Page 29 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Draven

After Everly saw herself back to her rooms, I stood beneath the stream in my bathing chambers, letting the icy spray beat down on me until it drove away the lingering scent of moonshade berries and frostlilies from my ill-fated encounter with my wife.

As soon as I was dry, I wrote to the Archmage again. He had sent word that he would come when he finished whatever the hells he was doing, but he could shards-damned-well come sooner than that.

The monsters were threat enough, but something was also testing at my wards for the first time since I had learned to put them in place.

From the day I had torn apart the Frost Grave Pass, my kingdom had lived and died on my ability to focus, to stay in control. Now my wife, instead of being the fate-promised salvation, was threatening to unravel all of that.

I swept into the hall where my wolves waited, not sure where I was going, just that I needed to get away. Away from my rooms and away from her oppressive presence.

Astra let out a low whine, sensing my distress. Though they were all bonded to me in their way, Astra and Lumen had been with me the longest, guarding my rooms from the day I was born.

If only they had been able to guard inside my rooms, perhaps I would have had one less reason to hate the king who came before me.

Only my mother had ever successfully intervened with his temper, had even known that he possessed one. And Nevara.

My Visionary. Someone else who had been chained at my side.

It was then I admitted where my feet were taking me, down a path I hadn’t walked in years. I only ever sent for her these days, or more often, she showed up when I needed her.

But I couldn’t fight a war on every front.

The monsters, the Unseelie, my liar of a wife, and my own shards-blasted Court.

Not her, too.

I could have icewalked to Nevara’s tower, but frustration still pounded through my veins. Each frosted step echoed on the walls around me in time with the clicking of Astra’s claws, and servants beginning their day and soldiers guarding the halls practically leapt from my path as I blew past them.

I ignored them, veering to climb the endless sets of stairs until I finally wound up outside of her door.

It occurred to me that I didn’t know if she would even be here, or awake at this hour.

Wan rays of sunlight were just now starting to break over the horizon.

I stood with a rare feeling of uncertainty, staring at the familiar stretch of pale wood, the gleaming entrance to the prison she had been born to.

It was something we had in common, the way we were both already shackled to the kingdom while we had still been in the womb.

I raised my hand to knock, but the door swung open before my knuckles could make contact.

Nevara stood in the doorway, features guarded, eyebrows raised.

Her shimmering hair was pulled back in a simple braid, but she was dressed for the day in a pale green gown, evidence enough that she had Seen me coming.

Astra pushed into her rooms, nudging Nevara’s hand with her head. She obliged the wolf, then stepped back to allow me entry. I followed her into her space, all high windows and plush throws.

In the years since my parents died, she had made her tower a home, but that didn’t mean it was any less of a prison.

“Why do you stay here when you hate it so much?” It was far from what I came here to say.

Then again, I wasn’t exactly sure why I had come.

Nevara arched a delicate brow, carefully trekking back to her chair. She sat down and lifted a still-steaming teacup to her lips, taking a sip before answering.

“It is the Visionary’s tower,” she said plainly.

“I would have given you any room you wished,” I pressed back.

Nevara took a careful breath.

“I know that,” she said softly. “But the only memories I have of her are here.”

Her mother, she meant. My father had slaughtered her when Nevara was just a child—the day she had predicted his death.

The thought twisted uncomfortably. Gnawing at me with sharp, relentless teeth. Was I like him , punishing her for all that she did and did not See?

“You have never been your father, Draven,” Nevara said, her voice firm.

I went still. Of all the things for her to have divined, she knew I hated to talk about him.

“You aren’t angry because of what I Saw .

You’re angry because of what I chose to disclose,” she said, resting her teacup back on its saucer.

“You feel like I lied to you, and as long as I’ve known you, you have hated being lied to.

I didn’t have to See to predict your fury.

Your betrayal, when you were already facing it down on every front. ”

“So you just saw the fallout and decided it was worth it?” I bit back. “I may not be my father, but sometimes I think you hate me nearly as much as your mother hated him.”

Nevara pursed her lips, getting to her feet. For a moment, I thought she was going to walk out, but she only turned toward her liquor cabinet.

Her staff was in the corner, but the space was familiar enough for her to stride across the room unaided. Her fingers traipsed along the wood until she felt the latch, then she repeated the process to pluck out a bottle of Emberkiss Whiskey and two glasses.

I didn’t remind her that it was barely dawn, as I was suddenly very much in need of a drink myself.

Only when she had poured us both a generous amount, something she gauged by feeling the warmth as it rose up the glass, did she sink back down onto her cushions and finally turn to face me.

“Do you remember the day I was bound?”

I took a long swig of my drink, trying not to be irritated by her abrupt change of subject. The spices burned in my throat, crackling like embers of a campfire.

“No one ever forgets the day someone is chained to their side, Nevara,” I said.

Let alone the day they lose their sight.

“No,” she shook her head quietly. “Not to your side. To Winter. Do you remember my vows?”

“I don’t.” I had been a boy of eight, more concerned with the jarring reality that the girl I viewed as a sister would never again be able to look me in the eyes. That she could be slaughtered, just as her mother was, just for fulfilling the duty she was sworn to do.

I had been…terrified. Furious for her.

She nodded, like that was the answer she had been expecting.

“I surrender my sight of this world, that I may See only the Shard Mother’s truth, to impart it for the prosperity of the Winter Court. From this moment, no falsehood shall pass my lips to Winter’s crown, nor silence when I am called to speak. If I betray this vow, let Fate unmake me.”

What was the point of a vow for something she had no choice in? Then again, I supposed my marriage had been much the same. The Shard Mother called and we all answered her bidding.

Nevara took a long drink, smoke curling past her lips as she let out a long exhale.

“So you see, I was bound to your kingdom, but I loved you .” Her eyes filled with a rare sheen of starlit tears. “So what to do, when the only brother you’ve ever known is destroying himself over a choice he was only ever forced to make because of your shards-cursed vision?”

Frost arched out from my fingertips to coat my glass. “What happened at the Frost Grave Pass was not your fault.”

Whatever other blame I laid at her feet, what happened that day was entirely of my own making.

Her hands tightened around her glass, coating it in a sparkling sheen of frost. “I was so busy, Draven. Searching the endless lines of your fate, searching for a single way you made it out alive, so busy drowning in the endless grief I felt every time I watched you die again that I never thought to ensure your mother didn’t. ”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. What was I supposed to say when she had all but acknowledged that she might have let my mother die for the sake of saving me?

All over again, I saw my mother’s face and felt the roar rip out of me as she crumpled to the ground. But I also saw Nevara’s face, young and pinched with grief. She was hardly of age, trying to make the decisions that could fell entire kingdoms.

Shards knew I understood that feeling all too well.

“And if you had looked,” I forced the words out through gritted teeth. “You still might not have Seen . Haven’t you said that’s not how it works?”

A sad smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

“We’ll never know, now. What I might have prevented if I had done my Shard-Mother-given duty?” she said from behind her glass of Emberkiss.

“You mean if I had died that day, and the kingdom had continued to prosper?” I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer after all the time I had spent trying to keep my Court together, from the day it had all gone to hells.

She sighed and rested her glass in her lap, staring down as if she could see the liquid smoke curling around the edges of the whiskey.

“I don’t know. She’s never shown me, if the Unseelie would have taken over.

If your mother would have saved you, had the day gone differently.

” Nevara took a shuddering breath. “I can’t tell if she’s punishing me…

or sparing me. Maybe everything would have been easier if I could have been as objective as I was supposed to be. Then and now.”

“So that’s why you stopped telling me things? Because sometimes I die in the end?” I let out a slow breath, not sure if it was relief or frustration. “We’ve both known that was a possibility for a while now.”

It was true. Whatever else I was, I would never willingly let my people be overtaken by the monsters, and the day was coming when even the power I had wrested from the ground itself wouldn’t be enough to stop them.

Nevara shook her head, not to argue, I realized. To deny.

She didn’t want me to die, but that wasn’t what she was afraid to tell me. Hells, how many times had she told me to avoid something because it would lead to my death? She had never been shy about it.

“It’s her you keep seeing.” My voice came out raspier than I meant it to. “Her death.”

Nevara’s silence was answer enough.

Icy dread gripped my chest, raking its fingers over my bones like it might shatter them. I told myself it was just for my kingdom. Just for Winter.

The whiskey swirled in my glass, catching the light, amber folding into shadows and smoke. And I tried, I tried not to think of my wife.

Her crystal-blue eyes boring into mine as she whispered lies. Or the way she felt in my arms, the taste of her tongue. The stubborn tilt of her chin, or her broken body chained to a stone wall.

I downed the rest of my whiskey, relishing the burn as it coated my throat.

Nevara sighed, her fingers tracing the rim of her glass as if it might hold the answers for us both.

“It isn’t that simple,” she said after a moment.

“There are so many lines of fate, Draven, and they aren’t as linear as you might expect them to be.

I just thought… that I could navigate them.

That I could get us where we needed to be without losing any more pieces of our souls.

But somewhere along the way, you stopped trusting me. ”

That was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth. If Nevara had trusted my judgment, she wouldn’t have played so many shards-damned games.

“You stopped trusting me, too,” I told her.

After the battle. After the unspeakable choice I had to make.

She didn’t deny it. “We’ve both made impossible choices, Draven. The stakes are always the kingdom. Winter. Our lives and legacies.”

Her voice thinned. She looked small against the carved bench, as if the tower itself might crush her with all the grief etched into its walls.

I watched her then. Nevara, my Visionary, who saw futures like spiderwebs, who slept in a bed of runes and woke to foreknowledge. She had never known a moment’s peace, not since the day her mother died and the Shard Mother claimed a child for her chosen vessel.

But she didn’t look like she belonged to the Shard Mother now. Right now, she looked older than her years, a female worn raw by loss, who had turned her solitude into armor.

“Is that why you refuse to find a mate?” I asked, carefully.

What sacrifices had she chosen to spare herself, and what to spare me?

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I care about your line, Draven,” she said, “but I would never inflict this on another soul. Not for the Shard Mother, not for Winter, and not for you. My line ends here, but I will stay alive as long as I can to give you what you need from me.”

I nodded, knowing she couldn’t see the movement. Then I took the seat next to her, my elbows resting on my legs as I stared down into my empty glass.

“Not even the Shard Mother?” I asked after a beat.

“Even I struggle with my faith, Draven. Especially now.” Her voice cracked once, soft enough that the tower swallowed the sound. “And I am so tired of watching the people I love die one horrible, gruesome death after another.”

I leaned back to wrap an arm around her as if I could anchor that tiredness, or at least weigh it. She rested her head against my shoulder, and for a moment, the absurd familiarity of the gesture, the way childhood habits refused to die, made the room tilt.

The truth of her sacrifice, her burden, sat heavy between us.

“I know you are,” I said evenly. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”

“I didn’t tell you because I’m still trying to get you the ending you deserve, Draven.

” She said it plainly, as if it were the most ordinary of admissions.

"Your knowing the future could change it. So if I have to keep playing my games and keeping my secrets for the sake of hearing you laugh again one day, then I will damn well do what I must, and you can hate me later.”

A muscle clenched in my jaw. It wasn’t a solution, by any stretch. Not when she didn’t always have all of the pieces, and the choices she made could lead to my wife being taken.

I wasn’t sure I was capable of trusting anyone with my life and my kingdom when I had no say.

Still, there was one thing I knew. “I could never hate you, Nevara.”