“It felt like one final rejection before she left forever,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t talk about it. I couldn’t tell you what she said without letting you know that I was awful enough,rottenenough to hold our mother’s dying wish against her.”
Adeline could feel herself soften as understanding sank through her. That understanding belonged to her in a way she was not sure it could to anyone but them; her and Mareda, the eldest daughters. The conflicted anger, the rotten thing inside them both that had been festering since their mother’s death. Mareda’s words struck just the right chord to open up the hollow, raw space in her chest she’d spent so long tending—but perhaps that only made it easier for the pendant to overwhelm her once more as her sister struck another chord. A discordant one, no less familiar.
“But I swear, Ade, I was not going to keep it from you. And I wasnotgoing to keep you from the throne. Neither was my father.”
All the fucking daughters.
She remembered this too well; Marry and her fairytale parents. Their perfect mother, her faultless father, the great tragedy of their unresolved love story and the family she’d been robbed of. Disbelief was an old ally that knew its way around her veins, toppling her defences and allowing the chill to burst into her blood.
“Mareda, he tried to have mekilledto make way for you.”
Marry shook her head so vehemently Adeline almost worried for her frail neck.
“Don’t think that of him.Don’t.” Pain warped her voice, and Adeline couldn’t ignore it even with the chill nipping at her veins, tugging at her attention.Wield, wield, wield.“He was not a perfect man. He was a coward, and he didn’t know how to let go or admit he was wrong. He failed us all in so many ways, madesomany missteps—but helovedthis family as much as any of us. He loved you and Iseult like his own. He would never have hurt you,ever.”
It was exhausting, the constant push and pull of the pendant. Her emotions giving way to the crashing tide of magic, her reason dragging it back out. It gave another little flare, a cat swiping at her skirts, and she finally grabbed the seaglass vial in her hand and pulled the whole thing over her head. It was still bleating at her, cold biting at her palm as she shoved it into her pocket.
Her head cleared at once, but exhaustion swept in so quickly it left her winded. She swept by her sister silently, and Mareda stiffened as she passed—but Adeline only took a seat at the small table behind her, sinking into the chair on trembling knees.
“What happened, then? The day I left?”
Marry turned, relief smoothing the taut line of her mouth before she joined Adeline at the table. She sank down just as slowly, one leg straightened gingerly before her, and a brief wince tightening her eyes.
“Doran happened,” said Mareda. Gently, as though this should be obvious. And Goddess, maybe it should have been. “Avette was waking, and my father was frightened. That awful old pendant; it was growing erratic. He thought she might wake angry, so he called in Doran. He needed an ally. He didn’t want to admit to me what he’d done, and he’d burned every other bridge, snubbed all the family he had, so there was only Doranleft. But Doran didn’t protect him. He had no reason to, cousin or not. Mother was gone, and here was a new, powerful contender for the throne with every reason to hate the one person Doran would never want to see crowned—you. So he tried to ingratiate himself.”
Adeline closed her tired eyes.
Doranhad tried to kill her.
She wanted to be surprised; like Edward, he’d known her since she was a child. Unlike Edward, he had openly andvehementlydespised her because she had always known who he was. She’d known who Edward was once, too. Despite what grief had made of him, sheshouldhave known who he was. Something peripheral called at her attention, sore and intangible like a bruise blooming unseen.Was.The past tense that formed her own thoughts, and every word Mareda had spoken of her father.
“Marry,” she said, surprised to hear her own voice wavering and whispered. “Marry, is he—is Ned—”
She couldn’t. But Mareda only nodded.
“She killed him,” she said, too matter-of-factly to come easily, even to Mareda. Her eyes were brighter as she spoke, pain lending them a little of their old shine—a little of their old conviction, too. “We’re all that’s left, Ade. That’s why Imogen’s pushing so hard. That’s why it has to be you.”
Adeline was not sure how to respond, out loud or even within her own head. Because how had it come to this, with no one left to save them? How was she now standing at the head of the table where she’d always been seated, forever looking up for guidance? When just months ago she’d still been seeking advice from her father, help from Edward, acceptance from their mother.Yes, she’d been building a life of her own,yes, she’d been campaigning as heir—but she was meant to have thetrueadults behind her, as they’d always been. She’d done little more than chair a few public courts; this wasnota job for her. It soundedhard, it sounded terrifying, it sounded unlikely beyond belief.
It also, unfortunately, sounded entirely bloody necessary.
Adeline said none of this aloud, or anything else for that matter—but for all the tension between them, the fissures that had become a chasm, perhaps some of that old sibling bond still hung in there. Just a thread uniting them still, pulled taut but intact. Even though she hadn’t said a word, Marry reached across that table and the chasm both, and wrapped her frail fingers around Ade’s. They still sat there, hand in hand, when Imogen returned some minutes later with three steaming mugs on a tray.
She nudged the door shut with her hip, and the brief cold receded behind her as she crossed the room. Her nose and cheeks were flushed, curls fluffed and unsettled as though the palace hallways were quite as wild as the winter beyond thesewalls. But as she crossed to set the tray down on the table, her eyes flicked to their clasped hands, then Marry’s contented face—and the chill that had tensed her jaw simply melted away. She smiled; a true smile, bright and beaming, bronzing her dark cheeks.
And Marry smiled back.
The air around them turned soft and warm as a physical embrace—until Imogen seemed to feel Adeline’s eye and quickly cleared her throat, grabbing a mug from the tray.
“Right,” she said, suddenly pragmatic. “Mareda, Jack tells me you haven’t had your broth yet either, so here you are.”
Mareda took the mug from her hands, their fingers locking over the ceramic for a moment before she pulled away. Though Imogen had turned deliberately brisk, the smile on Marry’s face hadn’t faltered. The very opposite, in fact. It was spreading, colouring the apples of her cheeks until even her eyes seemed brighter. They were vivid, closer to her ocean deep blue when she turned them on Adeline—then glanced sheepishly away, flushing harder.
Adeline felt her lips slip into a breathlessOh.
“Ade,” said Imogen sharply.
Her head snapped up, brow frozen in its disbelieving arch. Imogen gave a slow blink at her expression, but then ignored it, barrelling on.
