Kai raised his head. “Are they only rung at New Winter?”
“It’s the only time I’ve ever heard it.”
Kai propped himself up on one elbow. His brow creased as he called up some distant memory.
“I recognise the sound, it used to carry all the way down to the Laune on a still day.”
Ring.
He cocked his head.
“Before the Frost, they’d use it all the time for various messages. Six tolls on a day of worship to let the congregation know that the Temple of Adhlas had opened its doors. Three long tolls when the King’s Court was in session. If you can believe it, they rang the damn things forty-three times when –”
Kai choked on his words, suddenly pale. He rolled away, vaulting to his feet, and Adeline quickly sat up, scrambling after him with the blankets clutched to her chest.
“Kai? Whenwhat?”
Kai snatched her shift up from the floor and tossed it to her.
“Your mother, Adeline,” he said, his throat inexplicably hoarse.
“Kai, you’re scaring me,” she snapped, even as she pulled the shift over her head. “What are you talking about?”
“They rang the bells forty-three times, one for each year of the old King’s reign,” he managed, “on the day he died.”
Adeline was moving before she’d managed to form a coherent thought other than;No.She ran barefoot through the frigid marble halls, her thin shift bunched in her hands so her legs could move faster,faster. Cold panic plummeted through her, but it was no use to her right now so she clenched against it andran.
Kai had to be wrong.
Ring.
How many tolls is that now?
He had to be wrong, because she’d written to her mother only yesterday. She was still waiting for a reply, and how could Selma reply if she was–No.
How long did she reign? How many tolls has it been?
She’d had a flu. It was only a flu.
Ring.
Someone would have come for her, she would have known.
But you weren’t in your rooms last night.
Even the voice in her head was breathless and scared.
No.
Somehow she willed her legs to run faster, telling herself that if she made it to her mother’s quarters before the bell stopped ringing, she’d find her there, sitting up in her bed, sipping daintily at a cup of tea with a stack of letters scattered across the covers.
Ring.
She ran up the flight of stairs to the Queen’s quarters, scraping her shins against the steps in her desperate haste. She was almost there. It would all be alright in just a moment.
Ring.
A keening wail rose up from the far end of the hall, and Adeline stumbled as a shocked sob tore through her chest. She ran still, haltingly, her eyes blurring with tears, but not so much that she couldn’t make out the willowy blonde figure at the door to her mother’s rooms.
