Adeline
“Forfeit.”
“I can’t.”
“Fine.Say you’ve fallen ill – tell them you’ve caught the Queen’s fever.”
They sat in the parlour of Adeline’s rooms. Well, Adeline sat. Ceri stood behind her, pulling apart Adeline’s fraying braid; Ger perched silently on the armrest at the other end of her settee, one hand cupping his own jaw and fingers splayed over frowning lips; Kai was pacing. Pacing and occasionally pausing to panic in a new corner of the room.
“I’m not withdrawing, Kai.”
He turned away from her with his lip curling over his teeth in a sharp grimace, and his eyes landed on Ger. “All those training sessions on the stream, and it didn’t cross your mind to warn us?”
Ger dropped his hand from his lips, but did not shift from his slumped, defeated posture. He raised a brow.
“I found out exactly five minutes before the rest of Eisalaan. Tell me, should I have run out onto the ice and ducked under Ade’s blade to break the news? Or just scaled the walls and shouted it from the Queen’s podium?
“Snapping at each other won’t help anything.”
Ger shrugged, but Kai finally stopped pacing and sat on the armchair by the fire. He dropped his head into his hands and grumbled an apology into his palms.
“It’s fine,” Ger said stiffly. “This is shit.”
Ceri dropped Adeline’s newly braided hair and took hold of her shoulders with a gentle squeeze.
“Is Captain Doran really that bad?”
“Yes,” the others chorused.
Kai looked at her. Desperation pulled at his features, brows narrowing and lips flat.
“If you step foot on that ice tomorrow, Adeline, hewill kill you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Since when are you this dramatic? He’s not going tokillme in front of my mother and all of Eisalaan.”
“He’s not going to hold back either Ade,” Ger said, grimacing. “By the laws of the tournament he doesn’t have to. He’sencouragednot to, to help you show everyone what you’re made of. And – well, you know he’s not one to forgive and forget.”
He raised a meaningful brow, and Adeline glared at him.
Of course she knew Doran had never forgotten, would never get over how she’d humiliated him at the tavern all those months ago. But bringing it up in front of an already wound-up Kai was the opposite of helpful.
Kai stood. “I would like a moment alone with Adeline.”
From his suddenly Kingly bearing and the resonance in his voice, it was clear that this was not a request. Adeline nodded at Ger’s wary glance, and after a moment he and Ceriwyn had stepped into the hallway, the door clicking shut behind them.
Kai closed the distance between them and knelt before her, taking her hands in his.
“Please don’t do this.”
Adeline looked from the King to the closed door. He hadn’t wanted them to see him on his knees, she realised. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see it either. She swallowed, shaking her head.
“If I forfeit the battle I may as well forfeit the crown.”
“Then forfeit the crown.”
Her eyes snapped to his, and found them defiant and steady.
“You never wanted it anyway.”
