“Youmean so much to me, Kai,” she said. “You mean everything.”
Kai’s shoulders tensed beneath her arms. With his head pressed to hers, it was hard to read his expression, but he leaned back to let her see his eyes; the intensity in them. They were smouldering. She had the vaguest impression of staring into a bonfire, the sizzle of heat and the mesmerising flames, consuming and barely contained and all the more dazzling for it; it was a fire she’d gladly walk into. When he finally drew a breath to speak, his voice crackled with that same controlled heat.
“You mean everything to me.”
Chapter Nineteen
Adeline
No letter. Again.
Don’t fret. You’ll miss the scenery.
To be fair, the scenery hadn’t changed, and she had little else to do. Eleni had hurried off to solve some crisis with another missing shipment at the docks. The Merrow were staring down their last week on land, and Kai was due to spend the day in Nua Laune making final arrangements with Daithí and the Elder Council. Add to that the lack of word from her father, and with all the ensuing gossip around the palace, the idea of wandering the gardens with the keen and candid courtiers …
It made Adeline’s skin feel too tight, for more than just the blinding Dhaliaan heat.
So it was that she found herself aboard theArabidae, taking charge of nearly a dozen Merrow children while their parents toured their new home beneath the tranquil waves. It felt good to help in whatever small way she could; to feel useful—and keeping the children from flinging themselves into the sea was as much distraction as she could have possibly asked for. The youngest of their number was barely walking, and with the gentle sway of the anchored ship, the babe spent much of the afternoon perched on Adeline’s hip, babbling sweetly in her ear. With a shy little girl clinging to her skirts, and a precocious young boy sticking so close to her side she’d accidentally elbowed him in the nosetwice, she hadn’t the room to dwell on her father’s silence even if she’d wanted to. Especially when the talkative little boy, Colm, piped up that they should play a gamethe princesshad taught them, and the rest of the brood had erupted in excited squeals and gasps.
“What game did I teach you?” Adeline asked, wincing as she gently pried a twist of her curls from the Merrow baby’s iron grasp.
“Thelittleprincess,” Colm said. The boy grabbed Adeline’s free arm, face shining as he beamed up at her. “Will you play with us? The game your sister showed us! The Silver Winds one!”
Adeline hadn’t a clue what Iseult had taught them, but after some chaotic demonstration that had Captain Aegus grumbling from his perch on the forecastle, she recognised a snippet of an old nursery rhyme and her memory clicked into place: Iseult weaving through the treeline on the night of the mid-Winter faire, cheeks glowing pink as she chased the Merrow children’s heels. They’d been playingWinds and Waters, a play yard game borne of a nursery rhyme nearly as old as Kai was. The memory of Iseult’s laughter made her chest contract, and she squeezedthe baby in lieu of her own sister’s embrace, then set her bittersweet sorrow aside.
Adeline played the role of the Waters with the baby still attached to her hip, flailing his little arms and giggling wildly as they dashed around trying to stop the Winds from blowing past them. It took several rounds before the children began to take pity on her, and a handful of them allowed themselves to be caught. They stood in their two opposing lines. At the fore of the Winds team, Colm leaned into one knobbly knee and readied himself to run. Adeline narrowed her eyes, and he grinned back at her.
“Behold the Silver Winds that blow,” called the Winds team.
“Where Gilded Waters once did flow,” the Waters team roared back.
The children scattered in every direction, some of the youngest forgetting which teams they were on and simply tackling whoever they could get their hands on. Colm darted past Adeline’s reaching arm, and the baby yanked gleefully on her hair, unwittingly sabotaging her just as her fingertips grazed the boy’s shirtsleeve. He took a minute to whoop for his victory, then jogged off again as she worked to untangle her hair while the baby laughed and laughed.
“You’ve got your hands full,” came a deep, amused voice from behind them.
Her stomach gave a silly little flip.
Hair half-freed from the tiny Merrow’s fist, Adeline could turn just enough to see Kai standing at the ship’s edge, wet hair slicked back from his face and his shirt clinging to his chest and arms. She hoisted the baby higher on her hip andweaved through the children, half of them still screeching bloody murder as they darted back and forth.
“Not as full as these little hands.”
She tickled the baby’s belly, and he wiggled and burbled but clutched her hair even tighter. Kai gave a soft laugh.
“Here,” he said, moving in to help her. The moment he did, the baby seemed to notice him for the first time and gave a high-pitched coo of delight before throwing himself in Kai’s direction. Adeline lurched out of instinct, and between them, they just about managed to settle him in Kai’s arms before he could tumble to the deck.
“Isthathow it is?” Adeline asked the baby, reaching out to tickle him under his soft chin until he squealed and wriggled. The child snuggled in closer to Kai, not seeming to care a lick that he was soaked to the skin.
“I’m just a stepping stone,” Kai assured her. “He knows I’ll bring him back to his mammy.”
Adeline gave a sceptical hum. The baby, a wriggly, giddy little thing while under her care, had calmed in Kai’s arms, heavy-lidded with one chubby cheek squished against the damp collar of his shirt. Kai patted a soothing rhythm on the little one’s shoulders, his palm broader than the baby’s entire back.
It was difficult not to notice just how good the Merrow King looked with a sleepy baby in his arms.
Stop noticing,she warned herself.
But the thought made Adeline’s pulse flutter all the same, warmth tumbling through her chest and flooding her cheeks.Goddess, grant me some sense.She gave a half shake of her head, but that only served to draw Kai’s eye to her—and whatever he found in her expression softened his own, to dangerous effect.
She cleared her throat. “You’re good with him. Very … at ease.”
