Kai lifted his head from the cradle of her throat and kissed her, slow and sure.
“I’ve loved you since the courtyard, too,” he said. “You were the sunrise on the darkest night of my life, Adeline. I’ll always love you.”
The lump that rose in her throat came alarmingly fast. She swallowed against it, blinking back the accompanying sting as she reached up and gently cupped his face.
“I’ll always love you.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Kai
His bride wore a gown of brittle white, trimmed with pearls the colour of bone. She was death and devastation wrapped in ceremonial lace, drifting down the aisle on a tide of crackling ice. Behind her, the love of his life held the long train of her dress and fought not to meet his eye.
The throne room had been reimagined as an imitation of the temple Kai had never set foot in. The staggering blades of the ceiling had been drawn back in neat, glimmering rows, longer where he and the shivering High Priestess stood, as though either of them needed any reminder of what would happen if they denied their part in this. They knew. They all knew; the onlookers, too. They were the Court who had been terrorisedfor months, the prisoners who had watched their countryfolk’s blood spilt in frost patterns across this very floor. They had been filed into pews of ice, each row adorned with a bouquet of baby’s breath smothered in frost, while their occupants’ shuddering breaths rose in white, inconstant swirls. A captive audience, in every sense. Not one of them dared look around as Avette moved down the aisle, a pale-blue spill of carpet cleaving the room like a chasm through the Laune. They were frozen, all of them, much like the lifeless figures of the queen’s many victims that stood in the shadows beyond the dais and watched on with eternally horrified faces.
Despite his every assertion that he could do this, that it would mean nothing, Kai couldn’t deny the tension webbing through his muscles and winding them tight when Avette reached his side. It was surreal as only a nightmare could be, more maddening by far than his time beneath the ice. To stand here, bound by a faith he did not follow, facing a woman he did not want, while his very own heart looked on with her warm eyes glassy and pained.
Avette turned to hand off her snowcapped bouquet and paused a moment, lingering on Adeline where she stood in her periwinkle gown, all frills and pearls and gooseflesh. When Avette met his eye again, her smile was a knife to his chest.
“How sweet,” she whispered. “Dear Lina is quite overcome with happiness, my heart.”
He didn’t answer; didn’t look at Adeline, no matter how his eyes ached in their sockets.
“In the name of the Goddess,” the Priestess intoned above them, “and her every blessed Daughter.”
“In their name,” came the reply from the onlookers, faint enough to be plain that only a few had found their voices.
“Beloved son and daughter,” the Priestess went on. “You have come together in the presence of the the Goddess to state your eternal intention. Your Royal Majesty Avette Beira, have you come here to enter into marriage freely, joyfully, and without coercion?”
“I have,” said Avette, lashes fluttering.
Kai did not think he imagined the new tension on the Priestess’s face as her eyes flicked to his; knowing, as she did, that he could only lie before her Goddess, or damn them all to more unpredictable cruelties.
“And have you, King Kai Cumhaill, come here to enter into marriage freely, joyfully, and without coercion?”
Her swallow was thick and audible. Avette smiled, daring him to answer honestly. Blue light slipped over the gleam of her teeth and caught the sheen of the pearl that now hung alongside her beaming pendant. He dragged in the longest breath he could manage, wondering briefly if that flicker of her power would be enough for Imogen to release him, conduct him.
Peripherally, he caught the slight shake of her head.
It seemed not.
“Yes,” said Kai.
And though he was aware of Adeline’s subtle swipe of her fallen tears, it was not despair that kindled the waning fire in his chest. It was hope. Avette’s split-second call on her power had been meant to intimidate him, to keep him in line. But what if he were to falloutof line? How much power might she Wield to keep himfrom derailing her spectacle, her perfect fairytale ending for the Sorceress and the Drowned Prince?
His mind whirred over the drone of the sermon. He could see few opportunities to bait her, short of causing an entirely new spectacle. An option, he supposed. Hecoulddo something outlandish; interrupt the long reading of rites with the ragged scream already trapped in his lungs. Feign a desperate swipe for her necklace of proxy pearl and blessed water. Lunge at her in full view of their witnesses. But Kai was all too aware of the Queen’s Gard standing just feet from Adeline and the others; aware of the hungry way Doran watched her, leaning on his unsheathed sword, eyes narrowed with the same sharp gleam as his blade. He was waiting forherdisruption. If the disruption came from Kai instead, he knew the Captain would not differentiate; would likely relish the excuse to carry out his punishment on Adeline. Would Ger move swiftly enough to intercept? He didn’t know; the gard’s blade was not even drawn, though his hand twitched nervously around its handle.
He wasn’t ready, none of them were.
Mareda was watching Lady Imogen with her golden brow tight; Imogen was plainly focusing her every ounce of energy into remaining upright, fingers so tight around the queen’s bouquet that the stems had begun to bow around her knuckles.
He would need to wait. He would need to get as close to their agreed moment as possible, but perhaps, if he was clever, he would not need to see it all the way through to the seventh vow. Perhaps he could still give Adeline that much. It would matter, he knew.
It would matter, if they made it through this.
The minutes fell like grains of sand, the slowest trickle with no end in sight. The Priestess droned, sweat beading at her greying temples despite the enduring chill. Oblivious to her discomfort and her every word, Avette simply preened and posed. She tilted toward the pews and tossed back her long hair, unslicked for once and adorned with yet more pearls that shimmered as she moved this way and that, performing grace and beauty for an audience who saw only a monster. She didn’t notice—or, equally likely, did not care. She had everything she wanted. The power her father had always held out of her grasp, a place in Eisalaan’s history, the veneration of thousands. What difference did it make if their awe was edged with fear?
Kai was sorry to say that their fear worked in his favour too. The tension before her masked the anxious energy roiling behind her. Imogen, clinging tight to Mareda’s hand for balance. Adeline, visibly poised, with her eyes fixed to the floor to keep from giving herself away. Gerard’s hand tapping that same nervous rhythm on his hilt, over and over. Kai did not know how much longer he could hold out; didn’t know how much longer therewas. Merrow weddings were shorter, brighter, more song than sermon. There was no discernible pattern or pace to the order of the passages read, but behind Avette, the bridal party’s manner began to tighten bit by bit. Mareda had released Imogen’s hand and was carefully adjusting the fall of her skirt—beneath which, he knew, she had strapped a dagger to her thigh.
