Page 15 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Draven

I thought I had known what it was to feel anger before. To be so consumed by rage that it possessed me as if it were its own being.

I’d felt it once at the Frost Grave Pass… But this, this was so much worse.

“Morta Mea,” the words slipped from my mouth like a prayer and a curse as my gaze landed on my wife.

Her head hung limply over her shoulder, her arms shackled to the wall with iron chains, and her skin was stained a gleaming wet crimson from her own blood.

A growl ripped from my throat. Mana poured out of me, crashing through the cave in a vortex of ice and death.

One of the Unseelie bastards was stupid enough to rush forward, his skin flaying from his bones the closer he came. His scream echoed off the stone walls as another attempted to do the same. She unleashed an arrow that cracked in the frozen air and crumbled to dust at my feet.

I curled my fists, and the glacial wave changed form to resemble the enormous mouth of a wolf. Icicles sharpened into teeth that sank into the female’s torso, wrenching her spine free from her torso.

The male hovering over Everly let out a dark chuckle, as if this were some game, one he fully expected to win.

“I wondered if you would come for her,” he said, climbing to his feet.

As he stepped forward, the torchlight caught his face, revealing familiar features. The memory of him laughing with Everly by the fire morphed, his grin twisting into something much more dangerous as he loomed over her.

Those were the visions that had assaulted me as I raced through the forest, pulled only by whatever mana tied us to one another. That bond had led me straight to her, straight to them.

Was he the bastard that offered to break it for her? Was he the reason she wanted to sever it?

The male tilted his head as he studied me. His dagger dripped with her blood, too wet. Too much.

I let out another growl as two more winged spawn lunged, their shadows cutting across the jagged stone. An axe gleamed in the dim torchlight, but frost swallowed the haft before its bearer could take his first swing.

It shattered in his hands. He screamed, and the sound turned raw as my mana surged up his arms, freezing the blood in his veins until he toppled like a felled tree.

The second loosed a flare of copper light that seared through the cavern air.

I raised a hand, calling a wall of glacial spines that split the mana apart in a crack of ice and rust-colored flames.

The mana crashed against my ice, fizzling out like dying embers.

The warrior behind it wasn’t so fortunate.

My ice pierced him through the chest, pinning him to the cave wall, the sound of his gurgled cries fueling me forward.

I kept moving, my focus locked on the male standing far too close to my wife—the one who reeked of her blood.

His grin was feral as he stepped away from her, dark wings spread wide enough to scrape the cavern walls.

Mana coiled around him, sparking in jagged bursts of slate-gray and iron-red, the colors of cliff stone under a storm.

The floor split under my boots as jagged spears of rock thrust upward.

I shattered them with a sweep of frost, the shards spraying like glass as my breath came in steady bursts of steam.

The male’s eyes gleamed with sick delight. “Tell me, Frostgrave King, how many corpses will it take before you realize you can’t save her?”

I said nothing. I wasn’t in the habit of speaking with beasts.

Ice crawled over the cavern walls, slow and deliberate, as I advanced. My silence drew a laugh from his throat, sharp as broken glass. He lashed out again, stone shattering, the cave trembling with every strike.

But my fury was quiet. Lethal. Each flick of my hand tore through his attacks as frost met stone, and storm raged against storm until I had him staggering, bleeding, his grin cracking at the edges.

Behind him, Everly whimpered.

It was all the permission I needed.

Ice surged, fangs of frost snapping shut around his chest. His scream echoed once, sharp and short, before silence claimed him.

The ring was still pulsating with cold, still pulling me toward Everly as it had from the moment I crossed through the portal into Unseelie territory. Frantic and demanding, like the bond that bade me to protect her had no notion that she had come here with the express intent of severing it.

So I didn’t look at his body. Instead I froze her shackles until they shattered to dust and caught her before she could hit the ground.

She was smaller than I remembered as I scooped her into my arms. Too still. Too light. And there was no trace of the silvery wings I had seen the night she was taken, vanished as if they had never existed.

I could almost pretend that I hadn’t been forced to come here because she had lied about everything she was. That she hadn’t put my entire kingdom at risk with all of her shards-damned secrets.

I wrenched my gaze away from her battered face, and strode out into the night, heavy on my guard. When I tore through the wards to get here, someone had no doubt been alerted. I needed to hurry.

Crimson wings lay shattered just beyond the cave mouth, all that remained of the Skaldwing who had stood guard. Movement rustled in the treeline. I turned, mana already coiling like an icy inferno around my fist.

A winged male broke through the brush but froze mid-charge, his body engulfed in vivid purple flames. He crumbled to ash, the night wind scattering what was left of him.

Behind the cinders stood a female.

Her wings were pitch black, tucked in close, her bare arms ropey with muscle, scars gleaming pale against her warm skin. She held a dagger steady in her grip, still poised where the male’s back had been.

I recognized it as the twin of my wife’s blade—jagged and blackened steel with an amethyst set into the hilt. The warrior moved forward with the practiced grace of a predator, her steps soundless in the hush.

I clutched Everly tighter against my chest, preparing to unleash my mana when she took another step into the moonlight…illuminating features that stopped me in my tracks. My wife’s angular cheekbones. Her full, stubborn mouth. And the emerald eyes I had only ever seen in our shared dreams.

I hesitated for a single heartbeat while Nevara’s words clamored through my mind like a curse: Your hatred will burn it to the ground.

This wasn’t hatred. It was practicality. It didn’t matter who this female was if she stood between me and the only exit. Ice coiled around me just as the female sucked in a breath to speak.

“You can’t get out this way,” she said, her voice low, and urgent. “Go north. The wards are down, but I can’t hold them for long.”

I narrowed my eyes, suspicion burning. Was she really helping me, or helping her own cause?

Then the trees shifted far behind her. The clang of steel and the stamping of boots signaled the arrival of more Unseelie.

Shards damn it all .

I glanced down at the pile of ashes before the female. She had intervened on our behalf, and her eyes were wide with concern at the sound of the newcomers.

Though it went against everything in me to trust a Skaldwing, I nodded once, spinning on my heel to go in the direction she had indicated.

“Wait,” her voice called after me, barely audible against the rustling of leaves.

I had barely turned back when I saw something sailing through my periphery, metal glinting in the moonlight. My mana came up instinctually, before I could register what it was.

An amulet.

“For her.” There was something resigned in the female’s voice.

Everly whimpered again and the sound of boots grew louder. There was no time to second guess. I brought the necklace to me on a gust of wind, then disappeared into the shadows just as I heard the Skaldwings burst through the treeline behind me.