Page 42 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Everly

My fingers trembled as I clumsily laced my corset after Draven left.

He was so confident that he would be fine, but there was something off about all of this. This monster was wrong and more powerful than it should be.

And Draven was going to fight it alone.

No. Like hells he was.

Leaving my corset as it was, I burst through the door to my own room.

Wynnie shifted on her pillow, letting out a small yawn.

“So much for not wanting to be chained to his—” her faux smugness cut off abruptly when she lifted her eyes to mine.

“What happened?”

“I—I need my compendium.” Where had I left it?

Wynnie shot out of bed to help me look, moving aside furs I had piled on the couch by the bed.

My gaze landed on Lumen, lying as far from my sister as he could get and curled up like he was trying to look very, very small for her sake.

I froze in my tracks, remembering the reason he had first been assigned to me. He was more than just a guard wolf, he also served as a guide. I could find the monster. Wynnie could warn the soldiers.

“I need you to go to Eryx and Nevara.” My voice was abrupt in the tension. “Tell them that Draven needs them at…” I closed my eyes, trying to feel through our bond. “The northeast end of the wards.”

“Of course, but, Everly, I don’t know the way?—”

“Lumen does.”

The wolf stood at attention. Wynnie swallowed, still not entirely comfortable being that close to him. But she nodded with the same unflinching spirit that had kept her going through a house of corpses and monsters.

“Whatever happens, Draven is strong.” She crossed over to me, holding my gaze in the shimmering aurora light. “I’m sure it’s going to be all right.”

I wanted to believe her. How many times had Draven gone to fight and had always come back all right?

But a rare simmering of panic was creeping through the bond.

“Honesty always,” I whispered, not sure which of us I was referring to. Her, for making promises she couldn’t keep, or me, trying to tell her all the things I couldn’t put into words.

A shadow crossed her face, but she squeezed my hand once, then squared her shoulders, heading for the door.

“Lead the way…Lumen,” she said quietly, disappearing into the hall.

Then she was gone, leaving me alone. As soon as she left, I went back to searching for my compendium. I found it in the study, where Mirelda had tucked it neatly onto my shelf with the other books.

I yanked it out, bringing it to the desk and flipping through the images the way I should have done last night—would have done, if I hadn’t been so distracted by Draven’s hands on my skin and his unexpected offer to break the bond.

Something pricked at the back of my mind, but I forced myself to focus. Wards. I was looking for something that could harm the wards.

My heartbeat pounded too fast, too loud. The page winked out of existence, replaced by a shuddering image that punched the breath from my lungs.

Eight massive legs, jointed and hooked like barbed spears, slammed down into the ice. They dug trenches with each step, carrying a body plated in overlapping bone-white armor that caught the light and split it into shards.

The monster rose higher than any beast had a right to, each movement sickeningly deliberate, as though it remembered every step it had ever taken.

Frostbeasts weren’t supposed to grow this large anymore…

Not in this age. It shouldn’t be possible…

A ncient .

That was the only word that clawed through the terror consuming me now.

My stomach twisted.

Ice flashed from my—no, from Draven’s—outstretched hand. Frost roared through the air as he struck, but the thing only reared back, its tail arcing overhead like a whip. Its stinger dripped with an onyx resin that hissed as it struck the ground, burning holes into the ice.

My pulse slammed against my throat, a gasp escaping me as it sent out a piercing cry.

The creature’s face split wider than it should, mandibles clicking open to show teeth like frozen glass—rows and rows of them, jagged and glistening.

Draven dodged, his cloak snapping with frost-laden wind as another leg crashed down where he’d stood an instant before.

Another ear-splitting screech rang out, before a constellation of red, glinting eyes blinked into existence. All of them locked onto Draven, all of them seeing too much.

The vision jolted and blurred as the monster disappeared beneath the icy ground. I could feel Draven’s anger, the undertones of panic as the ground beneath him shook.

Then, the beast burst free from beneath the ice again, erupting upward in a spray of snow and shattered stone. Draven braced against the impact, frost blazing from his palms, but the sheer force of it still sent him skidding back.

I cried out, but the sound sent me flying back into my own consciousness.

Instead, I focused on the book in my hands, flipping back through the pages.

Ancient… It was the only explanation I could think of for something this powerful. Some terror escaped from fireside stories, or old legends… a nightmare come to life. That’s what had been niggling at me…

Finally, I found the page I was searching for. Bile crept up my throat as I stared down at sketches and notes about the Elderborne —the name scholars gave the colossal beasts that had no place in a world fenced by wards and treaties.

With a trembling finger I traced the inked diagram. Across the margin, an old textbook line stared up at me in my cramped script:

Where the Elderborne walked, the Shard Mother swept her hand. She unmade their nests and salted their lairs that the fae might not be ground beneath them; had she not, the Courts themselves would have been devoured and the line of fae extinguished.

The sentence struck like an executioner's axe.

Whatever had happened to unbalance Winter, it was escalating sharply now if the divide had awoken one of these.

Panic tasted metallic at the back of my mouth.

Draven’s face fractured through my thoughts—snow clinging to his hair, his jaw set, the way he moved like he was carving order out of chaos. But it wasn’t working. The creature wasn’t slowing down.

He couldn’t fight this alone. He couldn’t… He could… He will not die.

My breathing hitched as I forced my thoughts away from the dark path they were racing down.

Maybe—if I could reach him—I could give him an edge.

I scanned my notes again, desperate for anything that might pass as a weakness. There—a faint line sketched at the juncture where the plated armor of its leg met the body, an old annotation noting how the scales there shifted with each movement, leaving a vulnerable seam.

I locked onto the drawing, tracing the ink with my fingertip, pouring every shred of will I had into the page. See it , I begged silently. See it, Draven. Right here.

The surprise that hummed through the link between us was so sharp and real, I had to believe it came from the image I’d just carved into his mind. That I had done something besides sit and stew in my own fear.

My hands clenched until my knuckles ached. My talons slid free from my fingertips aching to do more.

Always. Always the ache to do more.

Monsters gnawed at Draven’s kingdom—the kingdom I had sworn myself to, whether I’d wanted to or not. And every time they came, I was forced to sit on the sidelines while the people I loved bled for a world I couldn’t touch.

Useless. Helpless.

Unless…

I raced over to my bookshelves, yanking another one free. An older book, bound in Unseelie leather and sent to me for a reason.

Do not take your freedom just to walk to your death.

But what if I wasn’t walking to my death? What if this was the only way to save the people of Winter?

To save Draven?

I pieced together my conversation with Isren, along with all the things I had read.

It was true that the dragons didn’t take kindly to unexpected visitors, but according to this book, they were highly protective of their own…

That didn’t help me find him.

There had been something, something that felt inconsequential when I was skimming through this tome, looking for information about the wards. When I hadn’t known I was the dragon’s descendant or felt the residue of the power it left behind.

But now…

There. A small sentence, tacked onto a larger passage detailing the many ways in which a dragon’s hide was impenetrable.

Dragons guard their scales above all else because they serve as portals to the beasts themselves.

There were no drawings here like in the rest of the book, nothing to tell me where to find a scale or what one might look like. It was a fool’s hope, maybe one I had fabricated entirely in my mind…

Still, I raced into Draven’s rooms. I had only ever felt one thing that felt like the crystals, potent and chaotic and ancient and familiar .

My mother’s necklace.

I had just had my hands on every inch of his skin, run them along his clothes before he took them off, and it hadn’t been on him.

So it was here somewhere. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath as I tried to sense any lingering echo of the power that was locked in the amulet. It was here. I could just barely sense it when I focused, like a whisper on the tip of my tongue.

I followed the faint sensation, stopping when I got to the carved midnight desk in his study. There.

My mouth went dry, my heart thundering an unsteady staccato like hail on a stained glass window.

I wrenched open the drawer, and there it was. With trembling fingers, I reached for the pendant, undoing the tiny clasp and prying it open.

A violet light flashed, strong enough to blind me if I hadn’t squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them, the same strange prismatic shard awaited me, still glowing faintly like it sensed my presence.

Its surface was alive, shifting like molten glass, fractured facets catching on themselves until the colors bled together—violet, obsidian, silver, and gold.

Light pulsed through it like a heartbeat, slow at first, then quickening to match my own.

With every throb, the air thickened, charged, as if the shard breathed power into the room.

It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and once again it called to me.

A summons in my blood, heavy as iron, certain as the turning of the stars.

It pressed into me with the weight of generations, as though an ancient presence recognized me, claimed me.

Dark, overwhelming, terrible in its enormity…

and yet it felt like home. Like the echo of a voice I had never heard and had always known.

This time, I didn’t resist the pull. Instead, I gave into its siren song, touching my finger to the scale.

Then there was nothing but darkness.