Page 19 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Everly

It was nearly an hour before the ice around the door began to thaw. An endless, pain-staking hour of infinite questions that came without any answers.

The hallmark of my life.

As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t stop my mind from racing over and over the scattered memories of the cave, and wondering what in the hells was happening with my clan now that I was gone.

Did they think that I was dead? That I had left? Had anyone been left alive in that cave, and if they were, what the hells kind of stories were they telling now?

I ran my trembling fingers through the tangles in my hair, each one catching like another question that tugged painfully at my skull.

Would my uncle come looking for me again?

If they found the cave, did they see all the blood I’d left behind? Was my mother burning the wisteria for me in truth this time?

Bile coated my throat.

I even thought about Kaelen, whether he was alive. Whether he knew his brother was a sadistic predator. Had there even been a small part of him that knew what Kyros had planned that night?

But before I could begin to go down that road, the faint scrape of metal pulled my attention toward the door. Like the sound of a chain scraping against stone.

I froze.

Draven’s mana had receded from the palace around the time his ice melted away from the doors, and even if it hadn’t, he would never use a key for his own rooms.

Golden eyes flashed through my mind. A sadistic grin. The smell of ancient stone and blood. So much blood.

I shot up in bed just as a pale green figure slipped into the room, a key in one hand and a steaming tray of food in the other.

It took me a moment to reconcile the male. Eyes and hair like forest moss, pale green skin like Spring grass. A neutral expression, if not almost kind.

Not Kyros.

Healer Amias.

He must have come to check on me. Logically, I knew that.

And yet, it didn’t stop my heart from drumming so loudly against my chest, I was sure it would break through.

I fisted my trembling hands in the blanket, trying not to let on about the sheer and unreasonable terror that had overtaken me at something as simple as the turning of a key in the lock.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” he said in his gentle tone, his deep green eyes widening. “I should have announced myself. I am more accustomed to taking patients in the infirmary.”

I nodded my head, not yet trusting myself to speak.

He took a careful step forward, his eyes watching me cautiously, like I was some woodland creature he was afraid of startling. Which was fair, all things considered.

But as he drew closer, the scent of warm, rich food curled through the air, making my mouth water. My stomach betrayed me with a loud, humiliating growl. Or perhaps it should have been, if I could still feel things like humiliation or shame.

Amias grinned, setting the tray across my lap. Bone broth sloshed gently around the ceramic bowl, darkened with herbs and cracked pepper. Steam curled along the surface in soft ribbons, and plump dumplings bobbed like pale moons.

The last time I’d eaten, Kaelen had been beside me, torchlight from the dining hall catching in his golden eyes.

But that was before his brother’s blade carved through my skin.

Before the chains.

Before the blood.

My mouth watered even as my gut twisted, my mind not wanting to go back down that road. I lifted the spoon, savoring the rich smell of cooked venison and spiced herbs. The dumpling burst the moment I bit down, and the broth scalded my tongue.

All at once, the rich salt tasted metallic and coppery. Like blood.

Shards damn everything.

My chest clenched, the spoon trembling in my grasp. I forced myself to swallow, though it scraped like glass all the way down.

My vision swam as I set the spoon down on the tray, hunger pains gone just as quickly as they had come.

“You must try to eat,” Amias said softly, watching me with that healer’s calm. “Your body needs it.”

If only my mind would let me.

I stared down at the tray. Instead of lifting the spoon again, my fingers traced those invisible lines along my skin, the exact paths I remembered the dagger carving.

They should be angry and red, puckered with scarring. They should hurt as much as the memories did.

But there was nothing. Not even tenderness. Not even the memory of a bruise…

“You remember what isn’t there,” Healer Amias said quietly, as though he could read the panic stuttering through me. “Our minds carry what the body has forgotten. And sometimes the memory of pain hurts longer than the wounds themselves.”

I swallowed hard and lowered my gaze back to the broth.

“How long was I out?” I asked before he could say anything else. My voice came out sharper than intended.

He smiled faintly, though his green eyes looked shadowed with fatigue. “Three days.”

Three days. The words hit strangely, both too long and not nearly long enough.

“Your wounds would have been faster to heal, had it not been for the poison that kept your blood from clotting,” he added.

Of course, that bastard had also used poison. Kyros had never intended for me to leave that cave. My vision began to swim, my breaths coming a little too short.

“The evidence may not show on your skin,” Amias continued, “but the trauma you endured was very real. Even with my own extensive training, I might not have been able to keep you…stable without the mana from your mate.”

Mate? That was an Unseelie term…

Did he know that? Or was it something they said in Spring Court, as well? I tried to focus on that rather than the panic that swelled in my chest at the certain knowledge of how close I had crept to death.

And that, once again, Draven was the one who had kept me from it.

I swallowed back the lump in my throat.

“Is that why I am here?” I asked, gesturing to the regal sheets and midnight curtains. “In the king’s suites, instead of my own?”

Amias nodded. “Though, His Majesty has instructed that you return to your own rooms once you’re stable enough, and you certainly appear to be.”

I narrowly resisted the urge to ask if that was the same majesty who had frozen me out of said rooms. But it wasn’t worth being barred from returning to my rooms now that the ice had melted. Being trapped here in his space was…lonelier, somehow, than being on my own.

I nodded instead, moving the tray with the unfinished food to get to my feet.

“I do have one final concern,” he said with the kind of gentleness that immediately had me on edge. “I wasn’t able to check your wings.”

My gaze snapped up to meet his. I drifted back to the first time I met the healer, after the Mirrorbane attack.

There was something in the way he spoke, the things he left unsaid that made me wonder if perhaps he understood more than I had ever meant for him to.

Had he known what I was this entire time? Did he despise me for it but was too polite to let that show?

I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

“They’re fine,” I said too quickly.

As much as Kyros had wanted to draw my wings out, I had managed to keep them safely locked away. It wasn’t without effort, but the darkness and blood loss had saved me on that front. It wasn’t possible to shift while unconscious.

Amias inclined his head in quiet understanding, not pressing the matter. “Well, remember to eat. And rest as much as you can.”

Rest . The word seared along my bones.

Because rest meant waiting, again. It meant being stuck in a holding pattern while life continued on without me. While I didn’t get a say, and didn’t have the power to demand one.

I must have let something of that slip into my expression, because the healer’s mouth curved into a sad, sympathetic smile.

“I’ll return to check on you later, in your own rooms.”

Just as he opened the door, a blur of ice shot past his head, ruffling his mossy hair.

He jerked back in surprise, but I recognized the sound before I saw her.

“Batty?” My voice cracked.

The skathryn hurled herself at me, all wings and silver-edged fur, her tiny body quivering with frantic energy. Her claws snagged at my nightgown as she burrowed into me, pitiful chirps breaking from her throat as if she’d been searching the world for me and only just found her way back.

That was why she had disappeared earlier—to find another way to me.

I hadn’t realized how hollow I’d felt without her until that moment, how much it had been like walking with half my soul missing. Relief flooded me so sharply it hurt, leaving me clutching her small, trembling frame as though she were the only tether keeping me upright.

I curled protectively around her, whispering half-formed apologies, nonsense words, anything to soothe her. Her frosty wings shivered against my skin, her breath feathering fast and shallow at my throat.

I barely heard the click of the door as Healer Amias excused himself, but the turn of the lock in the key registered all the same. Did he think that he was keeping the world out?

Or did he know, as I did, that he had just closed me into the cage of my husband’s making?