“What do we do now?” said Adeline. She hadn’t realised she was shivering until her teeth chattered against each word.
“Now,” Mareda said calmly, “we dress for dinner.”
That had been hours ago, and the New Winter feast was now well under way. Adeline had dressed in the floaty, softly shimmering blue dress Imogen sent to her palace rooms. She had tamed her hair and draped a delicate set of silver chains across her forehead. She’d layered her throat with the ice diamonds the Queen gifted each of her daughters every year.
She let the Herald announce her at the doors to the Grand Hall. Exchanged pleasantries with the nobles of the court, and the guests come from further afield. Picked her way through two extravagant courses before the traditional salted roast and mild honey wine.
Still they had heard no news.
Adeline couldn’t help but fidget as she watched the doors.
“Eat,” said Mareda. “Ade.”
Adeline felt Mareda’s cool fingers around her wrist, prying her hand down and laying it on the table beside an ornate silver fork.
“The sprouts are excellent tonight,” Mareda said lightly. “Eat your food and not your own skin. Please.”
Adeline frowned down at her ragged fingers; she hadn’t realised she’d been chewing on a hangnail. She picked up her fork and speared a sprout, but it hung in the air halfway to her mouth.
Iseult giggled. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing,” said Mareda. She nudged a bony elbow at Adeline’s ribs. “Isn’t that right, Ade?”
Adeline swallowed down the sprout in one painful gulp, wincing even as she nodded. “Nothing at all.”
Iseult’s tiny nose wrinkled in disbelief, but she hopped down from her seat and wandered away from the head table, evidently bored with her sisters and their strange mood.
“They should be back by now,” Adeline said, once their littlest sister was out of earshot. Sebastian was on the other side of her empty seat, but entirely preoccupied with the Queen, his bride-to-be.
“We should tell someone.”
Mareda laid a soothing hand over her wrist again, once more pulling Adeline’s fingers away from her teeth.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Mareda said, gently as one speaking to an overwrought toddler.
“What if someone gets hurt, Marry?”
“It’s New Winter’s Day! Nobody will set foot on the Laune today, I promise.”
That soothing tone was beginning to grate.
“Weset foot on the Laune.”
“Well, unless there’s another young woman between here and the Capital with a new pair of boots and a point to prove – I think we can stand to breathe, Adeline.”
Adeline sat on her own hands to keep from chewing at that sore and peeling hangnail.
“Nobody will be hurt, Ade. My father has it in hand.”
Mareda might have needled her further, but the doors to the hall swung open, and in strode Edward, flanked on either side by two of his most senior Wielders. Adeline bolted up in her seat, and even Mareda seemed to tense beside her as they watched the Commander approach the Queen. He dropped to one knee at her side, and she let him rest there for a long, painful moment. The Wielders on their knees behind him shifted uncomfortably on the stone floor. Finally, the Queen turned in her seat and deigned to meet his eye. Adeline couldn’t hear the words that passed between them, but beneath the overgrown brush of his beard, Edward’s lips strained upwards, a reluctant smile tugging at his every word.
“I think he did it,” she whispered to Mareda.
“I told you he would,” her sister hissed back.
Selma levelled Edward with a stare that chilled the very air around them, and Adeline watched as the Commander was cowed, his smile flattening to a tense line. But then the Queen reached out, and as her hand passed over Edward’s where it lay on his bent knee, the iciness around them seemed to thaw. Edward smiled in earnest, and bowed his head. As he rose to his feet, the Queen beckoned a nearby attendant and Edward had a drink in his hand within a moment, turning at a loud cheer from his fellow Wielders and raising his cup in a toast. Adeline watched them and smiled, relief spreading warmth through her chest – but no further.
Because the cold air that had captured Edward just a moment ago had changed course; over Mareda’s golden head and Edward’s raised cup, the Queen had turned her cold stare on Adeline.
