“He was there. He was calling out to me. Telling me about the others, telling me to run. And I’m so used to hearing his voice, I thought I was losing my mind, so I just ran faster, but—it was really him. It was Os. He was calling for help. He wasrightthere, and I could have stopped. I could have helped him, I—” He frowned, lips curling back as though recoiling from the words. “Icouldhave.”
Adeline swallowed. “I want you to listen to me, Kai.”
She set the scrap aside and took his hand, but he tugged it away again, rolling his head sideways to meet her eye, his stare both burning and glassy.
It made her chest throb.
“You’re going to tell me it’s not my fault. Just like Eda and Simon.”
“It wasn’t. It’s not.”
“Don’t,” he ground out. “Don’t. He wouldn’t have been in that cavern if I’d warned them sooner. He wouldn’t have been hereat allif it weren’t for me. None of us would be here, none of this would have happened—”
“That’s just not true,” she said, gentle over the slow rise of his voice.
“Itis.Because I walk chest first through life without a scrap of armour. Os knew that about me, he saw it, and it scared him, and he was right to be scared becauseI got him killed.”
Kai’s voice cracked.
His face flickered at the sound. They blinked at one another, both aware of that precipice where he’d stumbled to a halt. Each word he’d spoken was tighter than the last, throat closing asthough his body might protect him where his mind could not. And Adeline knew, even as her own eyes welled, as her heart bled and withered for him, that she would do the very same. She would protect him, too. She shifted closer, and though Kai shook his head, he let her take his hand. Let her drag him upright and into her arms; he went willingly, long legs folding beneath him before he collapsed against her.
“It’s alright,” she breathed, once she had him.
Her throat strained, but she swallowed the ache.
“No,” he whispered thickly, even as he clung to her.
His fingers dented her skin, his face buried in her shoulder. Her body tensed and shuddered under the full weight of him, arms and core straining to keep them both upright. But she would. She would hold him as the world fell to pieces around them; she would not let go.
“It’s alright,” she said again. “I have you. I have you.”
And with a last shuddering breath, Kai broke apart in her arms.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Gerard
Ger woke with a shrill gasp that sent his attacker skittering back against the opposite wall. He blinked the blur from his eyes and found Mareda staring back at him, her chest heaving beneath her own clutching palm.
“Goddess, youscaredme,” she hissed.
He stared up at her from where he sat against the door, panting and incredulous.
“Youkickedme!”
“I barely nudged you.”
Ger scoffed. For all her prim and proper ways, Mareda did make it rather clear sometimes that she was Adeline’s blood through and through. She had a point, though; as kicks to the shins went, this onehadbeenrather delicate, but he’d been onhigh alert all night. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep—wasn’t sure when he had even drifted off. But the door remained closed behind his back, and anyone coming in or out would have tripped right over him.
Mareda caught his glance over his shoulder and nodded at the door.
“Is he alright?” she asked quietly.
Ger thought of all he’d heard from the other side of the wall, the raw and broken sounds of unfettered grief. He shook his head. No, he did not believe the Merrow King was anything close to alright. Then again, whowas?
Mareda’s blue gaze hung on the door a moment longer, and the depth of regret when she turned that gaze on him resonated so hard it shocked him. All at once, Ger thought he might understand Ade’s sister in a way unheard of between them to this point. But, he supposed, up until this point, they’d had very little in common.
Now there was too much common ground. Too much shared pain. Too much understanding.
