“Adeline, it’s alright. I’ll do it. If it comes to it, I’ll marry her so we can see this through.”
Adeline could only stare at him. She did not know if the others had stopped breathing too, or if the fracture in her chest had severed something so vital she simply could not hear anything but roaring static. An unbearable weight was free-falling within her, tearing down everything in its wake, her voice and heartbeat ripped away in its path. She pulled her hand from Kai’s, and even the hurt on his face could not slow the collapse of everything that kept her upright and breathing. Impossibly, she gasped in a breath anyway, pain sawing through her with the effort.
“Alright,” she said.
It wasn’t alright.
Nothingwas alright. But after a terse moment, Marry spread the parchment out over the cracks and brambles, and they all continued as though it was.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Adeline
Ger lingered by the door for a moment after they’d returned to her rooms, almost as though he knew. Expected it, whether because he’d hoped for resolution on Adeline’s behalf, or because he’d seen the look on Kai’s face as she’d parted from him without a word. He tensed all the same when the knock came, shooting Adeline a dark look that she hadn’t the energy to return.
“I am at my limit with you two,” he muttered.
But he opened the door all the same.
“You’ve got Kellehever on your door tonight,” she heard him say, “so you have maybe an hour until he wakes up. I’ll give you some time alone, but be it on your head if you’re caught.”
He threw a quick glance to where Adeline stood warming herself by the struggling hearth, his eyes softening just a touch when they met hers. Then he side-stepped Kai, rounded the vacant gard’s post outside the door, and disappeared.
Kai watched him go, wordless for a moment before he finally entered the room. She could tell by the long seconds he took to close the door that he was steeling himself. Or perhaps that was for her benefit. When he did turn, slowly, his eyes flicked over her face, the faint sconcelight finding warmth in the gold streaks of his irises even beneath the serious set of his brow. She folded her arms under his inspection, and watched his lips tense in response before he glanced away, eyeing the exit as though he might give up altogether and retreat. But he set his jaw and turned around again.
“We could use another closed door, I think. Let’s not do this here.”
Adeline dropped her arms.
“Do this?” She echoed, but he had already taken several of his impossibly long strides across the room, and he did not turn around. She huffed as she hurried after him, reaching for his elbow to draw him up before he could reach her bedroom. “Hold on, are youangryatme?”
“I am just—” he began, then cut himself off with a sharp inhale, lowering his voice before he turned to her. “I amperplexed.”
“You can’t possiblythink I’m being unreasonable.”
“At the risk of surprising you, Adeline, yes, I do.”
She threw her hands up. “Because I don’t want you to marry her?”
“Because these are extenuating circumstances,” he gritted, “and I am asking for the very same grace I’ve extended to you.”
Adeline could only blink at him.
“What in the world does that mean?”
Kai’s jaw worked a moment, lips thinning with the force of his own restraint.
“I haven’t asked you why Avette is hanging Gerard over my head,” he said, so slowly she could hear the pulse beneath his every word.
Adeline could feel her own face fall, or perhaps that was the blood draining from her cheeks. She’d forgotten. Self-centred as it was, she’dforgottenall about her charade with Ger because it had served its purpose and they’d been left alone. A blessing at very little cost—to her, at least, becausesheknew what it meant.
“I kissed him,” she blurted out. Kai’s eyes fell shut, and like his every movement held a tether on her own, her heart faltered. “Not because I wanted to, not becauseeitherof us wanted to. It was for show. It was a way to hold off the Queen’s Gard and buy us some privacy. That’sall.”
He opened his eyes, and when they met hers, she almost wished he hadn’t. There was too much pain there, andfartoo much control leashing it. She’d hurt him, and he was holding it back—because he knew he’d have to hurt her too.
“I believe you,” he said hoarsely. “And I hate that it happened. And I understand that it had to. And I’m asking you to understand, too. That was for show, and so is this. It has to happen; I have to marry Avette.”
She reeled at the sting of his words, but he stared fixedly back at her. Adeline backed up a step before she could catch herself; when she spoke, her voice was thick.
