Adeline startled at being addressed, the unexpectedness of it jerking a nod from her before she even thought to protest. Notthat she’d want to.Didshe want to? She was still undecided as Imogen slipped from the room, the door wafting a gust of ice-wind behind her before it shut. They watched it settle in its frame, the lock sliding easily into place where Adeline’s door now needed a physical shove to scrape past the constant creep of frost. There was no frost here; not spilling out beneath the door or clinging to the frame like silver vines left wild to spiral and creep.
“It’s warm in here,” said Adeline, just for something to say. “Warmer, I mean.”
Always the first to break a silence between them, even when the jarring echo of that silence still rang in her ears. For an awful moment, it rang still, and she half-imagined they’d sit here unspeaking until Imogen returned. But then Mareda raked in a weak breath.
“It is. Imogen warded my door somehow, to keep out the chill.”
Adeline’s neck had been aching with the urge to turn her head, to look at her sister, but something stopped her. Perhaps it was the little pride that hadn’t been crushed beneath the rush of green in her veins, ground out with every groaning, thundering call that Imogen demanded. She couldn’t face her sister, couldn’t give in this time, no matter how much she wanted to; she let her eyes flick sideways instead. Marry’s focus was set on the door still, and though it irked Adeline that she hadn’t bothered to turn either, the spark of irritation was too weak to catch. In fact, the heat itdidspark waned at once. BecauseMaredawas waning, her bright, golden, lovely sister, wasting away. For as much as they were all hollow and hungry, Mareda was worse somehow; further along that road they all travelled, sprinting toward her own demise. Her pale hair was stringy at her hollowed temples, scraped into its tight twist at her nape. Beneath it, the longline of her neck was broken by a jagged valley of vertebrae. She watched those too-sharp bones shift, and realised a moment too late that Mareda had turned her head. The blue of her eyes was dull, but focused, watching her warily. Waiting.
Adeline swallowed. “So you’re speaking again, then?”
Speaking to me,she’d meant, but as ever Mareda heard what Mareda wanted to hear.Speaking to Imogen, she assumed, and said simply, “Yes. She’s taken care of me when I couldn’t find the will to take care of myself. Whatever happened between us before, it just … seems so silly now. Goddess, all my petty grudges—theyallseem silly. Everything felt so big at the time, but it was small, really.Iwas small. Living in my small world, missing out on much bigger things.”
Her self-awareness was so uncharacteristic, so blunt and honest, it rather caught Adeline off guard. Was this the beginning of an apology—or just an allusion to one? She waited, and for a moment it seemed that Marry was steeling herself to go on. But she hesitated then, hands coming before her to twist her pale fingers in a gesture so familiar it made Adeline feel vaguely dizzy. Homesick.Ridiculous,she told herself.I am home, after all.But that thought was swallowed up at once by the bottomless knowledge that had opened like a pit within her. This wasn’t her home; this was an abandoned shell, a relic overtaken by frost and left to ruin.Noneof them were at home here, and if something didn’t change, nobody ever would be again.
“Adeline,” Marry said; she was now spinning a loose silver ring around her finger, and the tentative way she spoke made her sound like a different person entirely. It took a moment longer to draw Adeline from her thoughts. When she did manage to meet her sister’s eye, Marry offered a thin smile. “Imogen knows what she’s doing. You can trust her.”
Adeline blinked at her; she was serious.Trust her, she said, as though the last year of their lives had not happened.Trust her,as though Imogen were spinning her a particularly outlandish dress, all of them gathered here to drink and gossip before another meaningless ball. Adelinewilledherself to take a breath before she spoke.
She got halfway through that breath before she sputtered, “I’m not even sure I trustyou.”
There was not enough expression left on her sister’s worn face for it tofallexactly, but something there did shift. Just enough to set off an echoing shift in Adeline’s chest. Until that moment, she had quite forgotten about the quiet thrum of the pendant around her neck, but it seemed to rouse at the pain pulsing beneath it. Seemed to reach for that pain in her chest and draw it in, a parasite draining the green from a burgeoning bud.
“I know I hurt you—”
The pendant throbbed.
“Hurtme? You ran me out of the fucking country.”
“Ade,no.” Marry started towards her, a plaintive light flickering in her eyes before she caught herself with a hand to her own chest. “No, I would never.”
Adeline stepped in, swallowing up the distance that Marry wouldn’t dare to cross.
“But you’d stand by and let Edward order my execution.” The chill of the seaglass raced up the full length of the chain, sending a delighted shiver around her neck. It was goading her, she realised, feeding off her emotional energy. She caught herself, tried to shut it out even as months of smothered grief bled through her voice. “You’d let him have me killed. All becausemother was going to name me heir, and you couldn’t fuckingstandit.”
Marry stilled, and for a moment, the dreadful high of triumph was dizzying enough that Adeline let herself slip. She let the pendant in. Let it hiss in her blood, intention loud enough it was nearly a whisper in her ear.You caught her out,it seemed to say.She assumed you would never know.
But Mareda gathered herself; shook her head. And when she spoke, it was not a denial.
“Iwasangry she chose you, Ade.”
The fizzle of Adeline’s blood went flat. She hadn’t expected it. The confirmation she hadn’t realised she’d been waiting for. The pressure that rushed from her chest like a withheld breath. If Mareda could admit she was angry, that meant there was something tobeangry about. That meant the letter was real, that her mother had spoken to Mareda.
That meant that Adeline reallywasthe heir to Eisalaan.
And Mareda had known all this time.
All this time,the pendant whispered, but again Marry spoke, and again the hissing fell away.
“I was angry at myself. You’re mysister. What Izzy is to you, to us both—that’s what you are to me. I’m supposed to protect you, even when I’m angry. To love you even when I’m jealous, which incidentally, wasallthe time.”
At that, the airless ache in Adeline’s chest swelled, the pain growing keener beneath the pendant. How could her perfect, golden sister have beenjealous?
Marry read her confusion with ease; her smile was soft and pained.
“You grew up without that expectation hanging around your neck,” she said carefully, “like a noose everyone said was a priceless jewel. You got to decide you could take the weight of it when you’d had the space to grow strong and able. It’s a wretched thing to think of your own sister, I know, but there it is. But more than anything, Ade, I was angry withher.And I knew I couldn’t be, not when she was—”
Marry swallowed; her veryskinseemed to have thinned, the bob of her throat far too visible. She looked vulnerable as a baby bird, which only made her next words cut deeper.
