Alun leaned past Ceri to press an open bottle of wine into Kai’s hands. The king considered it for a long moment. He let his gaze drag wearily over each of their faces; then muttered a curse and took a deep glug directly from the bottle, the column of his throat shifting once, twice, thrice. When he came up for air, Adeline gently took the bottle from him, and he caught at her hand to keep her close.
“You want to know about the prophecy,” he said to them all.
“Theywant to know about the prophecy,” said Os, flat if not outright bored. “I want them to stop spiralling.”
Ceri barely gave her cousin’s comment time to land. “Is it true that Eda warned you about it weeks ago?”
“How on Adhlas do you know aboutthat?”
Alun shifted guiltily, and Kai pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand, the other twitching in Adeline’s grasp. She squeezed back, and he returned the pressure through a deep, steadying breath.
“If we’re going to do this, we’ll need more wine.”
An easy request to fulfil, as it turned out; Pike had apparently been hoarding discarded shipments for the better part of a year, and his crewmates were only too happy to relieve their stores of some weight. The floral musk of Dhaliaan wine hung heavy in the air, and the chatter had thickened right along with it. Somewhere in the throng of the main deck, a clutch of sailors led the crowd through a rowdy sea shanty made up of indecipherable growls and grunts and a whole lot of rhythmic stomping.
It was a pretty scene, the cloudless, velvet sky awash with sparkling starlight, lanterns flickering throughout the deck likefireflies, and all that gold and silver light rolling fluidly over the dancing bodies that weaved and twirled in time with the sailors’ footfall. Adeline watched them as though from behind a frost-laced window; she couldseethe light,hearthe muffled merriment, but it was all beyond their reach. She sat cross-legged on the forecastle with Kai and his Merrow Court, and with a glance around their small circle, she was reminded irresistibly of a night in the forests of the Queen’s Village. The Mid-Winter Faire. They’d been gathered just like this, with Ceri at Adeline’s side, and Kai holding her eye from across the way where he sat drinking with Al and Os. He’d been laughing that night. She’d never seen him laugh like that before, with his whole body, his brow and shoulders loose.
Now, they were knotted and tense. Now, there was no laughter, and the night of the Faire seemed an age away; the bittersweet memory of a shared innocence.
There was drinking, though.
Kai swiped the sheen of wine from his bottom lip with a thumb and took a long moment to gather his breath and his thoughts. He looked up, and at once Adeline wished she’d squeezed herself between Kai and Os so she could hold his hand; he needed that, she could tell. He passed the bottle to Alun, and his hands curled around thin air.
“Many stories begin once upon a time,” he said slowly—and a prickle of recognition rolled down Adeline’s spine. “This story begins at the beginning.”
“Is this really the time for a bedtime story, Koo?”
“This story,” he said firmly, glancing at Ceri from beneath flat brows, “begins at the beginning.”
Ceri fell silent, and Kai went on, sighing through his nose.
“In the beginning, there was only Adhlas, and her unending sorrow. She was lonely in a way that we mortals could never comprehend, but she had a world of love within her. She wanted, more than anything, to fill that empty space. And so she turned within herself. From her bones, she created land, and from her flesh, her children. She wept and bled to bring us into existence, all so she could share that endless love. Her blood and tears became the waters that bind and sustain all life, and the rhythmic flow of it came imbued with power, all from the very centre of her being. Her heart, as flawless and exquisite as—”
“A pearl,” Adeline breathed.
Kai paused, and the other Merrow turned to stare at her.
“You know it?” said Ceri.
“It’s an old fairytale, I used to read it to my sister.The Pearl of All the World?”
Kai dragged a hand down his face, then held the same hand out in a wordless request, not even glancing around to see who handed him back the bottle.
“I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me.” He took a deep, fortifying swig. “The Pearl is Merrow lore; our creation myth, as told by our Elders. You know how it ends?”
Kai leaned across the small circle to offer her the bottle; his thumb brushed deliberately over hers as she took it, a brief moment of connection that audibly loosened his breath. Adeline’s heart contracted. She wanted to climb into his lap and hug him until she’d wrung the tension from the full width of his shoulders.
But she only took the wine and nodded.
“Adhlas had to harden her heart after her children turned against her,” she said, eyes flicking to the jewel-bright sky as she shifted through her own memory. “We ravaged her world with our wars and made her cry enough to fill the lakes and oceans. She hid her heart away beneath a storm of tears.”
“And if it was ever found?”
“Whoever held it would have the power of Adlhas at their fingertips. They’d Wield all the power in the world.”
“Yes,” said Kai. He dropped Adeline’s gaze, his eyes sinking to the deck before he forced himself to look at them all, the effort of it evident in the squaring of his jaw. “Six hundred years ago, I told this story to Avette.”
His voice thinned at the tail end of her name, and Adeline watched his chest hitch as he caught his breath. It took her a moment and a slight pang between the ribs to realise that she’d held her own, too. She watched, tight-chested, as Kai splayed his hand out before him, palm up so the thin ribbon of scar caught silver in the moonlight. He traced it with his gaze as he spoke, his voice low and distant, an echo of so many years passed.
