Page 21 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Everly

Even Batty’s presence at my side wasn’t enough to make me drift off to sleep when the darkness held nothing but monsters and a chill I couldn’t seem to shake.

That was without the visceral images of exploding frostbeasts or the inexplicable tug toward the north, both of which I could assume were courtesy of my marriage bond.

So I laid awake, tracking the slow descent of the sun through my window until the healer’s soft knock sounded on the door. He brought more dumpling soup, and I had it on the tip of my tongue to ask him to run a bath or light the fire for me.

But he already knew about my wings. I didn’t want to answer questions about my mana, too.

He stayed to watch me finish my food this time, rising to leave only when the bowl was empty.

“Remember that your body still needs to rest,” he said quietly, placing a small vial on the table, then letting himself out the doors. I picked it up once I was alone, uncorking it to sniff the contents. It was sweet, and faintly rose scented, like Wynnie’s sleep tonics.

A wave of mana washed over me from the hallway, tinged with ice and bitterness. I braced myself for footsteps, but the source stayed where it was.

It was strange how much more clearly I could pinpoint him now, like the distance had somehow honed something in our connection. More ties we couldn’t escape.

My grip tightened around the vial, and I tipped it backward, swallowing the tonic in a single gulp. A shiver coursed through me.

Batty chirped softly, nestling into my neck, offering me what little warmth she could. Between her and the potent tonic, sleep claimed me at last, a fitful slumber interspersed with shared memories that morphed to nightmares.

Or perhaps they had always been one in the same..

I saw Kyros looming over me, Alaric’s determined features in the instant before they were turned into mist. I saw myself, bloodstained and unconscious against a stone wall.

Defenseless and weak.

Somewhere through it all, there was freshly fallen snow, edged in juniper. The roaring of a fire. A squeak of indignation and furs pulled tighter against the chill of the night air.

Then it was gone, and I was dragged into nightmares once more.

It was warmer than it should have been, but that wasn’t what woke me. There was a scratching sound at the window again, and every muscle in my body tensed before I remembered where I was.

Polished walls. Silver fur rug. Massive bed and a complete lack of color everywhere I looked.

I was back at the Winter Palace, and it was Batty making that sound.

I repeated the reassurances like a mantra while I rose to open the window, trying to calm the rapid beating of my heart with each step. I was halfway to the window when I remembered the ice.

And Batty needed to…take care of her business.

Damn it all to hells.

Was it possible to train a skathryn to use a regular chamber pot? Regardless, I couldn’t very well do it in the next two minutes.

Which left me with exactly one option.

Shards damn blasted everything .

The mana coming from the room next to mine was subdued, but nonetheless unmistakable. Draven was in there, and he was the only one with the power to de-ice my windows.

Steeling myself, I padded over to the narrow door that separated our rooms. I reached for the handle, and my talons emerged from the tips of my fingers.

“No.” I spoke the word aloud, shaking my head for good measure. I had known nothing but weakness in front of the singularly unyielding male I was bound to. I could damned well walk into his room without a panic attack.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I forced the talons to disappear before turning the handle and pushing into the room without knocking.

The door was halfway open when frost crackled through the room like a whip, racing along an icy gale of power that stopped just short of my bare toes. I froze, lifting my eyes to where Draven lounged in his bed.

All at once, the subdued mana made sense. He had been sleeping. It should have been obvious, but the idea of him lying peacefully in his bed was so at odds with the unending rage I had felt over the past weeks that it took me several heartbeats too long to process it.

Then several more not to resent him for it.

He sat upright, and the motion dislodged the blankets, leaving him bare from the ridged muscles of his shoulders down to the defined V of his abdomen.

Yet, my gaze remained solidly fixed on the raised, crimson scar that marred the flawless skin of his chest. Where the arrow had sunken in.

“Morta Mea.” His voice was rough from sleep, the deep timbre resonating through me.

I lifted my gaze to his narrowed eyes, forcing myself not to falter under the weight of his stare—or his mana.

“I need you to open my window.”

He blinked once. Then twice.

“No.” His tone was flat. “You’ll have to find another way to get yourself kidnapped this time.”

My hands curled into fists at my side.

He really was such a frost twat, but I couldn’t very well tell him that in the same breath I was asking him for something. I let out a slow, controlled sigh.

“It is not for me. It’s for…” I trailed off, wondering too late if he would take his fury out on my skathryn. He had let her stay before, but that was when he held more indifference toward me than outright hatred.

Batty, however, felt no such hesitation to announce her presence, evidenced by her sharp trill as she flapped into the room behind me.

He let out a bitter scoff. “Like calls to like, I suppose. I always wondered how you had tamed the venomous beast.”

I was already tired of his remarks on my heritage. A shudder rippled down my spine as I suppressed my wings.

“You know perfectly well that I am not part bat, you complete and utter frost twat.”

So much for not saying it out loud.

Though I knew logically he could just as easily torture me shirtless in bed, my mouth didn’t seem to be quite as wary of him like this.

Batty made a soft sound that could only be interpreted as offense, and I patted her head, adding, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

She let out a mollified sort of trill before dive-bombing Draven’s window, raking her claws along the glass with an eardrum-rupturing screech.

I warred between looking pointedly at Draven and jumping in front of Batty to save her from his brewing wrath. A muscle worked in his jaw, and he waved his hand toward her, a jet of mana streaming with the motion.

My lips parted, but the mana bypassed her to the window. It opened the smallest increment, just enough to let out a baby skathryn. My shoulders sagged in relief, and Draven’s jaw feathered again.

He leaned back, muscles flexing as he pushed a silver-blond strand of hair back from his face. My mouth went dry, heat curling through my veins as I forced myself to look away from him.

Damn him for being such an attractive assface. And damn this stupid frost-forsaken ring that refused to let me forget it.

“I’ll return it to your rooms.”

As far as dismissals went, it wasn’t as cutting as it could have been. In fact, he almost sounded…tired. Which made two of us.

“Unless there is something else you need?”

I lingered in the doorway, my fingers fidgeting with the hem of my nightgown while I told myself that was not an invitation, and it was especially not one that I was interested in.

My gaze flitted back up to his bare chest, following the ridges of his abdomen for several heartbeats too long before trailing back up to study his face.

Shadows lined his aurora eyes, his moon-kissed skin even paler than usual.

I thought about what the healer said, that Draven had lent his mana to my recovery. Though he had made his reasons more than clear, I couldn’t help but wonder how much it had taken from him.

“How long are you going to keep me locked in those rooms?” I asked once my mind could put some of my racing thoughts into words.

Draven’s throat bobbed, his expression going even colder than it had been a moment ago.

“As long as it takes,” he said. “But lest you get any ideas about trying to go back to your precious Wilds or make contact with the people who are actively attacking my villages, you should know that your sister is arriving today.”

“Wynnie’s coming here?” I said the words in a single breath, relief and apprehension mingling in my gut.

I wanted her with me, obviously, but I didn’t like where he was going with this.

“She is,” he confirmed. “And I’m sure you know the punishment for harboring an Unseelie.”

I did.

Of course I did.

Like everything else associated with the Unseelie in this shards-damned kingdom, it was punishable by death.

Any sympathy I had for his fatigue dissipated like the icy remains of all the people he had tortured. And just like that, everything I said about not being able to watch him die was gone, too. I would kill him myself if he touched my sister.

I would find a way.

“Draven.” My voice was a low warning growl.

He arched a dark brow.

“Of course, her presence here will need to remain quiet for the time being, since we don’t need any more questions about anyone in your family. So she could stay in the dungeons,” he suggested casually, “or she could stay in your rooms.”

I might have believed he truly was nonchalant if not for the persistent echo of fury swirling around the room in a blizzard of mana and frost.

“So if I’m your good girl, you won’t punish my sister, is that it?” I scoffed. “Tell me again how the Unseelie are monsters.”

He raised his eyebrows, managing to look down on me even from his lower vantage point. “Once again, I have never claimed to be the hero, Morta Mea, but I will do what I must to keep my kingdom from falling, and you’ve proven amply that you can be trusted with neither their safety nor your own.”

“What difference does it make?” I threw out my arms in frustration. “I haven’t magically manifested the ability to access my mana in the past few weeks, and my mother has already told me that it can’t be unbound.”

A muscle worked in his jaw.

“We’ll see about that. With the facts at hand, the Archmage might prove to be useful this time around.

” His features darkened, and I couldn’t help but wonder at his ability to command a room from his shards-blasted bed.

“So if you have any other secrets that put my entire court at risk, feel free to reveal them when he arrives. I’d like to believe you are capable of telling the truth, though the evidence would certainly suggest otherwise. ”

Frustration flooded my veins. “Surely even you can see that I had no choice?”

He let out a small scoff, but there was not a single trace of amusement in the cold lines of his face.

“There is always a choice.”

My lips parted. “Spoken with all the privilege of a king.”

He clenched his jaw hard enough that the cracking sound echoed on the frosted walls. “Yes, how privileged I am to be shackled to my ravaged kingdom along with an ordained bride who would rather risk her life and damn my court in the process than tell the shards-damned truth.”

An easy accusation for someone who had never spent each day wondering if they would survive to the next because their very existence was outlawed twice over.

“Right, how silly of me,” I spat the words. “I should have exposed my wings the day you summoned me, so you could have fulfilled your own frost-blasted law to kill me on sight.”

Ice curled outward from his unmoving form, pulsing in time with his furious breaths.

“Lie to yourself, Morta Mea, but don’t lie to me. You could have revealed the truth at any point, but you weighed your own life against every single one of my people and deemed the risk unnecessary until someone you loved was in the line of fire.”

Shame burned through me, chasing away some of my anger.

Was he wrong? Hadn’t I weighed the risk against myself and Wynnie when I chose to keep my secrets? Would the Archmage have been able to find some sort of solution if I had only been willing to tell him the truth?

Was it my fault that my sister’s estate had been slaughtered, nearly taking her with it?

Would it be my fault if something happened to her now? She had only ever broken the law for my sake.

I squeezed my eyes shut, wrenching them back open before another visceral memory could assault me.

“Funny, I thought the Unseelie were incapable of love,” I said rather than respond with something that the ring might register as a lie.

His lips parted again, eyes flashing with a deep green consternation.

“What exactly did you see?” he growled.

A bitter huff of air escaped me. “Nothing I didn’t already know.”

I turned to go before I could cave to the bone-deep desire to throw something at him.

Or worse, to cry.