All was still in the family dining room. Silent. The only sign of life came not from the three people seated at one end of the long table, but from the salt breeze that tumbled and danced with the gauzy drapings of the balcony. And if that same breeze carried the vaguest hint of smoke, of distant violence borne all this way to them on a forgetful wind that toyed with Adeline’s hair, it was hard to tell. It could, after all, be the soot that still burned in her sinuses. The smoke that clung to her damp curls. The charred remains of Kai’s shirt over his raw, shining shoulder.
She couldn’t be sure, because really, it felt like she’d never left theArabidae. The ground beneath her seat was still shifting andinconstant. That grey haze still coated the world around her, Eleni’s words distant and muffled, though she sat close enough to lay her palm over Adeline’s rigid fingers. Even the weight of her Aunt’s hand was indistinguishable from her own.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
No.Yes?
Maybe she would, if she could make herself focus. She hadn’t taken in a word; would have assumed Eleni was speaking to Kai, actually, were it not for his silence. He’d been given a numbing tonic by the rescue crew who met them on the shore; something to help with the pain until he could be seen by a Healer. She wondered distantly if she’d taken some too and somehow forgotten. If that was why she felt this way. Why it took such effort to lift her head and find Kai. When she did, he wasn’t even looking at the Empress.
He was staring at a square of parchment held in both hands; it was half-crumpled in the force of his grip, and the tremor of that tension ran all the way down his forearms, absorbed into the wooden tabletop where they rested. The letter had come from home, delivered on the supply ship that had arrived that morning, complete with an envoy of the Eisalaan Gard. Adeline wasn’t sure what it said. She hadn’t asked. Because Eleni’s messenger had handed it to him, then turned to her and said that her father—
“Adeline?”
She turned her head. Her tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth, and it took two briney, smoke-tinged swallows to get it working.
“I don’t—” she tried, half-spluttering. The words were rough with the grit and grime that still coated her throat. “What did you—”
With a squeeze of her hand, Eleni spared her the effort of admitting she wasn’t listening.
“The news from Eisalaan,” she said slowly. “And the fire.”
Adeline focused on her aunt; really tried. She was drawn, hollow in a way that didn’t sit naturally in the softness of her face. Her eyes were a mirror to Adeline’s own, red and swollen to slits with only a glint of brown, its warmth dulled to the same ashen shade as theArabidae’sremains.
“Do you understand,Adeleni?”
She didn’t understand. She truly didn’t. None of it made sense, none of it feltreal, and she could not reconcile what happened on theArabidaeand whatever was unfolding back home, all the way over the Common Crossing.Couldn’t braid them together into anything she could grasp; the pieces simply unravelled in the palm of her hand. But the silence was starting to sound like the roar of those flames over the crash of the waves, so she said, “Mareda’s taken the throne. The Frost—”
Her mind stopped. Just stopped, like her thoughts had hit a pane of glass. She could nearly hear the thump and screech. And then she heard the messenger’s voice in place of her own.
The new queen has created bleak conditions, Your Highness, a winter unlike anything we’ve known. The Laune is closed for trade, the ports have all but frozen over. Scores of people have gone missing. I am sorry to say … your father is among them.
A slow roll of warmth down one cheek startled Adeline back to the present. She swiped the rogue tear away and sniffed to clear the sting in her sinuses.
“They repaired the Frost somehow,” she said thickly. “Mareda, and Edward.”
“No.”
It was the first word Kai had spoken in hours; the first thing he’d said since Pike had half-hauled him onto the rescue boat, his entire face slack, Eda nowhere to be seen. Soot blackened his gills, and his voice came out ragged and ruined, but it was enough to turn the gaze of both women. Eleni made a soft noise, understanding or agreement perhaps—but it was Adeline he looked to as he set down the parchment.
“That new queen,” he said, all on one flat, rasping note. “It’s not Mareda.”
Shimmering ice caught the candlelight as Kai slid the parchment across the table; overlapping patterns of frost for a pretty border on palace stationery. A Wielder’s touch that left the page cool beneath Adeline’s hand when she picked it up.
A summons, addressed to Kai.
And the signature drew that chill beneath her fingers, sent it racing up her arms, bolting down her spine like lightning. Because that was the name of the woman known to have disappeared into the Frost hundreds of years ago. A woman who should have been swallowed by her own curse.
“It’s Avette,” said Adeline. Her voice sounded quite as dead as Kai’s, but it raked at her swollen throat with each sparse word. “How?”
“The Thaw,” was all he said.
The Thaw.
The Thaw that had killed her mother.
And a summons from the woman whose curse had started it all. Had torn magic from the world. Split Merrow from their home, and their families, and their own futures. Ruined Kai and destroyed all he held dear.
A different kind of thaw crawled over her skin, rousing every numb nerve ending and setting them alight. Sinking heat through her muscles until liquid fire filled her belly and rose in her throat like a growl.
