And a third hand;Safety is all well and good, but please don’t leave me down here with these two for long! They’re terribly boring, and I have nothing to read.
“This is Kai’s court,” said Ger, realising aloud.
“So much for anonymity,” said Adeline.
“But Eleni abducted you, she gave up the Merrow—”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?”
Ger could hear the grin in her voice even before he looked up at her—and when he did,hereallytook a moment to look, for the first time since he’d raced to find her in that hallway. Her curls were longer and wilder, sun-kissed streaks of bronze and gold coiling through the dark brown. Her skin was sun-kissed too,freckles standing out on a slightly fuller face. She looked healthy and cared for, even if exhaustion tugged at her shoulders in that particular moment, drawing them inward in contrast with the curl of her smile. His beautiful, brave friend.
She really did have a plan.
That hopeful warmth flickered in his chest again, and this time he let it simmer for a moment.
“So now what?” Ger asked. “What do we do?”
Adeline’s entire face softened, her entire body, brow slack with relief and eyes at their warmest golden brown. It was the “We,”he knew. The quiet acceptance, and the reminder that they were in this together, as they always had been. Ger might have been a bloody coward, might have bowed to the panic that poisoned his blood, but with Adeline at his side, he could be brave. He could try.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
Even as he nodded, Ger felt his blood thicken and slow, his lungs spasm against that old reflex that stole through him and snatched at his breath. The fear was in him, and it probably always would be.
But he answered without hesitation. “Whatever you need.”
Adeline blew out a long breath and squeezed his hand.
“I need you to bring me to Kai.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kai
In the earliest days of his captivity, when the meals had begun to thin and dwindle, Kai found ways to cope with the gnawing in his stomach. With little else to do but sleep and wait and spiral, he would count the hours to his single meal of the day; often the only time he would see another face, even if that face was Benan’s.
Tonight, he did not notice the absence of his meal, nor mourn the lack of a sneer in his doorway. The torn flesh of his arm was clean and bound but throbbing insistently beneath a salve of stinging herbs, and even that was not distraction enough. No physical sensation could have occupied his mind right now. Hepaced around the room all the same, but his mind whirred faster than his weary body could move.
Adeline had followed him.
They hadallfollowed him.
And Eleni. Eleni, whom he had always thought so enigmatic—she had finally laid her patterns out before him. Betrayed them. He should haveknownshe would. The very first time they had met, he asked about her intentions. How it benefitted her, to transport every one of his kin across the oceans, to feed and clothe and shelter them. What did she want from him? She had never answered, not in any satisfying way, and he had been afoolto accept her offer on blind faith, to trust her even when he saw firsthand how duplicitous she could be. She had kept the murderous Sealgair a secret until she had him on her shores, kept Adeline’s dormant power from her foryears.He thought of how she’d sat with them after theArabidaeburned, and let him forget she was there, let him rant and rage until Adeline cut him off from revealing Eda’s prophecy.
But she had found out anyway.
Then she had dragged Adeline across the oceans to kneel at Avette’s feet, borne on the open waters thathiscourt negotiated for her.
His court.
At the thought of them, Kai’s entire body seized, his pacing halted mid-step as though he’d hit a physical wall.
His family.
Were they truly here, wending their way through secret tunnels of ice? Planning to go after the Pearl, to take their chances on the very same waters that had left the Sealgair dead or worse? Kaisank to the bed on trembling legs and dropped his head, with all the weight of his worries, into his hands. But behind his closed lids, he saw that Sealgair woman stalking him from the depths of Koemi with her fanged smile and predatory gaze. She blinked, and her features melted into his own hazel eyes and dark brow; Ceri, staring back at him from her perch on the rock, warped and vengeful. Kai’s mind buckled, every instinct within him straining to reject the thought, to tear it away and hide it, deny it.
But he remembered how adamant his sister had been.
Eleni had not lied. He knew that with a keen and stinging certainty. Ceri was here, Os and Alun too, and the Mother only knew who else.
