Page 31 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Everly

When Wynnie emerged from her bath, she was less excited than I was to see Lumen, murmuring something about all the murderous beasts in my life while she greedily snatched up her single allotted glass of wine.

She downed it in one go, and I guiltily pushed mine over to her as well, noticing the way her fingers still trembled, in spite of the brave face she put on.

She made it easy to forget that murderous beasts had ravaged her entire home not long ago. Wolves were not the same as Tharnoks, but with Lumen’s head nearly up to my elbow and his sharp fangs on display…

“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you. Draven sent him to guard the room…” I shifted uncomfortably, from the remorse and the still unfamiliar feeling of wearing a dress after two weeks of the more freeing flying leathers.

“I’m fine,” she said shortly.

But she didn’t sound fine. She sounded empty and tired, and it was telling that she didn’t ask why we needed an extra guard tonight.

I was debating the safety and potential hurt feelings of putting Lumen back in the hall when a rapid three-tap knock sounded at the door. Not the sitting room door that led to the main hallway. The one that led to the hallway I shared with my husband.

I wasn’t even sure Draven knew how to open a door by its handle since he always just blasted them open with mana, but I was positive he didn’t know how to knock.

My sister furrowed her brow, and Lumen stood at attention, but he didn’t look murderous. More… excited.

Still, my heartbeat pounded as I tiptoed toward the door. Wynnie strode next to me, her wine glass raised like she might use it as a weapon. Remembering the chair she’d hurled at a Tharnok back at the estate, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

I drew a steadying breath and cracked the door open…

A familiar set of amber eyes met mine, sparking like embers. His sleek raven hair was pulled back into a topknot, and a smirk was etched across his symmetrical features.

“Soren?” I let out a relieved whoosh of air.

“I told you that would startle her,” a dry voice cut in.

Nevara was here.

The Autumn emissary rolled his eyes. “Did you See that?”

“No,” she replied, unimpressed. “But the Shard Mother gifted me with common sense as well.”

I opened the door wider, revealing the Visionary’s ethereally beautiful form, pale tresses braided up to perfection, sparkling staff in hand, features carefully guarded.

I tried not to remember tears escaping her silver eyes, and the aftermath that followed. Tried not to feel the drag of a blade along my skin and wonder if that was the future she had seen all along.

I don’t blame you.

Sometimes you do.

“Did Draven send you to guard us as well?” Wynnie asked, stretching up on her tip toes to peer over my shoulder.

Nevara’s lips parted, but Soren spoke before she could. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”

I hadn’t thought it was possible for his smirk to get more mischievous.

“What would be closer to the truth?” I asked, stepping back to allow them entry.

My sister was alive. So was I. And whatever impossible choices she had to make, Nevara was my friend.

Her hand clenched around her staff like she heard the thoughts play across my mind.

Soren shrugged, pretending not to notice the tension as he pulled out two unopened bottles of Emberkiss from his cloak and waggled them at us. He might have succeeded at looking oblivious, if not for the concerned glances he cast to his side.

“That he asked one of us to come,” he said, stepping further into the room with his beverage offering. “Me, obviously.”

Wynnie laughed and snatched the bottle from his hand. “Lord Soren, I do believe that I find you delightful as well.”

He let out a low laugh, and I surmised Wynnie was referring to something from their first meeting. The two of them headed into the sitting room, speaking animatedly about whiskey and wyverns and shards knew what else.

I shut the door, hanging back to stand with Nevara.

Her grip tightened around her staff, her milky eyes sadder than they usually appeared. Draven might have wanted her here, but I could see her uncertainty over it. Her concern. Her guilt.

“You don’t See everything,” I said quietly.

A reminder and an absolution, for us both.

“No,” she said quietly, her bow-shaped lips tugging downward ever so slightly.

“You didn’t know that we’d be friends,” I added, and her head tilted curiously.

“Are we friends?”

I took a breath, pushing thoughts of torture and bloody estates from my mind. Batty chirped against my wrist, almost like she was encouraging me.

“We will be.” If I’m here long enough.

Shards, if we live long enough.

She smiled, but it held a forlorn edge, like she had heard every caveat I gave. Like she had already Seen them play out more than once.

Emberkiss was…infinitely more intoxicating than wine.

“Are you going to tell me what you’re really doing shut up in here?” Soren asked after his second glass of whiskey.

“...convalescing?” I offered, casting about for the likely excuse Draven had offered his people.

Wynnie let out an unladylike guffaw before dramatically composing her features and taking a delicate sip from her glass. Tendrils of smoke from the Emberkiss curled down from her nostrils to form a curly mustache.

Soren chuckled, his gaze flitting from the doors to the windows, both of which were sealed with a thin, unbreakable layer of ice.

“I get…so overheated sometimes,” I said half-heartedly before taking another swig of the spiced whiskey.

He glanced between the roaring fire in the hearth and the pile of furs surrounding me on the floor. Then, he pursed his lips in an expression that told me exactly how much he believed that.

“What she means is that sometimes she gets the uncontrollable urge to jump out of the window,” Wynnie supplied in a voice just a little too loud, giving me a reassuring look.

“Yes,” I nodded, the room spinning a little faster with the movement. “That is… exactly what I mean.”

Nevara scoffed, tilting her face toward the ceiling, her shoulders swaying like the room might be spinning for her, too.

“I see,” Soren said. “Shall I tell you the going rumors?”

He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Wynnie and I crashed into each other in a fit of giggles as we tried to sit forward at the same time.

“Obviously,” I said.

“Right now,” she demanded.

“Be careful, ladies, or you run the risk of further inflating his oversized ego,” Nevara said through a hazy smirk. “And shards only know how we’ll tolerate him then.”

Soren glanced over at her, his smirk growing wider.

“My ego isn’t the only thing that’s oversized, Visionary,” he practically purred the words. “But we can discuss that later, in private.”

My sister’s eyes nearly bulged out of her face while I choked on the cinnamon spirits, but Nevara’s expression didn’t twitch.

She blinked once. “No need. I have already seen.”

Soren chuckled, but Wynnie looked intrigued, a sentiment I echoed.

“Is that… a capitalized S, or a lowercase one?” Wynnie asked as Batty flitted over her glass, filling it with snowflakes.

Nevara only smirked.

I threw back the rest of my whiskey before pouring all of us another round while Soren continued on like normal.

“Well, the most popular theory is that you’re chained to Draven’s bed,” he said evenly.

Wynnie snorted. “She wishes.”

“I do not!” I spat, sloshing some of the precious Emberkiss onto my sister’s lap.

“It’s not right to lie in the presence of the Shard Mother’s own vessel,” Nevara said, clearly recovered.

I tried very hard to compose my features. “Well, it’s not a lie, because he’s a frost twat who thinks I’m an ab?—”

“Absolute disaster,” Wynnie yelled, cutting me off before I could say abomination.

“Yes.” I agreed quickly. “That.”

Laughs rang out through the room before the Autumn emissary continued.

“Then there’s the not remotely believable story about you managing to stay ill for two weeks when we have one of the best healers in the realm.”

“Shards,” I cursed as Batty landed on my wrist, settling against my skin. “I knew I had missed something obvious with that one.”

“And of course,” his gaze sharpened almost imperceptibly as his eyes met mine, “there’s always the outlier, claiming that you’re an Unseelie, sent to be the undoing of our King.”

Silence fell like a guillotine.

I let out a nervous laugh, and my sister followed with an even louder one in an attempt to make it sound like an actual joke.

“The Shard Mother would never allow that, and neither would I,” Nevara said, offense coloring her tone.

It didn’t escape my notice that she was vague on which part the Shard Mother wouldn’t allow, and I was sure it didn’t escape Soren’s either.

“Besides, the Unseelie don’t have blue hair,” I blurted out.

Nevara blinked, and Soren tilted his head. “Is that true?”

Indeed, it was. Only Winter Court had blue hair as dark as mine. Spring Court sometimes had lighter shades of teal. Unseelie usually had black or brown or pale blonde hair, with the occasional crimson, unless they dyed it on purpose.

“Yes.” I nodded enthusiastically, latching onto the easy differentiator before I realized I should have no way of knowing that. “I…read about it. In a book.”

Batty burrowed her face into my sleeve like perhaps she was embarrassed by me.

“I read that same book,” Wynnie said, passing me her newly drained glass. “And I was particularly disappointed in the section about wingspan. I would have thought we’d get at least a small hint of?—”

I clamped a hand over her mouth. “No to you, and to everything you’re about to say.”

Soren threw his head back in laughter. Wynnie only shrugged, but I could feel the mischief wafting from her tiny frame.

By the fifth round, we had shifted. The bottle made its steady rotation, glasses were refilled less carefully, and the tray of baked goods and leftover dinner scraps had been pulled apart between us.

I couldn’t remember who had sent for it, only that Mirelda had delivered it herself, along with four pitchers of water and an expression so steeped in judgment I thought it might curdle our precious whiskey.

She’d left reluctantly, muttering under her breath as though she were abandoning children to their own poor decisions.

Now, half the bread was gone, the cheese hacked into uneven chunks, and all the pastries were gone.

“For context,” Soren said, words only slightly slurred, “Lady Noerwyn is stretched out on a rug by the fire. It’s white, the color of moonlight, soft as a wolf’s fur…and she looks…ah, perhaps a little seasick. Like she’s been tossed around on a storm-wracked ship for far, far too many days.”

“I can’t believe you’d lie to someone who can’t see the difference,” Wynnie muttered, her voice thick, crumbs clinging to her lips as she pressed a hand flat to her stomach as if that would still it.

“Not a lie,” Soren corrected with a grin. “A choice. Descriptions can’t always be perfect… Though mine usually are.”

He winked before continuing. “You must use comparisons, textures, moods. The sound, shape, and even taste to paint the thing in a way that the listener feels it.”

Soren paused, tilting the bottle back for a long, dramatic swallow before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Nevara let out a low chuckle, one hand draped lazily over her eyes. “And apparently that means I’ve been painted as half-dead.”

Soren smiled. “And yet, you are as beautiful in death as you were in life, dear Nevara. A Vision as well as a Visionary.”

Wynnie cleared her throat dramatically. “Everly is casually leaning against the biggest wolf I’ve ever seen, using him as a pillow while her navy tresses lay askew like…a bowl of noodles that’s been dropped on the floor.”

Soren shook his head, and Nevara’s shoulders rocked with laughter.

“Lumen is warmer than a sack of feathers,” I said by way of defense, trying in vain to tame my waves.

He grinned, making a gesture for her to continue. “And the bottle of Emberkiss is…”

“Gone,” Nevara supplied for them, another short, rare laugh escaping her. “But you brought another one.”

“And here you claim you don’t See everything.”

“I always see what matters in the end,” she replied, but some of the humor had faded from her tone.

Before I could decide if I believed that, my sister spoke up again, a slurring quality in her words.

“Did you know that…people are bigger on the inside.”

“You mean like they have good hearts?” Soren asked, his expression genuinely empathetic as he settled next to Nevara, who rested her head on his shoulder.

Wynnie shook her head emphatically. “No, I mean…literally. They have more insides than you would expect.”

Soren choked on what was almost a laugh. “You’re not wrong.”

He took another drink, and Nevara drained her glass in one go.

Wynnie turned speculatively to the roaring fire.

“I guess you never really know a person until you see them…half eaten in your dining room.”

I turned my head slowly to look at my sister, who wore all the expression of someone who had just commented on the change in weather and not the mass slaughter that had taken place at her estate.

And I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Wynnie laughed with me. Loud, unhinged guffaws that were edged with the unmistakable edge of hysteria.

Our laughter didn’t fix anything. It didn’t erase the blood or the memories, but it carved out just enough space to breathe. And for now, that was enough.