“Fourchildren, with gigantic Leman heads?” She shuddered. “No, I think I’ll find it in me to move on.”
“My head is a perfectly healthy size, and youstillhaven’t told me why we were kissing.” Ger shifted closer, dropping his tenuous grasp on the levity between them. In its place, he took Ade’s hand and squeezed until she met his eye. “I don’t think you understand what it means if this gets back to Avette. What you saw back there, with Kai? That was her beinggracious.”
“I saw what she did to my father, Ger. I think I know what she’s capable of.” Adeline dropped his gaze, but not his hand. Shesqueezed it, drawing strength and a deep breath before she went on. “And I know you’ve seen it all happen. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. What it might have brought up for you.”
He flinched at that; the suggestion of what it had brought up for Ger, personally, to see the sort of torment he’d grown up with and sworn he’d never abide again. And still, he’d stood by for all these months and watched it happen. Protected his own skin, just as he had for all those years under his step-father’s roof. Until, of course, he hadn’t.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you,” Ade whispered. The crack of her voice drew him back to himself, and he fixed her with a fierce glare.
“I amgladyou weren’t here—”
“But I’m not,” she cut in, just as fiercely. “I’m not glad. I want to be there for you when you need me, and youneededme. Look, I promised you she wasn’t going to hurt me, and I meant it, so now I’m going to make you another promise. She won’t hurt you or anyone else. Ever again. Because we’re going to stop her.”
Ger’s chest gave a half-hearted flutter at that. He wanted to believe her. He wanted to be relieved, comforted, over-fucking-joyed, but—
“You can’t stop her, Ade. No one can.”
“No onehas,” she corrected at once. Then Adeline turned and picked up the glossy rock from the table, waving it meaningfully under his nose.
“You’re going to beat her over the head with a rock?” he deadpanned.
A laugh ghosted over her breath.
“Maybe,” she shrugged. “But this is a conch shell. My father gave it to me after our summer in Dhalias. When I was little, remember?”
Ger nodded. He hadn’t known her back then, but he knew about that Dhaliaan summer. It was practically mythic, foundational lore in the story of Adeline’s life. Salt and sand and citrus, and freckles on the bridge of her nose that had never really faded. They stood out a little darker now that she’d returned. She’d always said she’d go back one day, but he never got the sense she believed it. He knew forcertainthat she’d been expecting a slightly more magical homecoming than the one she got; a dawnbreak escape after an attempt on her life.
“I was homesick for a place that could never be my home, andDaughters, I was so angry at him.” Adeline paused to struggle with her breath a moment, and he knew she was willing herself not to cry by the jarring brightness that burst into her next few words. “He brought me this as a peace offering, and said it was a different kind of magic. He said I could hear the oceans all over Adhlas if I pressed it to my ear; that I’d hear the waves whispering to me from Dhalias, too.”
Adeline held the conch out in offering, and Ger took it gently, turning it with the care he understood it warranted. It was a pale, shimmering blue on the outside and oddly shaped, with one tapered end like a cone and a lip that curled back to reveal a cavity of glossy shell. She gave a prompting wave, and he lifted it to his face, sealing the glossier side over his ear. He couldn’t hear anything at first, but with some focus, he picked out a distant, rhythmic hush. Probably his own blood echoing in the shell’s cavity, he reasoned, but all the same, something tightened in the space between his heart and his gut that all his darkest memories seemed to occupy. Memories of his mother,who had wanted to travel the Crossing just as Ade had. Who had promised him they’d be free to do so one day.
We’ll see the oceans, Gerry, just you and me. We’ll bathe in free-flowing waters, warmed under the sun.
And though Ger had eventually freed them both, they never did make that trip either together or apart. To this day, he had never seen or heard those free-flowing waters.
“That’s what it sounds like?” he asked softly, and Ade smiled as if she knew. Which, of course, she did. She was the only person he’d ever told.
“Soothing, isn’t it?”
Ger held on a little while longer, and she let him, just watching with a pained sort of fondness. It was entrancing, that faraway rush.
“I can see why you thought it was magic,” he said when he finally handed it back.
“Well,” said Ade, slowly turning the shell in her hands again, “that’s the thing. Itismagic. You can hear the whisper of the waters, but there are some messages that come through a lot clearer.”
She grinned then, bright enough to thaw the frost from the walls as she turned the conch outward for Ger to see. Curled in its cavity was a small slip of paper that had absolutely not been there just a moment ago. Ade pulled it out and set the conch down between them, eyes flicking eagerly over the scrap nearly as quickly as she unfurled it. Her face dropped slightly, but then a soft rasp drew them both to the conch, and they watched as another slip of paper curled over the glossy lip. Gerard stared.
“Ade, what—Is that anote? Where did—”
Before he could even ask, the paper slid over the lip and fluttered into Ade’s waiting hand, pushed free by a third scrap. Adeline read them all, one after the other, breath catching on a delighted laugh. She thrust the scraps of paper into his hands, clumsy with relief.
“I told you,” she breathed. “Some messages come through clearer.”
Ger gaped at the ribbons of paper and ink in his palms. He was more inclined to believe the conch had really played him the sounds of the Dhaliaan ocean than to believe it had delivered the words scrawled out before him.
Received, and awaiting instruction,said the first.
The next, in another hand,Sorry about that,someoneseems to have taken your warning for anonymity a little too seriously and erased their entire personality. Glad you’re safe. We are too!
