???
The good news was that Ger’s body seemed to have realised he was not, in fact, dying. But even with his heart’s sheepish return to its usual steady rhythm, he wasn’t sure he’d quite recovered. His head was woollen, and it took an almighty bout of concentration to set one foot after the other just to maintain his assigned place in Avette’s escort.
The familiar hallways echoed, blank and endless. Cold in a way they had never seemed before, with frost lurking like rot in the shadows. By the time they made it to Selma’s old quarters, Ger could have lain down on the frigid marble floor and slipped straight into a taut and restless sleep. It was always like this after one of hislittle episodes, as his mother used to call them; they drained his every reserve, yet somehow left him wired and on edge.
His muscles were both rubbery and tense when he drew up short to bow to the Sorceress, just a half second later than his fellow gards. He rose that half second later too—but not so late that he didn’t catch her gaze on him where she stood paused with her hand on the doorhandle.
Shit.
That was all that went through his head.
Avette’s dark eyes were both cold and covetous, and he stilled instinctively beneath them, a deer faced with the flash of the hunter’s blade. Time slowed; he might have imagined that his post-panic fog had skewed reality, had the gards either side of him not shuffled slightly, a quiet murmur rippling through their ranks. From their second-hand discomfort, he knew he had not imagined it; she had been holding his gaze forfartoo long. Ger braced himself—for what, he couldn’t say—but Avette spoke not one word. Just blinked those unfathomably long lashes and finally released him, turning for the door.
He wanted to be relieved, wanted to sigh. His chest ached with withheld breath, but his body would not yet release him. So he watched, lungs burning, as the door to the queen’s suite swung open to reveal a rail of glittering gowns in the room beyond. Watched as two familiar figures rose from the stark white settee, only to drop once more in a swift curtsey.
Mareda rose with little of her usual grace, trembling slightly with the effort of drawing her own weight up on her wooden crutch, her broken leg angled slightly ahead of her. Imogen’s curtsey was fluid—she was upright by the time Ger’s gaze found her, her own eyes already trained on him.
Through the gap of the open door, they stared wordlessly at one another.
Ger wondered what she saw in his face; wondered if it betrayed his breathless panic. Imogen’s expression, on the other hand, was one he recognised; the painstakingly vacant expression of their late queen. It was a near-perfect imitation—save for her eyes.
This was not the first time in his life that Ger had cursed his own obtuseness, but the ache in his airless chest made that lament all the more bitter. Because Adeline would have read Imogen like a dog-eared book on her nightstand.
And Ger wasn’t even sure he spoke the same language.
He tried, in those brief few seconds before the crack in the doorway narrowed. He really did try, right up until the moment that Imogen turned away.
The door clicked shut.
He drew a painful breath.
Chapter Four
Adeline
Adeline had been quite content to sit in her cabin and rot. More than content, really. She craved the muffling dim that shrouded her like a thick winter blanket. The quiet. Not having to speak, or smile, or think, or feel. Not having to battle the suffocating sorrow that settled over her when she thought of all she’d left behind her. All she’d lost. Not having to fight the clawing guilt that seized her whenever she caught sight of Kai, nor the swell of warmth and yearning within her when he’d meet her eye.
It was the latter that had her opening her cabin door in the first place, after two full days of that cherished silence. The knock had come and stirred her from her bed, where she lay awake above the covers with her comfortably numb thoughts. She’d thought it was him.
Hoped?
Yes, if she was honest with herself—hoped.
That one ember of warmth tucked into a cobwebbed corner of her chest had glowed at the thought of him on the other side of the door, overcoming all the awful strangeness between them, tangled and barbed as it was. So yes, she was briefly hopeful at the thought of Kai refusing to give her the space she told him she needed;didneed, from everyone aside from—
She didn’t want to complete the thought, even in her head.
It hadn’t been Kai anyway; it had been Ceriwyn. She’d been bright and smiling as she pushed her way into the room and headed directly for Adeline’s trunk. She wore a pretty cotton dress, the same blue-green as the waves Adeline had glimpsed that morning before she’d dragged the shade back over the porthole. Her dark hair was twisted into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, and she wafted a fresh scent behind her that made Adeline all too aware of her own stale nightclothes.
“What are you doing?”
“Good morning to you, too, Your Highness.”
Adeline stood with her fingers still wrapped around the door’s edge, the path of her thoughts moving like muddied waters with no clarity or haste. She watched Ceriwyn root through her trunk, digging past all the needless tulle and glitter that Imogen had packed until she found a crisp day dress the colour of the cloudless sky and laid it on the bed.
“Come now, you’ll miss breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry.”
