“No, Adeline.” He took a step closer, voice low and careful like he really needed her to understand what he was saying. “I’m leaving the palace. Leaving Eisalaan. I told you I’d fix this, and this is the best I could come up with. Alun sent word a few days ago; we’ve been granted refuge in a Merrow territory off the coast of Dhalias.”
“Dhalias?”
She echoed him numbly, out loud and in her head.
Dhalias?
Her father’s homeland; seas so blue they washed into the skies, salted air and sunbaked shores. Clusters of bleached stone towns laced in pink and yellow flowers, and green, so much green. All of it framed by a peaceful scape of mossy mountains in the distance. It had always seemed an entirely different world to her, and she happened to know it was over a week’s journey. Adeline had been only once, when she was very young, so on the few occasions that Silas had gone without her she’d ached for his return for what felt like months at a time. But he’d always come back.
Unless she was quite mistaken, Kai wasn’t coming back.
Her head swam with a sudden flood of questions, several of them spilling out at once.
“When are you –howdid – there are other Merrow?”
Kai straightened his cuffs, putting on that distant, regal air he normally reserved for Council meetings and gatherings of the Queen’s court. He seemed to consider for a moment, then selected the easiest from her muddle of questions.
“Os will leave with most of the others tomorrow. I’ll stay a few days to settle some business with your mother, but by the end of the week, Ceri and I will join them.”
Adeline was vaguely aware that she was staring at him. She blinked to break her frozen gaze, and turned around, finding her way to the armchair and sinking into it on shaky legs.Dhalias.She’d wanted her space and now here it was; soon enough, there would be vast stretches of land between them, forest, farmland, rivers and entire oceans keeping Kai as far away as she could reasonably ask. It was the solution, the only answer to all the problems that arose from her knowing what he’d done. What he’dmeantto do. Whether he’d changed his mind or not, he’d intended to spur on the Thaw, and she, as a member of the Beira family and a potential heir to the Kingdom, now had to live with that knowledge. Live in fear of it.
If he stayed, she could not keep this information from her Queen.
If he stayed, she could not protect him from the backlash that would ensue from her already frightened countrymen, as their world melted around them.
If he stayed, she could never quite trust that he wouldn’t one day bury her Kingdom for some slim, glimmering hope of unearthing his own.
And yet –
“I don’t want you to go.”
The words tore out of her unbidden, spearing through the space and silence between them.
Kai didn’t move an inch, but for a brief moment she had the impression he’d been knocked backwards. Then he stiffened, and his voice lowered.
“That,” he said, “is not fair.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His face was very carefully blank, but there was no missing the undercurrent of tension thrumming through his tone.
“I made a mistake, and I fixed it.”
“A mistake?” Adeline rose slowly to her feet again, fingers digging hard into the armrest to steady herself. “You made adecision. Day after day, you made the decision not to tell me something that youknewwould hurt my family, my campaign – my entire fuckingcountry, Kai.”
“I have already admitted I was wrong.” His teeth were gritted now. “But –Adhlas fucking spare me– Adeline, are you honestly telling me you wouldn’t have done the same thing in my place? Would you have left Eisalaan to lie sunken under centuries of ice?”
No.
She wouldn’t have. She knew that, but she couldn’t accept that it was an impossible situation. There was always a choice, and she hadn’t forgiven him for choosing wrong. Not yet.
“You should have trusted me enough to tell me what you really wanted.”
“I do trust you.NowI trust you. But the last time I let myself get close to a Princess of Eisalaan, I lost my entire Kingdom. I condemned us all, and I couldn’t let that happen again.”
“It certainlysoundslike you trust me.”
