew it would hurt you. I thought that was the same as discipline, and discipline was all I had.”
She would not look at her. It was maddening.
“Why?” Adeline’s voice was thick, but the anger hadn’t quite sapped from her tone. Selma smiled sadly down at her blankets.
“I don’t know. I wish I did. Something – something broke in me, shortly after you were born. People said it was my heart, that I’d encased it in ice to match my frozen Kingdom. They weren’t far off.”
She roused up a laugh, the sound dead and hollow. Adeline said nothing. They were circling something, she knew it. Something she had always needed to understand. Something her father had tried and failed to answer in a way that made any sense.
When Selma finally looked up, her pale eyes were swimming, though she still fought to hold her smile.
“I think,” she said carefully. “I think I was just sad. Sad all the way down into my veins, and not allowed to feel it. So I didn’t feel it. Any of it. And because I couldn’t feel anything, I missed out on all the moment that made you. Just gave them away. To nursemaids. To your father. He did an outstanding job, of course, wonderful man that he is. That only made it worse.”
Adeline swallowed hard, the words lining up in some ineffable way.
Didn’t feel it. Any of it.
“You were sick?”
Her mother nodded only slightly.
“I’d heard it could happen; they called itthebaby blues. I felt it a bit after Mareda, but it eased. That was normal, the Healer said. It was supposed to go away like it had before, but,” she paused, and rubbed at her chest with the heel of one hand as though she held that sickness still, within her ribcage. “It never really did.”
Adeline ground her teeth. The anger within her had not simmered away, but changed, turned to a burning bile that stung her throat as it rose and rose.
Sad and not allowed to feel it.
Sick.
Her mother had been sick.She was the Queen of the SilverfuckingKingdom, and she had been sick for years, and no one had known. No one had helped her. They’d only made up stories about her frozen heart; never tried to help it thaw.
Adeline didn’t even know who to be angry with. She felt a sob rip free, and curled her nails into her palms until they bit into her skin. Selma reached for her hand and shakily pried her fingers out of their fist, but she went on.
“I knew, deep down, in a place I could no longer reach, that I had ruined things between us before you’d even said your first word. I didn’t know how to reach you either, but that was never your fault. None of it was your fault. And I’m so sorry, Adeline.”
The Queen was crying in earnest now, far beyond the dignified glimmer in her eye that was as much as Adeline had ever seen. Her frail shoulders were shaking with it, each word trembling off her lips like the tears that spilled from her ice blue eyes.
“I’m sorry I didn’t swallow my pride and ask for help. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to get better. I’m sorry it took me so long to heal, and I’m sorry I made you suffer for something that was happening tome. I will never not be sorry, and I know it’s still not enough.” She gasped out, one long ragged sob, and then shut her eyes tight. “I know that.”
Adeline reached for her without a second thought, clambering up onto the bed and gathering her mother in her arms as she broke entirely, desperate sobs wracking her thinning frame.
“It’s enough.” She kissed her forehead so hard it left a little pink mark on her pale brow. “It’s enough. You’re enough.”
Selma only cried harder. Cried as though she’d had these tears building up for more than twenty years. Cried as though she’d never stop.
Chapter 43
