The winds snatched his voice away, but a pulse of blue and a slow-dawning smile told him that Avette had heard him. At his side, Imogen gave his cloak a short tug, gently but insistently drawing him on. He went, gladly, thundering forward in several swift strides that had Benan stepping out from behind the princesses.
“What is this, Avette?”
Avette raised a hand, stopping Benan in his tracks without so much as a glance around her. Her eyes were on Kai, dark and vivid in the expanse of white; her skin, her dress, the blizzard whipping around her. She was storm made flesh, loosed upon the world by some force beyond his comprehension, all in the name of nothing but senseless destruction.
“This, my heart,” she said, with that practised, detached calm, “is nothing more than incentive. My dear Lady Snow has come so far in securing us our wedding gift. For this final effort, she will require your assistance.”
“No.”
It was an ingrained reaction, jerked from his nerves in the same way he might recoil his hand from a flame.No,he would not help her.No,he would never make the mistake of helping Avette again. Not when he still bore the scars of the last time, scored right through the centre of his palm. Not when the whole ofAdhlas bore its own scars, too. At his side, Lady Imogen cleared her throat, perhaps a touch pointedly.
Avette just smiled, as though he had said nothing at all.
“You will be allowed your little trinket, and you will use it to hold the waters at bay for my Wielders as they enter the cavern.”
Kai’s very breath sank through him, gusting away far beneath his feet into the biting cold of the Laune.
“Why not just freeze it?” he said.
Quickly,tooquickly, but panic had overcome him, working him like a puppet on its taut strings. Avette waved his words aside, impatient.
“The currents are too strong, too fast-moving. We will need the waters held aside before the freezing begins.”
Mother help them all.
The Merrow were expecting a frozencavern. They were awaiting his word; they would not know to follow him into the tunnels today, and for all he knew, they would have no way to hold back the waters for themselves. They’d had to keep their exchanges so bare of detail he didn’t know if the Sealgair had escorted them the whole way. Even if theyhad, he had no way to signal them without the conch.
They had lost, he realised, brain blanching with shock at that overwhelming knowledge.
They were too late.
“My cousins will keep us company as I await your success,” said Avette, but it was the sharp, yellow crescent of Benan’s answering grin that hooked Kai from his inner spiral.
Us.
At the implication, Kai all but gagged against the thick, sour slide of his heart in his chest. She meant to keep Adeline hostage. To hold her as collateral against his disobedience.
“And when you have returned,” Avette went on, “you may see to Adeline’s safety. If it still matters to you, all things considered.”
Kai could not help but bite at the obvious bait. “What is there to consider?”
Avette’s smile was bright and immediate.
“Well, I suppose her safety is less of a concern for you, is it not? Now that she has a strapping gard warming her bed. Sir Leman, I believe, alovelyyoung man indeed. Perhaps you know him?”
Kai stiffened. He didn’t want to look at Adeline—or rather, hedid, so badly his spine screamed with the effort of holding still. He could not give Avette the satisfaction, but he was so exhaustingly aware of Adeline’s orbit that he simply couldn’t help but see her in his periphery.
She was just as rigid as he was.
There’s an explanation,he told himself.There has to be.
But the turning in his stomach was untouched by logic; it wouldn’t settle, he knew, until this was over. Until he saw Adeline away from Benan’s looming shadow and Avette’s bitter glow.
“It’s no less of a concern,” he said, voice so tight that Avette’s beaming smile spread light to her eyes.
“Very well,” she said, with a delicate shrug. “Assist Lady Snow in her efforts, and I shall see to it that you are granted a moment alone with your dear friend.”
Alone.
