Page 38 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Everly

We landed in Draven’s rooms, the heavy silence settling around us like frost. Zerina’s retreating back was still in my mind. It shouldn’t have mattered.

Shards, I hadn’t even liked her at first. But Alaric had been my friend, once. Had been poised to be my friend again, one of the only people willing to show kindness to a half-Seelie.

And Zerina had started to become the same.

It all hurt more than it should, but maybe that was just the oppressive knowledge that this was my life. A half-life, no matter which side I chose, always hiding or suppressing pieces of myself.

Weariness soaked into my bones.

Draven reached into his cloak, wordlessly holding out a leather-bound book.

Right. My compendium.

I took it from him, my fingers brushing against his. The moment was more charged than it had a right to be, somewhere between his mana and the endless pull of my body toward his.

The room was frigid enough that my breath ghosted out in a delicate white cloud, the stone walls leeching the meager scraps of warmth from my bones.

But Draven’s hand was warm, steady, and the only thing in this room that felt alive.

It was far too easy to imagine leaning into that heat, to let myself thaw against him. Too easy to forget why I couldn’t.

I swallowed back the temptation, turning to go before I could fall victim to my own weakness again.

“Wait.”

The word was quiet, almost uncertain.

I stilled, my pulse stuttering. I began to turn back, only to freeze when I felt it. His hand hovering over me in a question.

Over my wings . I had forgotten to put them away. I nodded wordlessly, and he gently lowered his hand.

The contact sent a shiver of heat racing through me.

For the past decade, my wings have been a secret, something to hide, something that marked me as other. And they had been the source of every contention between us from the day he brought my broken body back to the palace.

And yet Draven’s palm settled there with devastating care, reverent almost, as if he’d reached past every wall I’d built and found the most fragile part of me.

My entire world narrowed to that single point of heat, my body betraying me, arching faintly into his touch even as my mind screamed to pull away.

But his fingertips were moving now, tracing along the delicate edges with a gentleness that belied every monstrous act I knew to be true.

Even his mana was quiet, the only sound in the room his low, measured breaths. Only his, because I had stopped breathing the moment his hand touched my wing.

His fingers moved in slow, deliberate patterns, dragging heat into places that should have been too cold to feel anything at all. My lips parted, a gasp escaping me before I could help it, even as tears stabbed at the backs of my eyes.

The trip to the estate had left me so defeated, the glaring evidence of a lifetime of having to hide. No one saw both sides of me. Wynnie tried, but even she spent her life teaching me to fold the dangerous parts away. To hide. To survive.

And now my Unseelie-hating husband was here, touching the wings I had always been told to bury, like they weren’t something worth keeping.

“Does it hurt, when you keep them inside?” His voice was low, even, his breath ghosting on my ear as he mapped a path along each ridge and line of the sensitive skin.

I was so caught up in the heat that spread from the path he was forging that it took me far too long to make sense of what he was referring to. Zerina, asking me how I could bear it.

“Sometimes.” The word rasped out of me, rougher than I meant it to be.

His fingers continued tracing a path from the base at my spine out to the farthest tip of my wing, gently following the curves and arches of each ridge.

A wave of heat slowly washed over me, flooding my veins, beginning with my wings, before moving inward to pool low in my core.

Draven tracked every flicker of my reaction in the window’s reflection.

“And this?” he asked, stroking a particularly sensitive area. “Does this hurt?”

Not in the traditional sense of the word, not pain as I understood it. But having Draven touch my wings and knowing we would be right back where we always landed was its own kind of torture.

Because I already knew how this ended. Where we always ended—balancing on the edge of a knife, teetering somewhere between want and ruin.

The truth spilled out before I could wrestle it into something safer.

“In a way.”

He paused, his hand stilling against me. I turned just enough to meet his gaze. His pupils were blown wide, features carved with intent.

Once again, I felt the tug of our bond. The pull that our blood vow had over us, begging me to step closer, demanding me to lean in.

To let go.

To fall.

But this…this was never the problem between us.

“What are we doing, Draven?” I asked softly.

He stilled, but didn’t move his hand from my wing.

“I see it now.” His voice was quieter, its deep timbre trailing fire along my skin.

His fingers slid, almost by accident, along a thin, sensitive vein at the base of my wing. It was barely a whisper of a touch, but it drew a gasp from my lips.

“See what?” I breathed, looking back at his reflection in the window.

He didn’t look away from my wings. If anything, his eyes grew sadder.

“How no one has ever given you choices…” He trailed off, the words left hanging between us. Soft though they were, they landed like stones in my chest, stealing my breath as they sank, and I heard the part he hadn’t said— least of all me.

“No,” I said after a moment. “But you haven’t been given them either.”

I watched him in the window’s dark reflection, the hard plane of his jaw, the sharp angle of his eyebrows, and the way worry always tugged them closer.

He was a male hollowed out by duty, the lines around his mouth carved by decisions that never belonged to him.

I had seen the dreams that haunted him. And the battles he’d thrown himself into until there was nothing left to give.

And I had been there the day his Visionary ordered our match, had watched the moment Fate handed him a path he hadn’t chosen.

The air stretched taut between us, delicate as spun glass and twice as easy to break.

“You asked how long I would keep you here,” he said, measured now, almost detached, but the words still cut like a blade.

All at once, the room felt too small for the two of us.

For the second time since we landed in his rooms, my breath escaped me, but this time it felt like I had the wind knocked out of my lungs. I knew. I knew where he was going with this.

I turned to face him, studying the resolute features that warred with the bitter resignation pouring out from his mana. The loss of his touch hit me like a physical blow, so much stronger than it should have been.

He met my eyes, and his jaw clenched. “After you get your mana back, you’re free to go.”

The air around us froze as we stood suspended in time, in a moment that I had been waiting for… His words should have been a relief.

It was a far cry from every other time he had told me I belonged to him, no matter what. That our bond couldn’t be broken.

My ring was silent against my finger. There was no answering buzz to tell me his words had been a lie.

He meant it. He was being sincere.

My pulse kicked against my throat.

“And if I can’t?” I managed. The question trembled on its way out.

Were my words hopeful or filled with dread? I couldn't tell, but my voice trembled all the same.

Draven’s gaze settled on my features, the barest line furrowing between his brow.

“The Archmage comes tomorrow.” He drew in a slow breath, fist clenching on the exhale. “If there is no path forward, I’ll help you find a way to break the bond.”

The chamber fell even quieter, like the walls had learned to hold their breath for us.

My lips parted, though no words followed. And my bones rippled with what I was certain should have been relief. This was what I wanted. Right?

Then why did it feel like the relentless agony of a blade along my skin, brands searing into my flesh?

Was he giving me a choice, or leading me neatly to the ending we both already knew? There was no future for the Winter King and a half-Seelie. No kingdom saved by someone who could not wield her own mana.

And no point in staying shackled to someone who could never be anything to him.

My wings folded in on themselves, vanishing back into the place I’d always kept them, as though they’d never been there at all.

Behind me, the hush of his chamber pressed in like a secret neither of us had chosen, but both of us carried all the same.