Page 12 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Draven

A charged hush fell in the wake of the final Unseelie filth’s death.

From outside came the piercing cry of a griffon. My ears caught it instinctively, the sound twisting sharp in my chest. So, that was how Nevara had arrived here.

Noerwyn stared with wide eyes at the wreckage, while Nevara hung her head. My chest heaved with a breath too heavy for the minimal effort it had taken.

Tension rolled through Nevara’s shoulders as if she were trying to filter herself. She opened her mouth, then closed it again?—

And I threw up a wall of ice between us and my wife’s sister. Noerwyn would be safe enough on the other side. Whatever my Visionary finally had to say, I didn’t want a shards-damned audience.

But Nevara stayed silent.

“You aren’t usually so soft,” I prodded, frustration clipping my words. “Or is it easier to be ruthless when you’re the one deciding who lives and dies?”

She shook her head. “Ruthlessness and cruelty are not one in the same. His death was not necessary.”

“He was a traitor, and an Unseelie, spying in my court.”

She let out a short huff of breath. “And if you had killed him for those reasons alone, I would have had no objection. This wasn’t about your law. This was about her.”

Worse than the censure I expected in her ethereal silver eyes was something far too close to pity.

I blinked, seeing an entirely younger version of Nevara, deft fingers traipsing along the raised bruises on my arm.

Invisible to prying eyes, but impossible to hide from the girl who used that arm to guide herself every day of her life.

My father hadn’t wanted her to have a staff, to have movements that were outside of his control. Still, he hadn’t been foolish enough to take his anger out on his own Visionary.

He had saved that for his son.

But Nevara had known. She had stared off into space to fake some visions and held onto others to drop with strategic timing, all with the singular goal of distracting the most powerful king in the realm from his son.

I stared at my Visionary, who was the closest thing I had to a friend growing up. The one person who was supposed to be on my side in the running of this shards-damned kingdom, especially when it became glaringly evident that my wife would not be.

“Everything is about her now,” I growled. “You made sure of that.”

“I didn’t choose your bride, Draven?—”

“No. You only chose not to disclose that she was one of them.” My hand cut toward the broken wings and scattered limbs covering the floor. “Just as you chose to let her walk into a trap.”

Nevara flinched as though the words were a blow. For a heartbeat her composure cracked; then she straightened, her chin lifted in defiance.

“I don’t See everything,” she said darkly, her shoulders rising and falling with the weight of her anger.

I felt it, then. The fracture widening between us. The air in my lungs burned like it wanted to escape me in a roar.

“No. Not everything.” Frost hissed over the floor, feathering outward from my boots. My rage surged, and the chamber shuddered with it.

“But those things?” I bared my teeth. “Those you Saw.”

Her stony silence was answer enough.

A growl rumbled low in my chest, shaking the icicles growing from the ceiling.

“Where is my wife?” I bit out each word.

Nevara’s expression shuttered, her voice as cold as the chamber around us. “If I tell you, what will you do with the information?”

Another silence fell heavy in the space between us, punctuated by the sound of Noerwyn’s fists pounding against the wall of ice. I ignored them.

“I don’t answer to you,” I snapped. Whatever semblance of patience I possessed was about to break entirely.

Nevara’s silver brows furrowed and she tilted her head thoughtfully. “You don’t know, do you?”

My jaw locked. “We both know I can’t afford to execute her with all that’s at stake.”

I didn’t mention the promise I had already made to Everly’s sister, or the other reasons that were screaming at me through the bond.

Nevara shook her head, her shimmering braid swaying with the motion. “And Shard Mother forbid you allow a single shred of affection to stay your hand.”

It was my turn to scoff. “Spoken like the one who sent her off to be kidnapped to begin with. Or are you going to pretend this was all part of some elaborate scheme to keep her safe?”

Nevara squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them on a breath.

“No.” The word fell like the whisper of a noose.

“I won’t pretend that. You asked me to keep your kingdom safe, not your wife.

That is what I’ve done.” Her lips twisted bitterly.

“What I always do. What I will spend the rest of my life in my shards-forsaken tower to accomplish, no matter who is sacrificed in the process.”

Sacrificed. The word struck like an arrow to the gut.

“You said she couldn’t die,” I growled, my voice rough with something dangerously close to fear.

“I said you couldn’t kill her,” she corrected, each word deliberate.

My blood froze for reasons I refused to name. The ring on my hand pulsed in time with my thundering heartbeat, rage intertwining with something deeper. Darker.

I opened my mouth, then snapped shut. “So she’s going to die?”

My Visionary lifted her chin. “All roads lead to death eventually.”

“This is not the time to be cryptic with me,” I snarled. Frost split the stone around us in jagged veins, sending the shrapnel hurtling through the air. “Tell me. Where. She. Is.”

She blinked. “Is that an order, My King?”

“Nevara,” I warned, my fists turning to ice beneath the weight of my mana.

Her sightless eyes flared, frost forming along her lashes and brows. Her breath formed a thick cloud as she grimaced at whatever it was she Saw. “I told you not to kill him. You changed things.”

Starlight swirled in her gaze, bright and merciless. Then she gasped, and the next words slipped past her lips in an unfamiliar cadence.

“There are no bonds that can’t be broken. Not even for the Frostgrave King.”

There was only one bond she could be referring to. The Winter Court marriage vows had never been unbound, not in the history of our reign. But neither had the vow been made to an Unseelie.

“She’s going to sever our marriage bond?” The words were harder to say than they should have been.

It should have been a relief. Shards, wasn’t that what I had wanted from the moment Nevara had named her? But even if the ring hadn’t pulsed against my skin, I would have known there was more buried in the warning.

“What else?” I demanded.

“She’s walking into a trap.” I spun toward the wall, mana seeping from my bones and freezing the air in my lungs.

“Draven, wait,” Nevara cried.

But I was done waiting.

The torches guttered and died. Darkness pressed in, pierced only by the violet blaze of the runes glowing behind one of the corpses.

If Nevara would not tell me where to find my wife, I would carve my own path through the Wilds, slaughtering everything that stood in my way, if that’s what it took.

I seized the body by the throat and ripped it free.

His bones shattered as they hit the ground, scattering across the ice-slick floor to land at my Visionary’s feet.

I focused my mana on the wall, and the runes seared hotter, a white-blue, the color of a star caged in ice.

It was similar to the runes in the palace library, but the mana that emanated from it was infinitely older.

Older than the ward stones, older than my palace itself, tied to the power of the earth itself.

Not here.

The Wilds.

Shards damn everything .

All this time when I had wondered how they snuck in and out of my kingdom too easily, even accounting for their wings, and they had a frost-blasted portal. Did it allow them to move past the borders without fighting through the Shard Mother’s barriers?

Would it work in either direction?

I examined it more closely, ignoring Noerwyn’s persistent tapping and Nevara’s attempts to get my attention.

Portals were almost unheard of now, and runes this old were not easily accessed. It wasn’t like the patterns in the library, transporting books a short distance away. This would have taken study to understand, more like the ward stones.

What were the chances that they had more than one person in the clan well-versed in this kind of ancient mana?

Running my hand along the rune, I felt it. The rune wasn’t smooth like it would have been if it was accessed this way. The edges were rough and defined, the center hollowed out precisely.

No, of course they didn’t have a whole legion of experts in ancient runes. They didn’t need one if they had a key.

I spun around, searching the remains of the corpses that littered the floor for something with a crystal in it. There, attached to the chain that had been around the neck of the bastard who had helped to kidnap my wife.

The one Nevara had warned me not to kill.

I plucked the crystal from the ground, fitting it into the center of the rune. The chamber groaned, timbers splitting as the portal roared awake.

Noerwyn continued to rage against the wall between us, her voice louder than before as she screamed expletives through the ice.

“Draven,” Nevara said again, her slim hand on my arm. “The future is not linear, and neither is it written in stone. Your hatred can still burn it to the ground.”

I pulled out of her grasp, releasing the cage of ice as I disappeared into the portal.

Nevara could speak of peace from her frosted tower while I tried to salvage the wreckage of all the secrets she kept.