“I have ruled this country for twenty-six years. I’ve led my armies through countless wars. Trust me when I say that there is always more to lose. Always.”
Still Kai did not speak. Dropping her hand, he slowly sank into his seat and held his silence as the Queen sat across from him once more. She offered another sad smile, and he answered only with a slight nod. But as the Queen went on to detail the aid and shelter she could lend to the Merrow, Kai retreated into the numbed ruin of his mind.
She would not help him.
His Kingdom was lost.
His people, stranded.
Avette, dead.
Yet the Beira still reigned. Avette’s line lived on. And if he could not have her, he would take what he needed from her blood.
Chapter 11
Adeline
“He came to the Cold Council meeting.”
Mareda spoke in a hush, though they were alone in Adeline’s room. They’d climbed into her bed, like they so often had as children; sitting cross-legged with their heads bent together, a dark crash of waves in a golden stream. Drawn around the bedposts, the pale drapes were like the walls of a cave, firelight and shadows flickering in answer to their whispers.
“What was he like?”
Adeline hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of the stranger since his arrival, though she knew he was living somewhere in the palace. It was, perhaps, half the reason she’d agreed to stay a few days when Mareda asked. She wasn’t sure why her curiosity burned so fiercely; he had, in hindsight, been sort of terrifying.
As if echoing her thoughts, Mareda shook her head with the air of one telling a ghost story; her eyes wide and voice pitched ominously low.
“He never spoke. Just sat at mother’s side, and watched us all.”
Adeline was quiet for a long moment, lost in thoughts of all she’d learned over the last week – which was barely anything.
The palace rumour mill, while working furiously, had been failing her. Hushed conversations fell to a guilty silence on her approach, and she was coming to suspect Marie’s hand in this. She’d been more or less banned from the kitchens too, apart from the suspiciously quiet lunch hour.
Adeline picked at a hangnail on her thumb until Mareda eventually pried her hand away and squeezed it, prompting her even though she had nothing useful to contribute.
“He showed up wet and shivering,” she said, for probably the fourth or fifth time, but then added: “Captain Doran said he was dangerous.”
Mareda jumped on the minor detail like it was the stranger’s written history laid out in ink and parchment.
“Doyouthink he’s dangerous?”
“I think,” Adeline said slowly, considering, “that Captain Doran believes he is.”
Mareda’s brow went flat with something close to disappointment. She chewed her lip.
“I don’t know, Ade. There’s something in the way mother talks to him. He’s important. She wants to keep his favour.”
At the mention of the Queen, Adeline gave a non-committal murmur and resumed picking at her thumb, dropping her sister’s eye for just a moment.
Thankfully, the moment passed without remark, and with no further details to rehash, the conversation shifted to lighter topics. The Mid-Winter Faire; Iseult’s next visit; the pretty heiress Marry had been talking to at their last ball.
But when Mareda eventually fell asleep, Adeline lay awake, queasy with guilt.
Because shehadreturned, after that strange day in the courtyard. She’d arrived at her mother’s rooms, as promised, with a lunch tray in her arms. And the following lunchtime too. And the next.
It was only half an hour here and there, but Adeline had been careful to tiptoe around the topic of their mother these past few days. Every time she found herself on the verge of bringing it up, something stopped her – Mareda’s face, in her memory. She recalled how her sister had reacted to that scrap of praise the Queen had granted her.
A shame. You may have made a fine leader.
