What happened,Kai tried to say—all that came out was a muted moan that vibrated around his aching teeth.
“Shit,” the shadow breathed. “He can’t evenspeak.How hard did Doran hit him?”
“His jaw is frozen shut,” said a second, impatient voice. “Move over.”
A cool gust plucked at Kai’s shirt collar, and all at once his jaw relaxed, the ache in his teeth forgotten even if his head still throbbed. He managed to crack an eye open, to glance up at the shadows kneeling by his side. Gerard and Lady Imogen. Two others stood behind them, though his vision was still too blurry to pick out much more than vague shapes.
“What happened?” he tried again, hoarse and pained.
“A man was killed,” said Imogen.
“Violently murdered,” muttered Gerard, but Imogen went on as though she hadn’t heard him.
“It caused a panic, and Her Majesty reacted on impulse. You tried to stop her, and Captain Doran intervened.”
Kai’s head throbbed, and he cradled his skull, wincing. Beside him, Gerard gave a derisive scoff.
“She started freezing people as they fled, and you lunged at her,” said the gard. “Doran knocked you out.”
He remembered.
The screams. The blood pooling in frost patterns beneath the fallen man’s body. The surge of the crowd and the wash of blue light flickering off the walls. The slam and splinter of frozen bodies hitting the ground mid-flight. Thethunkof bone and flesh against his skull.
And then black. A tide of darkness that tugged at him even now, eager to pull him under.
“Adeline?” said Gerard.
The tide retreated.
Kai swallowed back the last of the frost on his tongue.
“Safe,” he rasped, and the gard’s rush of relieved breath was so palpable it loosened something in his own chest. Beyond them came a soft sob, and Imogen rose at once to sweep across the room, where she bundled a shuddering Mareda into her arms while Councillor Norris awkwardly patted her shoulder.
“She’s safe,” Mareda was mumbling over Imogen’s rhythmic hush.
Kai watched them a moment, his thoughts slipping through his own grasp, skimming over his aching skull like a drop of oil on the water. He eased himself upright again, slower this time, wincing at the throbbing darkness that pulsed in his vision with each movement until Gerard steadied him with a hand at his elbow. Between them, they got Kai to his feet, and when hepitched unsteadily, Gerard guided him to a table and sat him down. These were the council rooms, he realised. That was the queen’s empty seat at the head of the table, nearly groaning under the weight of its thick frost.
It had felt Avette’s touch often.
“Why has nobody stopped her?” he said, more to himself than out of any real expectation of an answer.
But at his side, Gerard stiffened.
“You’ve seen exactly why,” he said.
Any thought Kai might have had of responding was swept up and scattered in the ice breeze that preceded the slamming of the door. Avette was a tidal wave crashing over the relative calm of the room. Gerard leapt back from the table at once, Imogen and Mareda scattering apart, and Norris leaping into a seat at the farthest end of the table.
“Ingrates,” Avette spat. “Weak. Worthless. After all the years they spent at my feet, praying for this gift. I saved them from the Thaw, and this is how they repay my sacrifice?”
She did not raise her voice, but the climbing, high-pitched hiss of each word was somehow worse. It dragged up his spine, frost-tipped claws counting each vertebrae. And as her gaze flicked manically around the room, breath heaving her slim shoulders up and down, her eyes glowed that same eerie blue they’d held when he tried and failed to Wield his power against her in the throne room. As though the pendant had sunk beneath her skin and lodged itself into her heart.
Behind her, Doran shut the door with a softness Kai hadn’t known him capable of. When he turned, his grey face wassplattered with a spray of fresh, vibrant red. Nearly as vibrant as the light in his eyes.
Rage tightened his gills at the sight, but his head gave a half-hearted pulse of dimming pain, a reminder and a warning.
“A handful of loud fools,” said Imogen.
Avette’s glowing gaze snapped to her, the movement of her slicked head so reptilian that even Kai jerked back. Imogen did not falter.
