Page 37 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Everly

Maybe Draven had been right not to trust me.

Not because I had been lying, but because I was afraid he was right. That I was incapable of making a decision that didn’t result in my immediate danger.

A winged figure stood in the doorway, delicate features bathed in shadows and painted in pure betrayal.

“Zerina.” I said her name on a breath just as Draven’s mana swelled behind me.

“No.” I held up both of my hands, heart pounding so loudly I could hardly hear the sound of my own voice. “Wait.”

If she had wanted to hurt us, she would have. To my everlasting shock, he listened, though I felt his mana wash over me like a shield.

I strained my ears, but there were no other footsteps on the ground, no rustling of wings down the hall.

“She’s here alone.”

Zerina scoffed. “I wanted to tread carefully because I thought you were in trouble, but I can see that I was wrong. I can’t believe I felt guilty when I heard that you were gone, or thought that I had failed at the last thing Alaric asked me to do.”

Her voice cracked on his name, even as her eyes burned with fury.

“You don’t understand—” I started to tell her, but she cut me off.

“Don’t insult me. I know what I saw. How can you even stand to look at him after the things he’s done to our kind?”

Her voice was raw, every word edged with pain sharp enough to cut.

“It isn’t that simple for me,” I said as gently as I could. “All our people do is destroy each other, Zerina. And I’m stuck in the middle of it…because I am both. Do you know what it’s like waking up every day knowing whichever way you turn, you’re the enemy?”

She reared back like I’d struck her.

Behind me, Draven tensed, mana thrumming to strike, but I gave the smallest shake of my head.

Shard Mother help me, I need more time.

“Both?” Zerina spat the word like it burned. “Is that what you tell yourself while you keep pretending? While you keep hiding what you are?”

Her hand slashed through the air toward me, a damning gesture at the absence of wings. “How do you even stand it?”

Not easily. I wanted to tell her. They hurt like a phantom limb sometimes, itch like a wound I can’t scratch. Especially now, after having such a small taste of freedom…

“I had no choice.” The words felt flatter than they used to, with Draven’s voice in my mind, telling me there was always a choice.

Maybe I hadn’t had a choice when I was a child, but after that, had I ever even tried to go back to my clan?

“And now?” Her mana flickered in a purple crackle across her skin, and she clenched her slim fists.

Her question echoed the one in my soul.

But Wynnie was back at the palace, and Draven would never let me go when I might still hold the only key to his kingdom’s salvation. Beyond that…

“And now, it’s complicated,” I answered her.

“Is it?” her tone dripped with venom. “Complicated like your husband torturing my mate?”

Draven’s mana surged at the threat in her tone. He took a step toward her, but she neatly stepped back. I recognized the move from training and how she was giving herself the vantage point to hurl a dagger if needed.

His mana still shimmered faintly in front of us both, but I knew there were weapons that could pierce through the shield.

Hells, couldn’t mine?

But surely she wouldn’t attempt it when Draven’s mana could just as easily bat them away.

This wasn’t like last time at Thistlerun Keep. He wasn’t distracted and surrounded and drained.

Her warrior’s gaze flicked over him, eyes narrowing as if she was assessing the same thing. He stepped forward again, effectively putting himself between us….but he didn’t attack.

Didn’t force me to leave.

Slowly, she stalked the edge of the room like a cornered panther, her leather armor creaking with each step. Her wings dragged behind her, ragged and frayed at the edges, as if the grief had worn them thin.

Still, she moved with that predator’s tension, and I knew better than to think she was anything else.

“Please, Zerina,” I managed, my chest cinching so tight it was hard to breathe. My pulse beat sharply in my throat, every word scraping against it. “We don’t have to be enemies.”

“Tell that to Alaric’s shattered corpse.”

She lifted her arm, and Draven’s mana answered in kind, jagged shards of ice splitting the air around him.

But she wasn’t aiming for either of us. Instead, her violet blast of mana burst through the window.

She darted around his projectiles as razor sharp fragments of glass whirled through the air. Then she leapt from the balcony and took off into the night sky.

I shouted her name, sprinting after her.

She couldn’t leave like this, not when I could still see her smirking while Alaric pressed his lips to her forehead, and I could hear her broken wails at the campfire the moment she realized he was gone.

Didn’t I know that panic?

I blinked and saw Draven’s aurora eyes widen as an arrow pierced into his skin, felt the pain as he sank to his knees. Then I saw Alaric’s features twisting in pain. Heard the way he said Zerina’s name with his final breath.

Shards damn it all.

All of this…all of it was wrong, and it was all from this. Hatred and pain and war in a cycle that never ended. But if I could make her understand…

My wings burst forth from my skin. I didn’t care that they tore through my gown and cloak. It was instinct.

“Everly.”

The rare sound of my name on Draven’s lips stopped me in my tracks. His mana wrapped around me, somehow warmer than it usually was, tinged with something curiously close to remorse.

I turned slowly to face him, but his features were carved from stone, unreadable as ever.

He was standing with the compendium in one hand, his other outstretched toward me. The moonlight caught on the silver scar across his palm. The one that matched mine.

“We should get back to the palace,” he said, his voice gentler than I had ever heard it.

I glanced back at the empty sky.

He was right. I knew that. Of course I knew that.

Zerina was gone, and there was nothing I could do to change her mind, or any of their minds. The Seelie, the Unseelie, they were all determined to hate one another.

And me.

So, I slid my hand into his, letting him whisk me back to the palace where I could go back to pretending I was half of what I knew myself to be.