Caveats and all, said a contrary voice in his head. He shook it away, and Ceri’s eyes narrowed at the tic of his head.
“You’re either lying or you’re an idiot.”
He snatched his arm from her grasp, feeling only the slightest flare of guilt at her brief stumble until the cold pulse of his pendant swallowed it up.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, and turned away.
“I know that she’s in love with you.”
The words slipped from Ceri in a flood, pooling beneath his feet and stealing his grip on the very ground beneath him. He faltered, nearly slid to his knees. The hallway went momentarily dark as a mighty pulse of warmth in Kai’s chest breached the pendant’s numbing glow. But the Adhlian cold was single-minded, and it beat back that warmth with renewed force, encasing his entire ribcage with sudden, unyielding ice.
Get to the docks.
“I don’t understand this obsession,” he said flatly, “with pairing me off in some fairytale romance. That is not, andhas never been, my reality. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ceriwyn.”
“She told me.”
Kai turned to her in silence, warmth prickling at him once more, weak but insistent. The call of the waters wailed beneathhis skin and in his ears, but he tuned it out; strained against it for just a moment longer.
“She said it quite clearly;I’m in love with him.”
“How do you know she meant—”
Ceri cut him off with an almighty scoff.
“Oh, you’re right,” Ceri said with a forced laugh and an airy wave of her hand. “Weeksof stolen glances and sneaking off for mountainside picnics, but it couldn’t possibly beyoushe was talking about. She must have meant Os. Have you seen the way they look at each other?”
Logically, he knew it was a joke. He had ripped something unmendable between himself and his cousin because of howlittleregard Os held for Adeline. But even the slightest flare of anger fed the cold glow, and now it shone like a fire-fed fuel. Ceri’s brows pitched, the wide whites of her eyes turned green.
“Kai,” she breathed, with a hint of nervous admonishment that made him falter back a step, straining once more to smother the acidic light and the call in his blood.
Docks. Get to the docks.
But—
“Ceri, why are you telling me this?”
He knew why Adeline hadn’t; she’d all but told him why shecouldn’t. But to hear that she’d acknowledged it all—he didn’t know what to do with that. Where to put that knowledge. In the cold space beneath his pendant? Tucked away, like everything else that inconvenienced or hurt him?
Kai didn’t want this muffled beneath the roaring call in his blood or numbed in his cold chest. He wanted to feel it. He wanted tohearit from Adeline. And maybe one day he would.
But at this moment, it didn’t matter what he wanted.
And perhaps Ceri saw that thought written out in the creases of his brow, because when she dragged her gaze from the pendant’s shine, her eyes turned soft and sad.
“Because you were my brother long before you were my king, Kai. And I want you to be happy.”
His tired heart contracted.
I want you to be happy.
Adeline loves you.
Ceri’s voice brought another burst of warmth that guttered the pendant's glow. But Oswalt’s voice was louder; Kai’s own voice louder still.
You don’t have the luxury.
Too selfish for too long.
