“Well, good,” said Ceri stiffly. “I was beginning to worry you hadn’t figured that out yet.”
Adeline just nodded, dazed by the visceral reaction of her own body. It must have shown in her face; she watched Ceri’s soften.
“I won’t ask you to lie,” she said finally. “We’ll tell him. Butyouhave something to tell him, too. All my brother has ever wanted is to protect the people he loves, and he tries. So hard. The least that we owe him are these small truths.”
It didn’t feel like a small truth.
She nodded anyway.
But she was still holding the mess of her chest together when she finally walked away.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kai
“What is it, Os?”
What is it now?was what he wanted to say.What have I done wrong this time?
“I’ll give your princess one thing,” said Oswalt. “Youdoneed to think this through.”
“Well, isn’t it fortunate that you’re here to offer your opinion.”
He was immediately uncomfortable with the tone of his own voice, the itchy, guarded feeling tightening his skin. It wasn’t fair, but their every interaction had been so tense lately. He felt Oswalt’s disappointment at every turn, and as it was, he was quite well supplied with disappointment of his own.
It was somehow worse that Os didn’t flinch at the terse tone.
His cousin only watched the Healer spread a stinging poultice over Kai’s burn wound, and wrinkled his nose at the smell, sharp and acrid. Kai wasn’t overly enthused either, but the numbing tonic was slowly wearing off, and his shoulder had begun to feel hot and tight. He wondered if the tonic had worked a little too well, in fact. He was beginning to feel other things too, scores of warring, unwanted feelings that churned in his insides. He found himself reaching for the discarded pendant, earning a soft tut from the Healer when his shoulder shifted beneath her ministrations. He uttered an apology—and another when he interrupted her work a second time, slipping the chain over his head before he held obediently still. The cold bite of the pendant seeped a familiar chill into his bloodstream, and he drew a full breath.
There.
“That feel better?” asked the Healer.
Kai hummed; hedidfeel better, if perhaps not entirely by her hand. But she offered a swift, satisfied smile as she applied clean linen over the pungent mess of his shoulder.
“I’ll fetch a tea for your throat,” she said, and after cleaning her hands on another square of linen, withdrew from the room.
Oswalt cleared his throat, and a prickle of irritation wormed its way beneath the welcome, numbing chill.
“Well?” said Kai.
Oswalt met his eye; he was good at that, always had been. Weathering the uncomfortable moments. Absorbing your anger and giving you nothing in return but a blank and rational stare. It was that stare he fixed on Kai now.
“I want to understand what your goal is.”
“You want me to tell you, again, that I’m going to stop Avette?”
“I want you to tell mewhy.”
Kai stared at him, uncomprehending.
How many reasons did he need? She had tricked him, betrayed him, doomed the Laune, caused the deaths and displacement of his people. She had snuffed all magic from the world but her own, all but imprisoning Mother Adhlas herself. She had extended her reach to the shores of their new home just to show them she could. She had killed Eda. Simon. The Mother only knew what she had done with Silas Vanjir. And if that were not enough, her own people were drowning in the onset of her cruelest Winter yet.
Adeline’s people.
“Because she’s suffocating Eisalaan,” he said finally, fighting to grasp at some semblance of his cousin’s composure. “Just as she suffocated the Laune. Because she holds Adeline’s people hostage, just as shestillholds our home. Because Eisalaan is not hers to claim.”
Os nodded, thoughtful and still so damned composed.
