Page 40 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Everly

“No.”

It was the first word Draven had said when I told Isren I wanted to find the Dragon, and he said it again as soon as the Archmage left.

Of course, Isren hadn’t helped that objection when he piled onto it with his own sage advice.

Dragons are particular creatures. If he allows you to find him, you must be sure of what you want. And even then, you must be willing to accept the consequences, should he decide you unworthy.

“What other choice do we have?” I said it like it was easy, like it wouldn’t destroy something inside me even if I did live long enough to destroy the bond. I felt it now more than ever, like it sensed the urgency, the finality of the decisions we were about to make.

The ring pulsated, the pull between us almost painful in its intensity.

“You risking your life to go to the Dragon is not a choice, Everly.” He said my name in three clipped syllables, each one edged with a mixture of panic and rage.

“You said that you would help me break the bond if I couldn’t fix my mana,” I reminded him. The words stabbed coming out, the ache of them catching in my chest.

His mana flared, like jagged shards of ice, snapping into the air between us. The room itself seemed to hold its breath as it rippled across the walls and ceiling.

And yet, Draven burned, his body radiating heat that seared through the chill.

“I said that I would help you find a way,” he ground out, voice rough with restraint. “The obvious implication being that I meant a way in which you didn’t face near certain death.”

I thought about Isren’s words again. I had to be sure of what I wanted. Even if I found the Dragon, would I doom myself from the start if the bond was tugging me in the other direction?

Did I have any other choice? Without a queen to balance out the heartstone, Winter would fall.

And Draven with it.

The thought froze the air in my lungs. “I know that there’s a risk to Winter?—”

“I don’t give a single forsaken damn about the risk to Winter,” he snapped. “There is a risk to you .”

The silence that followed was potent, trembling with unspoken words, with everything the bond refused to let either of us bury.

“The bond—” I tried, desperate for something steady to cling to.

“The bond?” He echoed, taking a step closer. “Like the bond forced an attraction?”

He gestured between us, his hand cutting through the charged air. “Tell me, is this the bond, Morta Mea ?”

My pulse thundered through my veins, sweeping beneath my skin in hot, treacherous flames. I thought of his hands on my skin, the brush of his mouth at my throat, the desperate way I wanted him even when I tried to tell myself I didn’t.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, trying to shake the feeling from my bones before I could give in. “You have hated me for something I couldn’t control.”

Draven took another step, and the air tasted like him. Sweet, and spiced like the forest. Fresh like mountain snow.

“Yes, I do hate the Unseelie, but I have never once hated you .” He said it like it should have been obvious.

My lips parted as I sucked in an unsteady breath, and Draven tracked the movement.

Maybe it should have been obvious. All of it. Looking back, had he ever reacted typically to anything where we were concerned?

He hadn’t killed me when he discovered I was Hollow. He hadn’t abandoned me when I failed the Heartstone.

Still…

“Your fury and the way you locked me in my rooms tells another story,” I tried to make the words sound bold, but even I couldn’t help but hear the question in them, like I was begging for him to give some reasonable explanation.

He nodded, further closing the distance between us.

“Yes, I hated that you lied about it. That it never even crossed your mind to trust me, not with the truth and not when I told you that I always protect what belongs to me.”

Another step forward, his gaze following the rise and fall of my chest before meeting my eyes again.

“Then you shoved me behind the shard-mother-damned wards and let them drag you away in chains,” his tone was low and dangerous as he dragged out his next words. “Rather than tell me there was a threat to my wife .”

Another small step forward and we were breathing the same air, the corset of my gown brushing against his chest with each quickening breath.

He stretched out a hand to brush a navy lock of hair from my forehead.

“If I had known, I never would have let them take you,” he said, gently dragging his fingers down my skin to the pulse point on my neck. “And I sure as all forsaken hells never would have let them hurt you.”

A gasp hissed past my lips.

I tried to make sense of his words, to navigate the contradictions that had mapped our lives from the moment Nevara stopped in front of me and called out the number three.

I felt the warmth of his arms wrapped around me, shielding me from our shared nightmares, and again when he carried me through the Voidtouched when he could have just as easily floated me on his mana.

He didn’t just keep me alive when I was a Hollow. He wouldn’t let the mages hurt me—slaughtered one of them for considering it—even for mana he needed to save his kingdom.

Then he took me to save my sister with nothing more than my tears to convince him.

The pieces fell into place, gentle hands on my skin and the Frostgrave King on his knees.

You are my wife…I do not allow anyone to harm what belongs to me.

A promise. A vow that I had taken as a claim instead.

You were my wife. Until I had decided not to be, he meant.

I hadn’t understood the way my lies would break him—would break us both. It had felt like the only way.

“You believe this marriage vow is the only thing between us?”

I swallowed, nearly coming undone at the sound of his voice. No , I didn’t think that. I hadn’t believed that for quite some time.

“I think that bonds can confuse all manner of things,” I said vaguely, my voice coming out in a breathy rasp.

He didn’t press the wording, which told me that he had felt the truth, too, resonating in his own soul.

“They can and they do.” His voice was the lethal whisper of steel sliding from a sheath, his aurora gaze honing in on mine. “But even with no bond, and no blood vow, and no Visionary, there is no one and nothing I would allow to hurt you or chain you ever again.”

I took a breath as he continued.

“So if you want to go, go,” he growled, lowering his mouth until it hovered just above mine. “But do not take your freedom just to walk to your death, Morta Mea , because I would find a way to follow you into that grave just to drag you back again.”

I felt the truth of his words sink into me like another blood vow, an unbreakable promise etched into the map of my life.

He meant it. Every syllable.

And I couldn’t deny that something older and fiercer than any shards-forsaken blood ring answered back inside me, a stubborn tether that chose him.

“I don’t want to go,” I breathed, the words sounding so much smaller than I wanted.

Draven’s jaw went slack, and then his mouth was on mine in truth.

His lips crashed against mine, hungry and feral, teeth and heat and need. I wrapped my arms around his neck, the last fragile thread of resistance snapping as I deepened the kiss.

He growled against my lips, his warm breath sending waves of heat echoing through me. Then he was walking us backward until my spine met the icy wall. His hands slid along the curves of my hips, the swell of my breasts with fierce, possessive intent.

I breathed him in, running my tongue along the seam of his lips, entwining it with his before pulling his bottom lip between my teeth and biting down.

Another growl shook the room, heat and ice warring for dominance as he ground his hips against mine.

His teeth grazed along my throat, and I gasped into him, my fingers curled in his hair before tracking down the hard planes of his body. Memorizing the rise and fall of each muscle, each ridge.

“Stay,” he murmured against my lips, both a demand and a plea.

Something inside me unclenched, a ragged and desperate need that had been coiled for too long, answering his with a wild, untamed hunger.

Without a word, he lifted me up, wrapping my thighs around his waist before pulling me from the wall.

He carried me through the room in a rough, breathless tumble toward the bed. There was the frantic tearing of fabric, the clatter of belt and corset ribbons, hands clawing and finding skin, until the room was only a blur of motion and heat.

When he laid me down, it felt less like falling and more like a surrender I had been rehearsing in secret for years.

My heart thundered in my ears, my breaths panting into the frigid air as he pulled away far enough to look at me.

His teal eyes drank me in, sweeping from my loose navy waves sprawled across his pillow, down to the peaks of my breasts, then further still.

Heat spread across my skin, thrumming where his gaze lingered, where it branded. It was a stark contrast to the ice swirling through the room, one that overwhelmed my senses, the contradiction unraveling me almost as quickly as Draven himself.

When his mouth claimed mine once more, I almost forgot to breathe. His kiss was rough, unrelenting. His tongue tangling with mine in a rhythm that left me seeing constellations bursting across a midnight sky of snow.

And then he slowed, the crescendo fading, as he scattered kisses down my jaw, across my throat, lower still.

Each brush of his lips was a new flame, coaxing, unraveling me a little further until my back arched to meet him. When he pulled one breast into his mouth, pleasure spiked sharp enough to make my talons slip free.

I tried to hold them back— tried to hold me back —but they scraped down his back before I could stop them. He growled, not in pain but in pleasure, and the sound reverberated through my bones.

Stars burst behind my eyes as he moved lower, every kiss scorching a path that left me trembling. He hovered between my thighs, and for one heart-stopping moment, he looked up at me.

A question burned in his gaze.

I nodded wordlessly, and then he was kissing me again, my world breaking apart under the force of it. My body shook, my breath coming in desperate catches, and when his growl vibrated against my thigh, I thought I might shatter.

But I didn’t want to. Not yet.

It didn’t matter that we were here, finally laying claim to one another in a way our bond had begged us to do for so long. I still couldn’t shake the feeling that if I let go now, it would be over.

This spell we were under would break, and I would break with it.

A sweep of his tongue had me surging forward, my claws dragging across his shoulders again, a plea spilling from my lips in a broken whimper. I pushed up onto my elbows just in time for my wings to break free.

He finally relented, a wicked smirk tugging at his lips as he crawled back up my body with predator’s grace.

Relief flooded me as his mouth crashed against mine once more, his tongue and his teeth answering every unspoken question racing through my mind.

Each one another promise. Another vow. Another way he lay claim to me, to us. The moment he pressed his body flush against mine, it was like a lock finally finding its key, a click of absolute rightness.

Our bond flared, consciousness weaving together. I felt his hitch of breath, his answering groan, and knew he felt it too—the wild, spiraling pleasure of us giving and taking in equal measure.

We fit together almost too easily, as if we’d been carved to the same shape.

And for the first time, I wasn’t afraid of breaking.