Page 3 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Everly

The courtyard buzzed with the kind of everyday noises that I used to find comforting. The rhythmic scrape of fabric against a washing board, the quiet swirling of the dawnbrew being ladled into cups, and low voices gossiping over their carved mugs.

Of course, back then, the gossip had felt harmless, not edged with words like traitor and monster and whore .

Perhaps I would have cared less if the words didn’t scrape along the raw edge of all the guilt I carried. After all, they weren’t wrong.

I was a traitor.

As angry as I had been walking into camp that first day, that rage had been harder to cling to when I saw the broken families and hollow expressions of the clan that had been decimated only a decade ago.

By the male I still dreamed about every night.

I forced the thought of the Frostgrave King from my mind as I stretched, wincing at the pull in my shoulders.

My wings burned from the effort, the long-unused muscles trembling. Even the base of my spine ached, every joint stiff, as if my body resented the sky as much as it yearned for it. It had been too long since I’d flown, and the strain still clung to every bone.

Alaric stepped into my periphery. His wings flared, subtly shielding me from the several sets of eyes that flitted between my shimmering wings and my winter-blue hair with disgust.

He held out a steaming mug of dawnbrew like an offering, one I quickly accepted, inhaling the bittersweet tea like it was a lifeline.

I let a bit of my annoyance cloud out the guilt when Tavrik walked by, eyeing me with suspicion like he hadn’t dragged me here himself.

“Have you taken to dosing the dawnbrew with memory loss tonic?” I muttered to Alaric under my breath.

His lips tilted into something that might have been a smile. “Not today, why?”

I took a long sip from my mug, relishing the way it warmed me from the inside out. It wasn’t nearly as cold here as it had been in Winter, yet the bone-deep chill clung to me all the same, like a frosty shadow I couldn’t shake.

“It’s just that they seem so shocked every morning all over again when I emerge,” I replied. “It’s impressive, really.”

Though I supposed it was preferable to the treatment I would have gotten in Winter if I had revealed my wings, since at least here, I was still breathing.

I spread my wings wider as I walked past, posturing like someone who had been granted a weapon instead of a female who was, by all accounts, helpless. Again.

My fingers drifted to my wrist, rubbing the bare skin. It felt wrong without Batty’s weight coiled there, her quiet hum a reminder that I wasn’t entirely alone.

“It doesn’t help that you’re still in your nightdress,” Alaric said easily, dragging me from thoughts of my skathryn. “Not exactly flying attire.”

I shrugged like the choice had been intentional, rather than acknowledge I had been too distracted by dread.

“Sure it is. Perhaps if I give them a real show, they wouldn’t be so overtaken with the mere sight of me every frost-damned day.” And I couldn’t deny that the thought of mooning them held a certain childish appeal at this point. They could hardly be any more horrified.

Alaric chuckled. “I daresay that would only attract more gossip, but to each her own.”

A scathing voice cut in. “If the traitor queen wants to bare her arse literally as well as metaphorically, I don’t see why you’d want to talk her out of it.”

I wouldn’t have thought Alaric’s face was shadowed before, but it was beaming now, lit up from within at the sound of his mate’s shrill tone. He was certainly the only one who felt any sort of peace in her screeching presence.

I clutched my mug tighter, debating the relative merits of shuffling along a little faster. My sadistic uncle to look forward to. Zerina’s barbed personality to get away from.

It was a toss up, really.

“Be nice, Rina,” Alaric chided gently, tugging one of her long braids and touching his lips against her forehead in a gesture that felt too intimate for public.

I looked away, trying not to remember a forehead pressed against my own, a gesture that was somehow protective and relieved and almost awed, from a male who would dream vividly about his hatred of me only a week later.

“Maybe I would be nicer if she wasn’t the reason you’ve been gone so much right before you have to leave again,” she shot back, her voice all saccharine control.

My head shot up, and I stopped so quickly that my tea sloshed over the side of the mug. “You’re leaving?”

They exchanged a look before he nodded, slowly. “I’m being sent on a mission, but Zerina has been cleared to take my place.”

I just barely bit my lip from asking if his mission was to kidnap someone else, to take a Seelie child. If it involved my husband.

“Yes,” Zerina cut in, rolling her umber eyes. “And I’m just thrilled about babysitting your useless arse, but we all do as the Thane requires.”

She left on that note, giving me a sarcastic little curtsy as she went.

I tried to quell the panic rising in my chest at the closest thing I had to an ally being gone so soon, leaving me with his hateful mate as a consolation. Alaric gently nudged me to keep walking, reminding me that there was, in fact, worse ahead than my new guard.

“So nice that the healing springs have worked so quickly.” My tone was not as neutral as I might have hoped.

She had been easier to like when she was unconscious from her injury, but I was glad she had healed for Alaric’s sake. Though all Unseelie referred to their spouses as mates, true soulmates were rare. He would be able to feel her pain, and he sure as hells would have felt her death.

So I didn’t wish that she had died. Just that she could…be away from guard duty a bit longer. Or guard literally anyone else. Though, depending on what my uncle had finally decided to reveal today, it might all be a moot point.

The banter had distracted me from the reality of my situation, but we were nearly to the longhouse now.

Alaric stopped just short of the doors, turning to look me in the eye. “She will warm up…probably. But if it helps you to accept the situation,” he looked around to ensure there were no prying ears, “I will find out about your sister.”

Wynnie .

Every waking moment since I left had been plagued with possibilities of every single horror that might have led to her demise.

Over and over I saw her, in the jaws of a Tharnok or shattering into frozen chunks of blood and skin, sliding across the tar-stained floors of the estate she had made into a home.

All because I had left her there, with wards that were failing, and a king that would suspect her of treason. A king that had been dying when I left him bleeding on the ground.

I had all but begged Alaric to ask about her, and now that he had agreed, my lips parted with the visceral need to add another person to his list.

Was Draven all right? Was he looking for me?

And to what end?

Alaric shook his head slightly, like he knew exactly what I wanted to say, and all of the reasons I couldn’t say it. I nodded, bowing my head in all the gratitude I couldn’t speak aloud, for all the kindness he had been given no reason to show me.

Then I walked alone to face my uncle, leaving the only kind face in the village behind. One way or another, everything was going to change.

Again.

My uncle waited in the longhouse, the central hub of the village. He was seated at the head of a table large enough for twelve, where he sat for every meal, insisting I join him like I was an honored guest instead of a prisoner.

It was too early for breakfast, so the room was empty, aside from a handful of slaves setting up for the day.

I hadn’t yet seen any of the child slaves they had taken from Winter, and no one would tell me where they were. When I had been here as a child, I had been naive enough to believe they only took adult slaves, but the crying child in the snow had shattered that illusion.

Shards .

The sight of the adult Seelie fae wearing iron shackles was hard enough to stomach without thinking about the blue-haired little boy.

Squaring my shoulders, I took the seat on the other end of the table, just as I always did. As far away from him as I could get.

My uncle, the Thane, Vaerin Skaeldruna. Whatever name he went by, he was still an icicle sucking bastard.

In the days I had been here, he had refused to share whatever mutually beneficial arrangement he had in mind when he kidnapped me. Aside from shared meals in public, he had refused to see me at all.

Neither had he had me tortured or killed yet, but it was an uneasy stalemate to say the least.

He waved a hand to dismiss the servants, and I raised my eyebrows.

“Are you ready to tell me why in the frosted hells you dragged me back here?” I demanded, leaning back like every possible answer to that question hadn’t twisted my stomach into thorny, brambled knots.

He narrowed his eyes, just as I had known he would. He despised my Winter slang nearly as much as I despised every single thing about him.

“I had hoped you would be feeling more reasonable today.” His voice was light, but lined with something sharper. “Especially when I have gone out of my way to return you to your family.”

Family . I thought of my sister, who could be dead now if Draven had decided to punish her for the treason of my existence. Unbidden, I also thought of him , the monster who had almost started to feel like mine.

But I sure as hells didn’t picture the male who had given me over to mages to be tortured for the sin of being a Hollow, or the asshole Skaldwings who had done exactly nothing to stop it from happening.

A scoff escaped before I could stop it. “I have no family here. You saw to that.”

When you took me to the mages. When you killed my mother.

The words sat between us, cold and brittle, like all the ice I had left behind a week and a lifetime ago.

He tilted his head, eyebrows raising more in puzzlement than the anger I had expected. “Is that why you didn’t ask about her?”

I put my hands on the table, tracing the grooves of the wood to center myself. At least I didn’t have to hide my talons here.

“You don’t get to talk about her after what you did.”

A breath of air escaped him, almost like a laugh, if he had been capable of such things. He nodded to himself like he had put something together, a condescending smile gracing his lips.

“You were always an imaginative child. Here I thought you were just harboring the same childish grudge for her that you held for me. It never occurred to me that you believed I would harm my only sister.”

I blinked, trying to make sense of what he was implying. It couldn't be possible.

She wasn’t here. She had never come for me. And…

I pictured bodies, one after the other, everyone who had defied him.

He had chained her up. Had ordered her to stay. I could still hear her voice echoing in my head, thick with the traces of fear she had never before shown.

Run, Everly. Don’t stop, no matter what happens.

To her, she had meant. She had known that he would kill her.

He had to be lying.

“You have never let disobedience go unpunished,” I said quietly.

“Come now, Everly. You of all people know the importance of family. Why do you think I worked so hard to keep you alive?”

My lips parted, equal parts disbelief and fury.

“Yes, I’m sure my torture was a real burden on you ,” I spat.

A muscle clenched in his jaw.

“I did what I had to do in order to keep you alive.” Light flickered from the chandelier, painting the jagged edges of his onyx wings every shade of crimson, reminiscent of the blood that had swirled down the drain while he told me the pain was for my own good.

My fingers dug into the table, silvery talons piercing into the wood.

It shouldn’t have been surprising that he still believed that, but it scraped along the edges of a wound that would never quite heal—the self-righteous assurance from a male who would never understand that there were things far worse than death.

“Why did you bring me here?” I demanded.

Instead of answering, his eyes flickered to the door.

It took me a heartbeat too long to understand why. Footsteps pounded against the earth, the heavy, booted steps of a soldier moving with urgency.

I clambered to my feet just as a burst of mana threw open the door.

My pulse thundered through my veins. For a single wild moment, I thought that Draven had come. It was insane, yet still more plausible than the reality unfolding before me.

The mana that smelled of the forest and steel and my childhood, the obsidian wings shadowing the doorway. The soft cry of ‘Everly’ from a voice I never thought I would hear again.

And underneath it all…the impossible notion that my uncle had been telling the truth.

Because my husband hadn’t come for me.

My mother had.