Not that he’d begrudge Adeline the cabin that had been his, nor even tell her she’d taken his room. How could he?
He’d carried her down there when she was sick and weak, hating himself for how potent the relief had been, having an excuse to hold her again. He’d lain her down on his bed. He’d had her trunk brought in so she could freshen up. And then she’d asked him to leave and let her sleep, and he’d … frozen.
When he’d stumbled out the door and asked Simon where to find the princess’s cabin, the boy had just given him an odd look and a vague gesture in the direction he’d come from.
“I assumed you’d share the same room, Your Majesty.”
“Ah,” was all Kai could say.
Simon’s youthful brow had crumpled.
“I should have asked, I just thought—You were so rarely in your own rooms back at the Palace, and when youwere,she was with—Well.” He flushed hard, whether from embarrassment or his breathless babbling, Kai could not tell. “I could ask the crew if there’s another—”
“No,” Kai cut in. “Not to worry.”
And he’d left it at that. It was a fair assumption, after all.
They had been awfully public, toward the end, with whatever had been between them. By choice or not, she’d left her kingdom with him. Of course, those around them had assumed they were still courting, when in fact they were—
Mother.Kai didn’t know what they were doing, but he would not allow himself to dwell on it. Not when there was so much else he ought to be concerned with. A good king, a selfless one, wouldnotdwell on such things; he would think only of what hedidknow.
In this moment, he knew that his back ached. He knew that the Merrow were waiting for him, counting on him to secure them a new home.
And he knew that Dhalias was on the horizon.
The crew rushed about the deck as they sailed closer to the bay, the passengers pressing close to the railings to avoid being trampled. And as Kai leaned over one side of the forecastle and watched the glittering waters of the Dhaliaan ocean part beneath them, it occurred to him that he could be sailing right over the heads of the settlement they’d come looking for.
The last he’d heard from Alun, who had gone ahead as emissary some weeks ago, the Chief of the ocean settlement had agreed to meet with Kai. He would not, however, accommodate the displaced Laune Merrow. Not until they had officially met, ruler to ruler. He wasn’t sure where Alun had taken the others inthe meantime—he hadn’t said in his last letter, and after Queen Selma’s passing, there hadn’t been time to wait for his next. He could only hope they were comfortable and content; it was all he’d thought of throughout the crossing.
It wasnearlyall he’d thought of.
A familiar spill of laughter ran across his thoughts, and Adhlas save him, it had been too long since he’d heard that sound. He couldn’t help but be drawn away from the ripple of the waves beneath him, drawn instead to the dark ripple of Adeline’s hair as she threw her head back andlaughed.
She stood nestled into the bow beside his sister, Ceri’s own smile so smug and sly he could only guess at the kind of joke she’d made to shock such a sound from the princess. Part of him wished he knew what she’d said; whathecould say, given the chance. Ultimately, it didn’t matter—she was laughing again. Kai indulged, as he so often had in the past, in the wide curve of her lips and the way her curls bounced with each helpless shudder. Indulged for just long enough for Ceri to feel his gaze.
She tilted her head at him, and despite the warning he tried to impart with a raise of his brow, her eyes flashed with mischief, and she threw her hand up in a merry, exaggerated wave.
His heart lurched as Adeline turned.
They’d had so many of these moments throughout the crossing, but that did not make it less excruciating. The abrupt halt to her laughter. Her panicked stare, which he knew mirrored his own. Perhaps, if he’d been a touch less consumed by her, he might accept that look on her face as proof that it was over. That the distance he’d so diligently kept was what she wanted from him. Perhaps he would even find some relief in it; in theknowing.
He might have—if it weren’t for the fact that it was so often Adeline inhisposition, caught staring at him from across the ship. She was grieving, and she’d drawn a boundary that he intended to respect. But it happened frequently enough that Kai came to realise he’d been subconsciously waiting for her approach. Waiting too long, it seemed, now that the green-and-gold shores of Dhalias loomed ahead of them, dragging him closer to their final parting of ways.
He recovered himself with a tight smile and caught the relief in her eyes when she returned it. She gestured, a little timidly, for him to join them, and though his boots appeared to be fused to the deck, he managed to drag them across the forecastle. Ceri smiled sweetly and took a sweeping step back to let him in, ignoring his scowl to wind an arm around his back.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” said Adeline, and when he turned to find her face tilted up to his, so close he could nearly bathe in the boundless, earthy warmth of her eyes, he found he could not answer right away. If he spoke, he risked saying something trite and cliché because,yes, the sight before him was breathtaking. Adeline seemed to sense the direction of his thoughts all the same, and it was with the slightest flush that she finally drew her eyes away from his. She nodded out to sea, toward the shore.
“Dhalias,” she said.
He followed her line of sight; the land before them was no longer a craggy, green mass against the cloudless sky. They were close enough now to make out the broad stretch of golden sands along the port and the slow rise of sun-bleached buildings stacked atop the mountainside. Lush greenery weaved neighbour to neighbour, laced here and there with the same bright bush in floral splotches of deep pink and purple.
It was not the same green he had so missed—not the soft, woodsy banks of the Laune he had known—but it was such a welcome reprieve from the endless white snowscape of Eisalaan that Kai felt his chest tighten with longing.
“Itisbeautiful,” he agreed.
Adeline’s answering smile was so broad and so immediate that it quite sufficiently stole his breath. He was glad, in that moment, for his meddling little sister—she had been standing at his side watching them keenly, and she seized the stilted silence with an arm flung out over the railing.
“Oh, look! I can see the dock.”
