Page 28 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Draven

She tasted the same.

Like moonshade berries, sweetness edged with the barest hint of poison. Like she could be the death of me in truth.

She kept one hand poised over the scar from the night the world had shattered the fragile ground we had built. The other hand snaked along the ridges of my shoulders. She dragged her nails through my hair, leaving fire in their wake.

The last time I had been this close to her, she had been tenuous, but there was no hesitation now. She fisted the short strands of my hair, pulling me against her with a needy moan that nearly brought me to my knees.

I pressed my thumb along the lower edge of her mouth until her lips parted, then I dipped my tongue inside her mouth in an exploration that was a slow and deliberate contrast to her frenzied breathing.

Heat pulsed through me in time with the mana that spread from my limbs, engulfing the room in a thick coating of ice. All but the space around us—around her.

I teased at the seam of her nightgown, dragging it upward along her thigh, and she entwined her tongue with mine with urgency. When I kept my pace steady, her teeth clamped around my lip, a protest and a demand in one.

Shards damn it all.

“Was there something you needed, Morta Mea?” I growled, nipping her ear, then her neck.

Tell me that you want this .

She let out a low string of curses in response, moving her free hand from my chest to my shoulder, tugging it with purpose.

In spite of every reason I had to stay away from her, I couldn’t bring myself to deny her. Not this, not anything.

She was everything I accused her of being, a liar and traitor, the ruination of the Court I had sworn my life to.

But she was mine.

A curse worse than the monsters that plagued my kingdom, more destructive and entirely impossible to escape. My wife.

My death.

So I moved my hand higher, teasing her with the prospect of the relief she was begging for. Heat emanated from her core, blazing from every point of contact. The marriage bond thrummed with a combination of satisfaction and need.

Or maybe that was only Everly.

Pulling back just enough to see the crimson spreading up her cheeks, I swept my thumb higher along her thigh, and her lips parted on an exhalation. I moved my other hand to trail along her side, up her ribcage, grazing my knuckles along the edge of the curves she had pressed against my chest.

The nails along my skin turned sharper, and she froze. I followed her gaze to the hand on my shoulder, where each of her delicate fingers was tipped by a pointed, silver talon.

An Unseelie talon.

She pulled away from me, and I didn’t try to stop her. Her chest rose and fell in time with my own, our mingled breaths the only sounds breaking through the strangled hush that had fallen over the room.

Her lies had seemed further away when her body was pressed against mine, her sigh playing along my skin. I had almost let myself forget what we were to each other, the visions I had seen from her, the reason I had been forced to leave my people to retrieve her.

All at once I saw him, the male she had come here to ask about. The teasing smirk I had seen through her mind before it turned sadistic.

After I found her half dead in the cave, it had been easy to forget the way that hours before, she had been sitting around a fire, a drink in her hands, laughing with the male by her side, while I tore across the kingdom to find her.

Even now, she wasn’t here by will. She was trapped, by the bond, by the Shard Mother, by me, but once she left, would she go to finish what she had started?

“Did you ever find what you were looking for?” My tone was low, but it still shattered against the tension coiling between us.

Her crystal-blue eyes widened, her swollen lips parting in surprise. “What?”

“A way to break the bond.” The words cut through the air like razorblades of ice. “Did you find it?”

She reared back like I had slapped her, like she hadn’t been the one willing to risk her life to sever our vows and her commitment to my people.

Her brow furrowed, confusion and disbelief radiating off of her in waves. “Did you want me to?”

I didn’t have an answer that I wasn’t sure would be a lie, so I countered with what I actually wanted to know instead.

“Were you going to do it so you could be with him?”

“No—” she said quickly.

But the ring vibrated, and I clenched my fist around it. She tracked the motion, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I don’t know, Draven. Honestly, I thought you’d be relieved.”

The ring vibrated again, and I scoffed. Shards forbid she answer a single question with the barest shred of honesty.

She let out a frustrated breath. “It isn’t like either of us ever had a choice. You didn’t want me either. You can’t even stomach half of my heritage.”

She was right about that much. If we had been given a choice, neither of us would have shackled ourselves to the enemy.

I thought about her standing on the tower under the aurora skies, flawless to the point of being infuriating.

The way she always tipped up her chin in the face of danger, clenching her fists, meeting every new torment head on.

The wings she had hidden until they nearly got us both killed. The lies that escaped every time she opened her perfect mouth to speak.

No. We wouldn’t have chosen each other. It only mattered that she stay because Winter needed her.

That was why it felt like she was still dragging her talons along my skin, piercing through to the bone.

I stood to my full height, turning my back on her and calling back the walls of ice that had formed between our rooms—the mana that had trapped her here with me.

“Then by all means, far be it from me to force you into anything else.”

Fate had taken both of our choices away when it came to our shards-forsaken marriage vows, but I wouldn’t let her accuse me of taking this choice from her, too.