Bertha and Edward had been mourned over empty ice caskets. Aunt Johanna, though thawed and breathing, had never fully woken from Avette’s spell, and even as she lay tucked away in a Healer’s suite, her recovery appeared less likely by the day. Even Silas had struggled to be here; his days were shorter now, rising amid the full bustle of the castle and retiring not a moment later than the sun had set. Adeline told herself it was to be expected; the thawed victims who fared the best had turned out to have dormant gifts, and her father had been trappedfor months without a drop of his own magic to fortify him. Of course, it should make sense that he’d need to rest.
Deep down, she knew it was more than a physical exhaustion.
In his waking hours, he was quieter. His words came to him slower, as though his body had forgotten how to convey his thoughts from his mind to his mouth. It frustrated him to turn from a moment of silence and distance, to find expectant eyes awaiting replies to questions he hadn’t heard. And yet, when Eleni suggested he sit out the meeting, he had come alive.
“I’m still here,” he had said, in his stern and quiet way. “And my daughter needs me.”
So here he sat, at Adeline’s side on a spare settee they’d had to drag into her rooms just to accommodate everyone.
“Cosy,” Ger quipped, to a round of silence and sideways stares.
He wasn’t wrong, though.
Nobody had much felt like stepping foot inside the old council rooms, where they had all suffered such indignity. Where they had watched Bertha drown. Where Avette’s influence still lay thick and unthawed. There hadn’t been enough seats to spare either, with Ger standing in for Doran and the additions of the Empress, the Merrow Council, and their Nua Laune counterpart.
Little old Norris now sat, stricken, between Imogen, with her pearly-white eyes, and Fionnula, the leader of the Sealgair, who stared fixedly at Kai with her long fingers drumming a seaglass dagger against the armrest. She stopped only when Ceriwyn leaned over the settee to flick at her arm, earning a hiss and a baring of fangs before the dagger was tucked reluctantly away.
They sat in silence for too long, unsure who should lead the proceedings, though Adeline could feel more than one pair ofeyes turned her way. They’d all been there, after all, when the gards had knelt, one by one, and laid their sword at Mareda’s feet. They’d all seen Marry rise over Avette’s body, bloodstained and spent, and heard her resonant declaration.
The usurper is dead, she had called, voice ringing across the ravaged hall.Long live Queen Adeline.
“If there’s any hope for progress today,” Eleni said finally. “I believe we all know where we must begin.”
She turned her gaze once more to Adeline, and the others followed. The weight of their eyes and expectations was undeniable. Kai reached out and squeezed her shoulder, holding on through her long, steadying breath.
“I was my mother’s chosen heir,” she said.
“Her late Majesty told me so herself,” said Mareda at once. “I can confirm it.”
“And I,” said Eleni, with no small amount of flourish, “can prove it.”
With that, she withdrew the crumpled scrap of parchment that Adeline had left in her possession on their long return to Eisalaan. Norris scooted forward in his seat, unease forgotten in his eagerness. He took the letter from Eleni’s outstretched hand and turned it immediately to inspect the broken blue seal, then flicked it open to pore over the faded ink. Adeline watched, one knee bouncing beneath her skirts, as the Councillor’s grey brows disappeared into his sparse hairline. When his face softened into a smile, she thought she knew which words he was reading. She heard them in her own head, their author’s voice as clear as it had ever been.
I hope you know, my darling Adeline, how very much I love you.
And as if to ensure she felt that love on all sides, Silas reached out to take her hand. His touch was cold now, always, but the intended warmth flooded her all the same. Her jittering knee slowed, and as Norris raised his head, she lifted her chin high.
“Well then, long live Queen Adeline indeed,” he said.
???
There was so very much she wanted to do with her position, to the point where she hadn’t yet had the space to articulate it all. Caldbon, of course, still loomed over their heads with only the thin buffer of little Iseult’s love and affection to hold off an immediate advance. Adeline suspected their King was deterred, too, by the potential of another ally lost in Dhalias—Eleni had decided to stay a while as her advisor, while Papou stepped into his old shoes back home. She could not stay forever, though, and Caldbon would not be held to the whims of an eight-year-old for long.
They were coming, sooner or later.
She could only hope it was later; sooner was thoroughly booked. Eisalaan would thaw, and they would all have so very much to learn—some of them, more than others.
“An academy?” Norris had said sceptically when she’d brought the idea to the Council.
“A refuge,” she’d told them.
They would need one, Eisalaan, and all of Adhlas. Because every day more and more people would wake to find a strange call in their veins, and when they did, they would need someone to guide them, just as she’d needed Kai and Imogen. She was more than willing to share her home for the cause. It was, after all, no longer the home she’d left behind. What better way to cope with that than to create something new?
And so, in the days that followed the Council’s first meeting, Imogen had been resting and unspooling more and more magic for anyone who could Wield it; there had been more to answer the call than they’d realised. Tucked away in the kitchens, Marie and Jack had discovered an odd surge in their blood. A handful of the gards and several of the courtiers, too. Those with Isa and Lasra’s gifts did what they could to thaw the frost within the walls, and together the inhabitants of the Silver Palace all did their part in putting their home to rights.
“There will be more,” Imogen had said. “When the rivers run free, and magic finds its way back to the crevices of the world, many more will hear the call.”
She spoke like this from time to time, intoned and distant until Mareda inevitably took her hand and guided her back to reality.
