Traitor’s truth, thought Adeline numbly as Avette paused to draw a long, wet breath. Her hands fluttered aimlessly at the protruding, jagged ice in her middle.
“How?”
Imogen’s hand stroked down the side of her face, pausing to blot at a thin bead of blood pooling in the corner of Avette’s parted lips.
“BecauseIam the Mother’s favoured daughter,” Imogen said, so sweetly. “Iam the Saviour of Eisalaan.”
Avette tried to shake her head, and Imogen hushed her, soft and low.
“Yes,” she said, then tapped gently at where the pendant and pearl had lain side by side on the queen’s faltering chest. “You had your little trinket, Your Majesty. But I hold the Pearl in my heart and hands.”
“You stole it.”
Avette’s shriek rang throughout the hall, buoyed by a final burst of venom, but even that much cost her. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she forced them open again, their blue sheen entirely doused. Nothing in its place but black, enduring hatred.
“I took what you were too vain and entitled to seek out for yourself,” said Imogen, the sharp words softened only by her benevolence. And in that moment, kneeling at the side of her fallen foe, she could have been the Goddess herself for all the power and beauty she exuded. Her dark skin beamed with an iridescent glow, her eyes bright and focused with all the power she’d expelled. Her lips curved, and Adeline would have called it a sneer if she didn’t look so fiercely, terribly beautiful. “It wouldn’t have mattered either way, Avette. It chose me. It wantedme.”
“No,” Avette hissed, another burst of venom that pushed her failing chest too far. Blood pulsed from the base of the stalactite and burst in a spluttering gasp from her lips. Her eyes slid shut again, fluttered half open one final time. “I am theSorceress—”
Her lips fell slack mid-speech, face stilling like the perfect porcelain it had always so resembled.
Imogen reached up to slide her eyelids shut.
“And you always will be.”
???
It was over.
Over.
Some part of Adeline understood that itwasover, but she couldn’t look away from Avette’s still face, her ruined wedding gown of bloodstained lace and muddied pearl. Couldn’t stop imagining that blue light would leak from beneath those long lashes, and the silent winds would howl to life once more. Disbelief was a cloud over her thoughts, over her every sense. She felt it lift, slowly, in the same moment that Ger’s arms fell away from her middle. The stillness of the hall gave way to murmurs, careful shuffling. People were moving, tentative footsteps all around, but when Adeline found the will to drag her attention from the fallen queen, there was only one person who existed to her.
Kai’s gaze found hers in the same moment, across fallen bodies and blood and moss and slow-thawed ice. They stared wordlessly at one another, and Adeline saw, in his folded brow, the same relief and sorrow that sank through her like a bottomless ocean, the same love that bloomed in an unending forest. She moved for him, and he kicked his legs free of the half-thawed slush—but then stilled, staring down at the remnants of ice that clung to his shins. Adeline paused too, still so on edge that his slightest hesitation had her heart hammering at herribs. Kai’s attention flicked to Avette’s body, then past his own shoulder.
His frown cleared.
And then he was running, not toward her but away, into the shadows at the back of the dais. Behind her, Gerard cursed and shot after him. Adeline spun a wild glance around her, but Imogen and Marry had folded to the ground at Avette’s side, cradling one another and murmuring quietly, unaware of Ger or Kai or Adeline, or even the gards tentatively laying down their swords at the foot of the steps.
Adeline left them, picking up her ruined skirts to follow Ger’s path through the tangle of vines and running waters. There was movement in the shadows, and Ger sped up to crash into the wall just in time for a figure to stumble against him. Adeline stared, uncomprehending, as he guided the trembling woman to sit on the ground and turned at once to reach for another wavering figure.
There were somanyof them.
Some of them sobbed and moaned; all of them shivered violently. Had they all fled from the battle, sought shelter in the shadows? Her mind wouldn’t make sense of it. Not until she finally found Kai, his arms bracing the elbows of a man with a damp tangle of dark curls.
Adeline’s knees buckled.
Every trembling stride forward threatened her balance, but she made it, collapsing at the final step as she grasped blindly at wet cloth and shaking arms. The weight of her embrace nearly toppled them both, and they tilted a moment before Kai righted them, guiding them wordlessly to the ground and stepping back to give them space.
And in that space, Adeline finally had room to release the swelling sob in her chest. For as much as they trembled, her father’s arms around her were bruisingly strong, his hoarse voice surprisingly steady when he swept her curls aside and whispered the three words that made her weep so hard she could not see.
“Welcome home, Mischief.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Adeline
It took several days to assemble the Cold Council, or what was left of it.
