The green glow above her heart reeled in, and Doran gave a great, gasping sob of breath. The Sealgair woman lifted him higher, his boots slipping in the mess of frost and moss.
“What would you have us do with this one, Your Majesty?”
Ceri nudged her, and she realised with a start that the stranger was addressingher. There was no time to dwell on the honorific, as much as it resounded inside her like the clash of a bell.Your Majesty. Her mother had beenYour Majesty,Kai wasYour Majesty, but Adeline was—
“Don’t know,” she said, weak and wheezing. “Don’t kill him.”
Despite her mercy—or perhapsbecauseof it—Doran sent her a look of sheer, unfiltered hatred. It was a look reserved for the lowest of traitors, the demons of old folk tales who toppled kingdoms and brought plague and devastation upon all the Goddess had created. Strangely, that one look from the man of her nightmares was all she needed. She drew herself up, decisive.
“Restrain him. Leave him here.”
The Sealgair pouted, but she let him slump to the ground and began to drag him backward like nothing more than a flailing sack of potatoes through the sparse treeline.
“Wait,”Doran shrieked.
Nobody paid him any mind.
“We’ll be along shortly,” the Sealgair called merrily. Her lips curved in a speared grin that sent a shiver stealing down Adeline’s spine. “Do us proud, Your Majesty.”
Without another thought to spare, Adeline snatched up her fallen sword and hurried out of the small clearing, emerging into the hall with Ceri on her heels. She snapped her head this way and that, finding her bearings in the mess of ice and bodies. The trees and brambles she’d called in her panic had erupted at random intervals in the corners and alcoves of the room. The pews were overturned by sprawling roots, and theceiling had collapsed in parts, shattered icicles as long as swords strewn across the marble floor, some of them half-melting in rippling streams of water. The air smelled of earth and brine, and the doors had been flung open, but the room was even more crowded than before. Merrow and a fresh wave of gards had joined the fray, and many of the imprisoned civilians remained, armed with their fists, stolen swords, shards of ice.
It was disorienting chaos, and it shimmered with hope.
Butthere,at the head of the room, the glittering whirl of winds and waters had enveloped the whole of the dais. Adeline’s heart leapt into her throat and sent her surging forward. As she tore by struggle after struggle, she thought she caught a glimpse of a steely grey head before it was swallowed beneath the punishing weight of a mob.
Adeline forced herself onward. She had spared all the time she could, wasted precious seconds to give Doran the mercy he so often withheld from those he was sworn to protect.
And after so many years beneath his thumb and his sword, neither she nor Eisalaan had any mercy left to spare.
Chapter Forty-One
Kai
Something was wrong, but Kai hadn’t the space to stop and puzzle it out; couldn’t risk the glance around. The call in his blood was unending, the waters flowing bountifully forth, but Avette’s blinding glow spoke to her own ease. They were too evenly matched, one-to-one, where she should have been overpowered.
Where was Adeline?
Dread weighed on him, slowing his muscles just enough that each movement was a struggle, each surge of power and deflection just a breath shy of turning the tide. Every lash of his waters collapsed in a solid mass at Avette’s feet, every crashing wave whipped away by her winds.
Her face blazed above her pendant, blue light hollowing her features and leaking from her eyes as the wind whipped her hairinto a dark halo. She lashed out again and again, fierce but not fierce enough—and that, he knew, more than his betrayal, was the true reason behind her unyielding rage.
She knew her power was not performing as it should; knew she could not havetrulysecured the pearl. Knew Kai did not have it either, considering he hadn’t yet ended their struggle. She chanced the occasional glance around for the source of his power, but neither of them could spare their attention without succumbing to the other.
“What is it you hope to achieve?” Avette called over the shrieking storm around them. She gestured broadly at him, the sweep of her arm less graceful. Less ethereal. She really was just a girl, just a desperate human being as fragile as any one of them. “You could have ended my life by now.”
She knocked back his advance with a gale force gust, but Kai bore down and let the force of the waters carry him forward, the elements beating at him from all sides. It was a struggle to draw breath, but he called back to her all the same.
“And you could have ended mine.”
It was the truth. He could have flooded her airways; she could have shattered him where he stood. He saw that she knew it too, the firm set of her lips speaking words she would not allow past them. She needed him alive—and he needed to live with himself when all was said and done.
“I won’t if you yield now.”
“You won’t either way, Avette,” he said, and as if to disprove him, she shot a spear of pure ice in his direction. He avoided it by a breath, the frigid shard tearing at his sleeve as it passed. Kai twisted awkwardly in his deflection and lost his footing, but his magic shot forth instinctively as he fell, and Avette screamed asthe forceful stream shot her feet out from under her. He was the first to rise, darting for her before she could do more than freeze the flow of the water. Kai’s heart leapt into his throat, the relief sweeping up his gills and snatching his breath as he reached down for the pendant, barely daring to believe—
“Your Majesty!” someone howled, and then Kai was landing sideways on a wet mess of slush.
He rolled to see Avette shoving Benan off of her with several irritated slaps, and then out of nowhere, the Queen’s Gard was wrenched down the dais steps. Kai lurched to his feet; eyes locked to the struggle. There were several more gards surrounding Benan, but they were—
