Estella Valehollow's Arc

Chapter 10 of 11

Dawn came gray through the high windows. Estella heard the gate before she saw him. Boots on stone. A voice calling her name in the empty hall. She climbed to the throne and sat. She smoothed the dark skirts over her knees and waited. Adrian came through the doors with snow on his shoulders and no weapon in his hands. He stopped at the foot of the dais and looked up. His face was thinner than she remembered. He opened his mouth to speak, and Estella raised one finger. Not yet. First he would stand there and feel the weight of the room she had built for this. She let the silence stretch. Then she spoke from the carved chair, her voice steady. "Your daughter is upstairs. Warm. Fed. She will walk out of here with you." Adrian's knees buckled and he caught himself on the bottom step. "But you stay," Estella said. "You answer me. Alone. No tricks, no wife at the gate, no coven at your back. Swear it now, or I change my mind." Adrian lifted his face, wet and ruined, and swore. Estella rose from the throne. The bargain was struck. The reckoning could finally begin. Behind her, the small black dragon shifted in its coiled sleep and opened one gold eye. Adrian saw it and went very still. Estella smiled for the first time in years. "Send the child down," she said. "Then we begin." Adrian climbed the stair with shaking hands. Estella sat back down on her throne to wait. The room she had built had done its work. He had come alone, and he would not leave the same man. Adrian came back down with Penny in his arms. He set her on the stones and whispered to her. The girl ran for the doors, the white bear clutched tight, the cloak dragging behind her. Estella watched her go and did not call her back. Then Adrian reached inside his coat. He pulled out a worn leather book with silver edges and a star on its cover. Estella's breath caught. Her mother's grimoire. He held it up between them like a shield. "You want a reckoning," he said. "Hear me out first. This is mine to give back. But only if you listen." Estella's hand closed on the arm of the throne. The bargain had shifted under her. He had walked in with nothing, and now he held the one thing she had never known he kept.