Not when Kai sat at her side.
The sight of him made Adeline trip mid-step, Ger catching her elbow. Her stomach plummeted even as he righted her. Even as her foolish heart soared in the opposite direction.
Alive, whole, here.
Kai’s beard was shorn, his hair neatly trimmed, his white suit crisp and well-fitted. And yet, just like Gerard, there was something off about his face. Handsome as ever but … hollow. Until his eyes found hers over Eleni’s bent head, and came alight with a vicious, vivid strike of light, a bolt of electricity that seemed to shock through his entire body. He sat rigidly in his seat, his hands straining oddly against the armrests and his jaw working furiously.
He was bound, she realised, unable to move or speak.
“You flatter me, Empress Vanjir,” said Avette.
And though her voice was quite as lovely as her face, the sound of it dragged over the hairs at the nape of Adeline’s neck. That horror twisted at her spine, and she found her gaze turning without her say so. She was met with a glittering, black stare,fringed with lovely, long lashes. Avette cocked her head like a curious bird, and a dim blue light flickered over her features; Adeline noticed, for the first time, Edward’s aged blue pendant sitting neatly against her lace collar.
“And you have brought us a wedding gift,” she said.
A wedding gift.
Eleni’s bright chirp echoed her own numb disbelief; “Aweddinggift?”
Avette merely smiled.
“But I am afraid I must ask, Empress. This new world of yours is not the world I left behind, and I have learned to be shrewd. What do you stand to gain with such a generous gift? I have searched for my cousin far and wide, it is true—but she isyourkin too, is she not? Why bring her home?” Avette leaned forward in her throne, spine still impossibly straight as she tilted her head curiously. “Whynow?”
A new kind of tension ringed the room; a tension Adeline did not understand. She could see it in the way the cloaked courtiers shrank back against the walls, the barely audible whimpers. The way that Ger stiffened at her side. They were braced, all of them, expecting something awful. If it caught Eleni’s notice, she didn’t let on, just smiled that easy, enigmatic smile.
“I’ve been an ally of the Silver Kingdom for many years, Your Majesty and I, too, have learned to be shrewd.” She shrugged one shoulder and threw a careless wave in Adeline’s direction. “When word reaches my shores that the most powerful woman in the world wants something in my possession, I pay attention.”
Adeline couldn’t help but notice that the courtiers did not unpeel from the cold walls—that Ger didn’t exhale. Avette didn’tmove either. It was as though the entire room had frozen perfectly in place, leaving only Adeline and her aunt untouched by the spell that held them all. Avette’s pendant gave a slow, blue shimmer, and she finally pursed her lips and sat back. Unprompted, her dark eyes swivelled to Adeline, and she was struck with a breathless wave of … Goddess.
Unfathomablehatred.
And it was not her own.
She hadn’t expected to strike up a friendship with the woman who’d usurped her mother’s throne, tortured her kinfolk and kidnapped the man she loved, but even so, it threw her. The bitter chill in Avette’s eyes ran deeper than the Laune itself, and Daughters knew nobody had ever looked at her like that before in her entire life. She hoped, as she fought back a shiver, that they never would again.
Avette’s long lashes finally broke her dead stare, and she returned her attention to Eleni, markedly colder now.
“And if I hold something ofyoursin my possession?” said Avette.
Eleni’s smile turned quizzical, but she seemed to sense it was best not to speak. In her silence, Avette’s lips tilted in a feline smile. Then, lit in a flare of blue light, she made a swift gesture over her shoulder, and Adeline watched as a snowstorm rose behind the throne, a roar of wind and a blanket of billowing white. It was only as the storm died away that Adeline saw it reallywasa blanket—not a sheet of snow, but of linen. Those same heavy drapings the palace staff had dragged over the furniture in her mother’s rooms to stop her things from gathering dust after she’d died. Adelinesawthe fall of the fabric and the glimmer of the ice sculptures behind the throne, butshe couldn’t make sense of what she was looking at—not at first. Peering out over Avette’s shoulders were two of the same eerie statues that had lined her path to the throne. One was small and wizened, the other tall with a crest of curls blown back from his face in an invisible wind.
Curls much like her own.
Her body made sense of it before her mind could catch on; she felt it in the crumple of her brow, the thick slide of her heart. And then, like a roll of thunder before the strike, Adeline heard Eleni’s sharp inhale. A gasp—and its answering strike was the bolt of pain in her chest. That anguish forked through her, split her ribcage down the middle. Pain poured out of the crack, and she crumpled in on herself, the room tilting around her, then jerking upright when Ger caught at her waist, dragging her to him before she could hit the floor.
Her father, herfather—
“I know,” whispered Ger. “I know, Ade, shh—”
She hadn’t known she was wailing until he shushed her, still holding her upright as her entire body sagged under the unbearable weight of it. She could not stop looking at his glassy face, couldn’t stop poring over that expression. He was scared. Her father, her protector and greatest champion, the person she looked to when she didn’t know what else to do, who she wouldneverstop needing, who made her feel safe in this cold world—he had died scared. Sorrow moved through her like a river in a storm, dragging her along in its treacherous current.
“A theatrical streak to rival your sister’s,” drawled Avette, though Adeline was barely capable of hearing her, let alone answering. Shetskedthen, put out by the lack of response from the pile of broken pieces that was Adeline, scattered at her feet.“Gard, if you cannot silence my dear cousin, I will be only too happy to assist.”
Even through the shuddering sobs that wracked her, she could feel Ger’s grip tighten around her waist.
“Ade, please,” he breathed in her ear, voice splintering with panic. “Please, I’m so sorry, butplease, she’s going to—and—and youpromisedme. You promised she wouldn’t hurt you.Please.”
His fear was palpable, just enough to cut through the storm of her sorrow. Because shehadmade him a promise, and she’d made herself one too—that she’d protect them all. So she gasped down a breath; another, fighting past the burn in her raw and heaving lungs. When she’d slowed her sobs to an uneven hiccup, Ger sighed and drew her closer, dropping a kiss to her crown.
