Fightinghim.
Defending Kai?
The thought was a wasted second too many, Avette already upright and alight in blue by the time he’d turned to engage her again. But she was not looking at him. She had seized the moment of confusion, too, whipping around to search for something, someone.
Imogen.
Kai saw the moment she put it together. Mareda and Gerard squared off as one fluid shield, Imogen behind them with her jaw set and lashes fluttering over blank white eyes. The light of Avette’s pendant drew in for just a moment, a stutter of shock like a stolen breath. Kai lunged for her at once, yanking at a fistful of her skirts just as she sent another vicious ice spear bursting forth. His grasp caught her off balance, and the ice spear flew wide, shattering against the Priestess’s podium. Avette slipped with the force of her own power, and though Kai stumbled at the tug of her weight, he was yanked forcefullybackward before he could hit the ground. Too much happened between one breath and the next, chaos ripping through time and compressing seconds into an incomprehensible flash. Kai was thrown against the podium, a shape looming over him, and the burst of pain through his spine shook his grasp on his magic. It barrelled through him unchecked, the mess of ice and water across the dais rising in a towering wave that thrust the figure backward. Benan caught himself at the edge of the steps and teetered for a frozen moment—and just as he advanced, snarling, a thick, green rope lashed around his waist and whipped him backward.
There was an audible crack as Benan’s head ricocheted off the marble floor.
Kai had a brief impression of Adeline’s slack, bloodless face where she stood at the foot of the dais steps, staring at Benan’s unmoving body.
And Avettehowled.
Chapter Forty-Two
Adeline
The scream was not one of loss or heartache, but the rage behind it was a force nearly as strong. Avette’s scream tore at the air like a many-taloned beast, whistling through the very winds that burst outward from her chest and blast past everything in her radius. Adeline’s entire being shuddered at the pitch and force of that unyielding shriek, and for a wild moment she thought the resounding shatter in the air was her own aching eardrums—until the weight in her hand loosened. She glanced down and found her fingers curled around a hilt and nothing else. The blade was shattered, scattered at her feet in winking frosted pieces.
Fucking bollocks.
Her hilt clattered to the ground as she tore up the steps, flat against the still howling winds. Marry had fallen under the blast,faltering to her hands and knees, but Ger wasrunning. Racing toward Avette as though he might physically hold off the storm with nothing to wield against it.
Adeline screamed his name, fear bolting through her in a wave of nausea, buckling her knees. She crashed halfway down, but even as she shot up, Ger was thrown sideways by a rippling crash of water.Saved, she knew, but at a cost. Avette caught the wave in a solid, shimmering wall, and Kai was struck mid-step, his shins caught in the runoff of his own waters. Avette left him immobilised and shattered the ice wave before her. Still, she advanced on Imogen, her hair a whipping storm. Marry was on her hands and knees, struggling, slipping among the mess of fallen stalactites.
“You,” Avette intoned.
Adeline scrambled for her magic, gathering her vines.
Avette threw her arms wide, the entire hall bathed by her beaming, cursed pendant.
Imogen’s smile was a crescent in the flash of blue light.
“Me,” she said.
And before either could make a single move, Mareda surged to her feet, lunging all at once for Avette.
Adeline screamed, vines lashing forward without direction—but there was nothing for them to grasp. Avette and Mareda spun to the marble mess in a flurry of tulle and wind and whipping hair, black and gold and—and red.Red.Adeline didn’t want to make sense of it, didn’t want to acknowledge the spill of vivid colour for what it was, even as she reached her sister’s side and fell to her knees.
“Marry,” she sobbed.
But Ger was there too, holding her back, whispering.
“Wait—wait.”
Mareda was breathing, low and heavy and laboured. She struggled upright, bearing down on something long and shimmering, silver slicked with red. And Adeline saw it. An icicle jutting from Avette’s ribcage, her face a marble mask of shock, the blue glow ebbing from her eyes with each slow blink. Mareda wiped her bloodied hands on Avette’s wedding gown—then reached out and snapped the chain from the usurper’s neck.
“Traitor,” Avette gasped, her slim brows crumpling like paper with the effort.
Mareda only stared down at her, cold and unyielding, until a soft touch at her shoulder broke her stare.
“She’s talking to me,” said Imogen, and with little more than a beat of reluctance, Mareda shifted sideways and stepped away.
The room had fallen silent, Aera herself holding her breath as Imogen knelt in a soft puff of tulle. Not a soul spoke or moved, all watching the queen’s favourite lady reach out and brush a curl from her face, tenderly.
“Traitor,” Avette gasped again.
