“Do not call me that, you traitorouswench.”
Eleni merely threw a raised brow over her shoulder, but the gard with the length of rope in his hands gave a deliberate, nasty tug. Adeline stumbled midstep, her bound wrists straining as her elbows parted to catch her fall. It didn’t help. She toppled face-first into the snow with anoofand a mouthful of ice.
Fantastic.
Eleni drew up short, spinning to face her with both hands planted on her hips.
“Oh, nowreally,” she sighed. “A brief respite in the sun and you’ve forgotten how to walk on your own terrain?”
Adeline lifted her head from the perfect faceprint in the snow.
“Have I mentioned that you can go fuck yourself?”
“Not in a few hours at least. Up you get.”
Shecouldn’tbloody get up without the use of her hands, but the charming gard who’d tripped her in the first place was generous enough to haul her to her feet and nudge her forward. It was rather surreal, being frogmarched into her childhood home like this. Not quite the return she’d anticipated—nor the home she’d left behind, she quickly realised.
It hadn’t quite fallen to ruin. The opposite, she supposed. Everything was preserved exactly as she remembered it, just beneath several layers of ice. So thick in places it made the fine marble walls look like half-melted wax.
But Eleni clipped ahead of her as confidently as she walked the sundrenched halls of her own home, and under the forceful guidance of the gard holding her restraints like a leash, Adeline had little choice but to shuffle along after her. That was untila great silver shape came barrelling around the corner and sent Eleni stumbling into the wall with a shriek. But the shape staggered to a halt and stared wildly around, his eyes rounding as they came to land on her, halfway down the hall. He stood there, stiff with disbelief, ignoring Eleni’s dramatics as she caught her breath with a hand clasped over her chest.
“Ade.”
The sound of her name. The sight of that face she knew as well as her own. It was too much—and more than enough to flood her throat with unshed tears.
“Ger,” she said thickly.
He bounded forward before she’d drawn her next breath, gathering her to his cold, armoured chest, face buried in her snowdusted hair. He held her so tight she could barely breathe beneath the crush of steel plating, but it didn’t matter. It was Ger, Ger,herGer. Alive and whole andhere.
“Jack said it was you,” he murmured into her hair, “but I thought—Ihoped—”
She tried to lift her hands to halfway return the hug, but her leash pulled taut, and her winced curse had Ger pulling back, brow pinched with concern as he looked her over. And then concern dissolved into simmering rage.
“Why,” he snarled, leaning past Adeline to grab a handful of the other gard’s cloak, “have you bound a Princess of Eisalaan?”
Her binds slackened as the gard backed up slightly, stammering something about “traitor to the Sorceress”and“just following orders.”
“Well then, as I outrank you as a member of the Queen’s Gard, you can followmyorders. Let her go. Now.”
He snatched the rope from the stammering gard’s hands.
“And as I outrankyou,” came a bemused voice from the end of the hall, “you would do well to escort myself and my dear niece to Her Majesty’s throne room. I believe she’s expecting us.”
Ger stiffened; despite having knocked Eleni into the wall, it seemed he was noticing her for the first time. He turned slowly on the spot, and Adeline didn’t miss the way his arm extended backward to shield her. His tone, when he spoke, was mistrustful. More than reasonable, really.
“She’s your family,” Ger gritted out. “And you’re just … handing her over?”
Eleni’s smile was warm in the chill of the blank hallways.
“Yes,” she said simply. “Come along now.”
Ger stood a moment longer, frozen even as Eleni wandered around the corner and the sullen gard shifted around behind them. Adeline nudged him gently forward.
“It’s alright,” she whispered. “It’s going to be alright.”
He blinked around at her, dazed—then his eyes focused, hazy blue turning clear and sharp as a polished pane of ice. He drew himself up and turned on the gard.
“Follow the Empress,” he commanded. “Ensure she knows where she’s going.”
