Adeline went still as a hunted animal, then suddenly came to life with an exaggerated shrug. “Nobody I recognise. Red-haired fellow. Very short, with a long nose. Moustache like a walrus.”
Iseult wrinkled her own nose. “He doesn’t sound very handsome, Ade.”
“Well, beauty is subjective, Iz.”
She turned the page hastily and read on, speaking at a rhythm just a half second faster than before. The illustration kept up with her, ink and paint filling out quickly. Kai and Avette practicing their magic on the banks of the Laune on this page, Avette’s scowling father on the next, Avette in Kai’s arms – he had to look away at that, the scone and tea lurching in his stomach. When he looked back, Avette was mid-flight, hurtling down the grassy banks, her hand grasping a glittering blue oval at her neck. Kai shot up to his feet, and leaned on the armrest for a closer look, barely noticing when Adeline paused to catch her breath in a short gasp.
The pendant.
Iseult turned the page and as her sister read, the pendant was sketched out again, in much finer detail than the rest of the image. Did no one else notice the staggering detail? A tapered glass vial that shimmered with the movement of water within, like a teardrop framed in soft blue light.
Avette, with her arms spread wide, pendant glowing as the sky above her greyed.
That was it. That was definitely it. That, around her delicate white throat, was the glass pendant that had bitten into his fisted palm all those centuries ago, when he had struggled so fiercely against the current, fighting the press of the deepest, blackest depths of the lake to retrieve that one drop of water that Avette had begged of him.
Hot bile rose in his throat. He wanted to tear the page from the child’s book. He wanted to reach through the paint and paper and close his hand around the pendant, snap the chain. The page turned and began to sketch out an image of his own stricken face, hand outstretched before him as the ice closed above his head. Kai was distantly aware of the pain building in his chest, and he forced himself to look away again. Sweat prickled at his hairline. This had been a terrible idea.
“As the desperate flurry stilled, the Kings Gard crept from the shelter of the forest. The Kingdom was transformed, one white expanse adorned with the silver shimmer of frost. The Princess was lost to them, frozen where she stood, with her cracked heart pouring ice into the earth ever after.”
Wait.
He had never heard this version before. The historians had written that there were no survivors. That Avette disappeared with the flurry. But there she was, rendered in quick strokes of paint with her slim arms held aloft, hair fanned out around her white-blue, glittering face. Frozen, an eternal living sculpture. Kai watched again as the illustration filled in the teardrop shape of the pendant against her solid ice skin–and then the blue glass gave one deep, deliberate pulse. He flinched.
“Some say the Merrow are still trapped beneath the lake to this day.”
Adeline winced.
“Sorry. That wasn’t terribly tactful. We should have it rewritten to say you escaped.”
The story over, she finally peered up at him and seemed to startle slightly at whatever she found in his face.
“Kai? Are you alright?”
He blinked. The pendant was no longer pulsing, just innocently lying against the collar of the ice sculpture that had once been Avette.
“I’m fine,” he said slowly. “That was just a bit... surreal, I suppose. It’s my story, but it’s not.”
Adeline bit her lip and nodded. “I’m sorry. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.”
Kai waved her apology away, coming back to himself, hastily gathering his composure under Iseult’s worried gaze. He smiled reassuringly at the girl.
“That’s quite a book, Iseult. How lucky you are to have such a treasure.”
She beamed.
“I’ve never heard that version before, where Ave–” He stopped himself. He couldn’t say it, even now. “Where the Princess becomes a sculpture.”
Adeline gave him a small, sad smile.
“I think it’s the author’s way of tying in the Shrine,” she said, gently.
He didn’t like the careful, knowing way she was speaking to him, as much as he knew he should lean into it.
Heartbroken, human, vulnerable, trustworthy.
But Kai didn’t know how to be any of those things in this moment, with the truth so close he could almost touch it. Didn’t know what he could possibly say other than: “Oh? What’s that?”
“The Shrine of the Sorceress. It’s an old monument to the First Frost, but it’s become a place of worship. Some people believe she’s Aera herself.”
