Page 13 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Everly

For the next several hours, I wore a path into the floorboards, pacing until the wood practically groaned in protest. My slippers had rubbed raw blisters into my heels, but sitting still was not an option. Whenever I stopped moving, I’d see it all again.

Alaric’s face. His shredded wings. The spray of bloody snow.

I shook the images away for the hundredth time, but they clung, curling behind my eyes like twisted, thorny vines.

And beneath it all, I couldn’t stop hearing Draven’s voice…

The Unseelie are not capable of love.

Damn him.

Damn him. Damn him. Damn him.

I ran my hands over my face and tucked the few strands of loose hair back into my braids. It wouldn’t be long now. Soon I would have some frost-damned answers, or at the very least, a distraction from my spiraling thoughts.

There had been no real opportunity for Kaelen to answer my question—plea, really—but we had agreed to meet at the training arena during the guard’s shift change. No one would be there this late, and the torches would burn low enough to give us some measure of privacy.

And I needed those answers. Needed to know what he could tell me about the Dragon and whatever bonds they could break before I was forced into another shards-forsaken situation that I had no say in.

Something niggled at the back of my mind.

Was it stupid to trust Kaelen?

Was I stupid for wanting to?

I thought again of the sincerity in his eyes, and the conviction in his words. He seemed genuine. And no one else was offering up any answers… I glanced up at the dragon carving above my mantle.

And for better or worse, my choice was made.

The distant bell clang at Gravemoor Towers marked the hour. It was time.

With a thought, I folded my wings tight, tucking them back beneath my skin, as I did every night before bed.

The familiar pull tugged between my shoulders, leaving a faint ache in its wake, like the ghost of something larger pressing to be free. It was routine, automatic, yet after hiding them for so long, it always left me feeling smaller.

I grabbed my cloak from the peg near the door, swept it over my shoulders, and tugged the hood low over my head.

On much lighter footsteps, I crept back to the window, my fingers sliding over the latch until it was unlocked, and then waited for a sign that anyone had heard.

Zerina was too careful, too suspicious to leave much distance between herself and my door, but the other guards always stationed themselves farther down the hall.

Too far away to hear the window open.

It felt wrong to be taking advantage of her absence while she was grieving Alaric. Grieving the loss of her husband because my husband had killed him…

I swallowed the thought, forcing myself to focus on the task at hand.

With a soft click, I pushed on the window as quietly as I could, waiting until the rotating guards shifted to slip out into the night.

The fires outside had burned down to embers, warriors curled beneath furs or keeping quiet vigil at the edges of the village wards. My pulse thundered in my ears as I slipped past our hut and into the treeline of the forest.

Every flap of wings, or rustle of leaves, scraped along my nerves. But adrenaline dulled the fear into something more tolerable, and perhaps wildly more reckless.

I’d been lying awake too long. Alaric’s death continued to claw at me right along with Draven’s rage, and ice, and pain. The way he shattered everything around him…

I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing it again. Without feeling it.

So I didn’t. I just kept moving.

The air was sharp enough to bite, stars crowding the sky like frozen fire. My boots crunched over frost-slickened roots as I wound through the pines. Every shadow sighed as if it were alive, but I kept walking.

When I made it to the training grounds without being caught, I nearly sighed in relief. Kaelen was waiting for me there, his back turned, the silver streaks in his midnight wings flaring under the moonlight.

Then he turned, and the world tilted. A moonbeam glinted off the tip of his ear…catching on the metal of an earring.

Not Kaelen .

Kyros.

His golden eyes gleamed like a predator with freshly cornered prey. I stepped back, my pulse hammering beneath the surface of my skin.

“Sorry to disappoint. I know you were expecting my brother,” Kyros said, taking a casual step forward. “But he isn’t feeling so well.”

His words landed like a blow. Each one rattling like a cage door as it slammed into place.

“What did you do to him?” I hated the way my voice trembled, hated the way Kyros’ pupils widened in response, as if my fear was something that excited him.

I needed to get out of here.

My eyes sliced to the forest surrounding the training arena, then up into the starlit sky. I could fly, but I knew he would outmatch me there. He was a trained Skaldwing warrior, and I had spent half of my life on the ground.

But he wasn’t built for this terrain… The forest was a gauntlet of roots and fallen trees just waiting to trip him, and if I was lucky, he would end up eating bark while I ran for help.

A bored sigh escaped me, my breath forming a small cloud in the cool night air. I parted my lips like I was about to say something, but then spun on my heel to dart for the trees. I didn’t make it far.

White-hot pain exploded through my skull before my foot could even hit the ground. I didn’t have time to brace myself before my head slammed into the packed dirt.

The impact rattled my spine, and my ears rang with a high, piercing whine, drowning out every other sound.

The world swam around me, shadows and torchlight blurring together. My stomach lurched, bile rising in my throat, and I couldn’t seem to catch a full breath.

The edges of my vision went dark, tunneling in on Kyros’ bulky frame. He was still moving toward me, taking slow deliberate steps, a satisfied grin flashing across his face.

And if he was there, who in the frost-bitten hells had hit me?

Several dark laughs responded in answer to the question I hadn’t realized I’d voiced. But I couldn’t turn to face them. I couldn’t move, or breathe, or do anything but try to hold on to consciousness.

“I think you’ll find that I have many friends who despise you just as much as I do,” he said, and the cruel smirk carved into his face was the last thing my blurring eyes could hold on to.

“Seelie whore.”

I awoke to a splitting ache in my skull, each pulse pounding like a drumbeat behind my eyes. Cold, damp stone pressed against my back, seeping through my cloak. For a moment, I thought I was still dreaming, lost in the haze of some nightmare, but the ache in my head was too sharp, and far too real.

Blinking against the dark, I tried to steady my breath, but my lungs burned and I coughed instead. When I shifted, fire lanced across my wrists. And my wrists were too heavy. That’s when I registered the bite of iron shackles locking me in place.

Panic clawed up my chest as I tried to break free. My chains rattled with the movement, the sound echoing off the cavern walls.

The sound of dark laughter froze me in place, and I blinked until my vision cleared.

Kyros sat on a jagged boulder directly across from me, spinning a dagger lazily in his hand. A thin smile stretched across his face. Several more figures loomed just beyond him. More Stormbreak warriors, ones who had sneered at me back at the village. But among them was a face that didn’t belong.

My gaze snagged on Tavrik by the cave mouth, his eyes flicking toward me before sliding away.

Frost-loving ass-face.

“Twice now, Tavrik?” I choked out. “Perhaps the Stormbreak clan shouldn’t be taking their social cues from you if luring females into traps is the best you can manage.”

A muscle jumped in his jaw. For a heartbeat, something that looked like shame, if he were capable of feeling such a thing, was written plain across his face.

Kyros let out a dark laugh. His grin widened, then vanished entirely as his hand snapped out. The back of it cracked across my cheek hard enough to rattle my teeth. Stars burst behind my eyes, iron biting deeper into my wrists as I reeled.

“You said you only wanted to talk to her,” Tavrik said, taking a step closer.

Kyros tilted his head, his smile sliding back into place. “And I will. But if you interrupt me again, Tavrik, I’ll let her watch while I carve the cowardice out of you first.”

Tavrik stiffened, his fists clenching and expression shuttering before he stepped back into silence.

Coward .

Kyros turned his attention back to me. “Do you know what I hate most about you, Frostling?”

He lingered on the nickname, twisting it into something venomous.

Frostling . From Kaelen, it had sounded like banter. From Kyros, it was an insult.

“You walk around like you really are the Chosen One,” he said, crouching in front of me, his voice edged with mockery.

“Like you’re special. And all of them—” he gestured vaguely toward the world outside, toward Kaelen, toward my uncle, my mother— “they believe it, don’t they?

Parading you around like your blood means something.

Like those pretty wings buy you a place among the clans. ”

His hand darted out, fingers trailing the edge of my shoulder, like he was trying to coax the wings in question out of my skin. Bile clawed its way up my throat, my chains clinking as I jerked away from his touch.

“You want to know the truth?” His expression turned serious.

“I wasn’t invited to those meetings. The ones where the Seer whispered about you to my brother.

But I know what she promised him. That you’d save us.

” He let out a dark laugh before continuing.

“But all I see is the Hollow Seelie whore who will be the end of our people.”

Save them? That was what the Seer had told Kaelen? Was that why he was so sure an alliance between us could work?

My heart tripped hard against my ribs, confusion and panic threading together in equal measure. Why me? What could she have possibly seen?