Page 43 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Everly

I landed in the mouth of a cave.

The air was warm to the point of being hot, thick with the familiar mana that bled from the stone and the dark, patient and enormous.

Beyond the cave’s mouth, a narrow river drifted quietly through the trees, its surface glinting where the light touched it. The forest swayed with the breeze, branches brushing together in a low murmur, as if unaware of the heavy power gathered just inside the stone.

The serenity of it all was jarring against the suffocating weight that pressed from within the cave, like it was trying to test me with the intentional reminder that there was still time to walk away, to find my way back to safety.

Snow and blood spliced together in a flash, showing Nevara’s shining mana working in time with Draven’s relentless barrage of ice.

The monster shrieked, more in anger than pain, shooting out webbing that glittered like broken glass.

No. There was no turning back now. I had come here for a reason.

If he allows you to find him, you must be sure of what you want.

I was sure now. Even if I had been willing to risk my sister, my friends, the people that – under duress or not – I had been chosen to protect, I still wouldn’t have wavered now.

Not when Draven was in danger.

I wouldn’t lose him just when I finally understood what it was to have him. I couldn’t. He might hate me all over again for taking this risk but I would do it every time to make sure I didn’t have to watch him die.

To give him a chance at a future that was more than bloodshed and monsters and making the difficult choices over and over again.

I took a step forward.

A deep voice rumbled through the cave, rattling my bones.

“Tell me who you are, and why you have come here.” It rolled through the hollow of my chest until I felt like I was growing smaller, fading into nothingness, utterly inconsequential against a thing that could unmake mountains with a thought.

The cave trembled and shook with a presence that brought me to my knees, a suffocating force of mana. I strained to breathe, to think.

What had he asked?

Who am I?

Images flashed through my mind. Black tresses in the mirror. Chains on a table and scars on my skin. I saw myself hanging from the shackles in a cave, weak and bloodied and broken.

No. That’s not who I am.

I heard forced wedding vows, felt the weight of a crown I never asked for, saw my wings bursting from fabric that was never meant to hold them.

Two versions of myself, both true and both false. It still wasn’t an answer. It wasn’t who I was.

Whatever else you are, you are my wife. Draven’s voice echoed in my mind.

I heard Wynnie next. Honesty, always.

Hadn’t I always struggled with that? Out of necessity or out of fear, I had lied to myself far more than I had lied to the people around me, but deep down, I knew who I was.

I was the girl who was born into two worlds but fit into neither, who had a lifetime of difficult choices, who loved deeply. Someone who had made far too many mistakes and endured far too much trauma and found a way to come back from both.

And yes, sometimes I was a liar, but I was a shards-damned survivor.

I pushed to my feet, pushing against the phantom wind of the power that flooded from the inside of the cave. The gale clawed at me like a living thing—hands on my cloak, teeth at my ankles—trying to yank me back into kneeling.

My legs burned with the effort of standing; each step forward felt like stealing ground from a god. I planted my feet, gritted my teeth, and forced the next step with the sheer determination that had gotten me through unending hours of torture and pain.

I hadn’t shifted for Kyros. I hadn’t cried for the mages.

And I would not yield to this dragon when I had everything at stake.

Tears stabbed at the back of my eyes, but I forced myself to go on, to think past the power that was crushing me from the inside out.

Why? Why was I here?

Draven’s carved features flashed in my vision, not the blood-streaked, intent version I imagined in the battle with the Korythid, but flushed in pleasure as he was last night. When he had been mine.

When I had realized what it meant to belong to him in truth, and what I was willing to risk to keep him.

I had seen it then, the perfect synergy of my soulbond, of the contradiction that had plagued me since birth. Unseelie and Seelie. For the first time, I understood why the Shard Mother had chosen me to be the bride of the strongest fae our realm had ever seen.

Our bond…it was an endless duality of chaos and order, two sides of the same coin, the balance that was missing in the realm. I didn’t need to break the bond because I wasn’t defective and there was no mutual destruction.

There was only power.

I drew the cave’s heat into my lungs, letting it burn. Letting it burn away every insecurity until there was none left. Until it steadied me.

“I am Everly Skaeldruna Elarion Ashwynter. I am the Queen of Winter and the heir to the Shadow Clan.”

Every step forward was a fight, a limb-by-limb claiming of ground. My boots slipped on wet stone; I had to shove my toes into cracks, curl my fingers around ridges, bite down on the taste of my own blood to keep from doubling over.

One foot, then the other, until walking was no longer an effort of will but a fact I could measure.

“I am the daughter of the dragon.”

I squared my shoulders, lifting my chin in the face of the unrelenting storm of mana, letting it sweep through me instead of over me for a change.

“And I am here to claim the power that is rightfully mine.”