“Adeline, this is—when did you get this?”
Her face was buried in his shoulder; he could barely make out the thick, muffled words.
“Our last night in Eisalaan. It was hidden in a stack of letters in my bedroom. She must have written to me just a few hours before she—” She swallowed hard, her shoulders shifting as she burrowed closer and he could not help but turn and gather her to his chest.
“What should I do? I don’t know what to do.” Her breath fractured, cracking her words as she spoke. “I don’t know if this changes anything.”
“It does, if you want it to.”
She stilled, her face still turned into his collarbone—but after a moment she nodded. And when she pulled away to prop herself up on an elbow and let him see her tear-streaked face, he understood she did not want him to misinterpret her nod.
“Before you came to us, my mother was … different. Things between us were different. She’d built up all these walls to protect herself, and—I don’t know, maybe some of that was the Frost too. All I know is that it createdsomuch distance. I didn’tknowher. For most of my life, I didn’t know my own mother.”
She bent her head, and her curls fell forward like a curtain; Kai swept them back again. She was sharing a tender, unseen part of herself, and in that moment, some instinct told him that it was the very least he could offer in return: to see her.Trulysee her, and listen to every word. She glanced up at him beneath her lashes.
“Growing up, I wantednothingto do with her. I wanted my father. I wanted Eleni, even when she stopped responding to my letters. Dhalias was the first place I ever truly felt—not just loved, butsafein that love, you know? Loved from all sides, loved even if I was being a brat, or felt a little moody that day, or Goddess forbid, a little silly. What Eleni said tonight, about seeing me as her daughter? It would have made my entire childhood if I’d heard that a few years ago.”
Her throat bobbed, and when she spoke again, her voice was bolder; still soft as a shadow in the intimate darkness, but strong and certain.
“The thing is, I got a bit of my mother back over those last few weeks. I got to know her. The woman you met; she wasthat, and she was more. She was caring, in her own bizarre way.” A smile flickered around her lips. “She had a sweet tooth. She was sort of … irreverent. And she liked it when I was, too. She was funny. She likedyou, you know. She wanted us to be—”
Adeline’s gaze flinched away, but when she forced it back to him, her eyes were that same soft, warm brown he knew so well.
“She wanted me to be happy. And she wanted Eisalaan to be happy, she really, really did.”
Kai nodded, and it seemed like the right response, because Adeline’s eyes softened further, and that flickering smile took hold for a long moment before she returned his nod, just once, firmly.
“So yes,” she said. “If this is what she wanted, I trust her judgment. If it’s what she wanted, it’s what I want too.”
Kai was already reaching for her and when she leaned down to meet him he kissed her forehead, and each sticky, salted cheek.
“Then we’ll find a way,” he said. “First thing tomorrow, we’ll ask Eleni to send word to your father—perhaps with an Imperial messenger so Edward can’t intercept.”
He coaxed her against him again, guided her head to his chest and cradled her body in the crook of one arm. He felt her melt against him, relief softening the taut lines of her body and slowing her breath. Whether it was the relief of sharing her burden, or having a plan, or simply lying her weary body down, he could not say.
“Alright,” was all she said as she curled against his side.
And they spoke no more of Selma, or Eleni, or even of their respective kingdoms, but theydidspeak. Sleep did not find them for many hours to come, and they lay there side by side, whispering long into the night. And if the tone of their conversation had not lightened, Kai would have been willing to share a buried truth of his own—it was that he longed to spend every night just like this. With Adeline warm in his arms, watching the light shift from moonlit silver to watery blue, to dawning golden pink as they talked for hours about nothing at all.
Chapter Seventeen
Kai
Of all the royal luxuries Kai had experienced here in Dhalias and even in the Silver Kingdom, nothing compared to the luxury of waking up like this. Turning in his half-conscious state and rolling into the warm divot of the mattress, finding a soft, familiar body stretched out along his own. He reached out and found her waist easily, like finding his way home in the dark. And when she shuffled back and curled her body into his, their contented sighs were a harmony.
It was peace and perfection. It was all he had wanted, for weeks now; this simple moment of rest with the woman he loved. It was untouchable. He was nearly angry with his own body when it inevitably ruined the moment, fully awaking to the day and the reality of Adeline,pressed against him as she was, her curls tickling his skin and the swell of her ass nestled in his lap.
“Oh,” she said, and in that one word, he could hear the smirk in her voice. She sounded bright and rested and far more like her usual self than she had for much of last night. “Goodmorning, Your Majesty.”
“Sorry, I—”
He was cut off by his own sharp inhale when Adeline made a slow half circle of her hips, grinding herself deliberately against him.
“Sorry?” she repeated innocently.
“Not in the slightest,” he rasped, and she rewarded him with a giggle and another roll of her hips. He groaned and twitched beneath her—and between one moment and the next, she was not teasing him any longer. Not giggling or making little remarks. Perhaps she was distracted. Perhaps it was because his hand had found its way between her thighs; because she was too busy rocking against the heel of his hand as he cupped her, her undergarments growing damp beneath his palm and each of her movements dragging her curves over his aching cock.
As much as he’d enjoyed their peaceful waking embrace, he couldn’t find it in himself to be disappointed in the turn of the morning. Because this was familiar too; this endless, unsated need for each other was where they had left off so many weeks ago. If he had any say, it was where they would pick back up, too.
