Page 5 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Draven

“This is taking too long,” I growled.

We had been on the road east for the better part of a week, trudging toward the Unseelie that Lady Noerwyn swore could lead us to my dear, fated bride.

The Skaldwings that were apparently hiding in my own damned court.

Noerwyn ignored me, and I dug my heels into the Velgrun’s flanks, urging the stag into a harder trot that tugged at the still-healing wound in my shoulder.

At least without a sleigh weighing us down, we weren’t shackled to the main roads, but the beasts were still a far cry from my Aldrath steeds back at the palace.

If I could have risked abandoning Lady Noerwyn to the frostbeasts, I would have already icewalked back to the palace to demand answers from my Visionary and reinstate the wards around my home. Instead, we trudged along the countryside like we had all the time in the world.

Like it hadn’t already been nearly a fortnight since the Unseelie stole my bride.

And to what end? To lure me across the border? To officially start another war? Or was this about her ? Something she had done? Some debt her family owed? Or was it to finish whatever the hells they had started with the mages?

None of that answered why she had been outside to begin with, meeting with them. Had she known they were coming? Kept in touch? Spied for them?

I ground my teeth, a muscle in my jaw clenching at the thought. Did she realize the cost of her lies, that my palace was vulnerable to monsters while I took off after the promised salvation for my kingdom?

My companion tipped from her saddle, scrambling to right herself for at least the twelfth time in an hour.

“Though it might go faster if you could keep your shards-damned seat,” I muttered, tugging irritably at the too small cloak that pressed against my neck.

Her dead husband’s cloak, to be precise.

She tracked the motion, eyes darkening before she looked away.

“Well, feel free to explore one of our many other options.” Her voice was weary, but no less sarcastic for it. “I’m sure you’re swimming in them.”

She grunted, straining yet again to keep her seat as her stag leapt over a tree that had fallen onto the path. “That must be why you consented to make a bargain with me, after all.”

The temptation to abandon her to the monsters and return to my palace swelled to a breaking point. And perhaps I would have risked it, if I could have trusted that traveling through the ice wouldn’t rip apart the wound in my chest.

If I could have trusted a frost-damned word my Visionary said…

I grimaced and shoved down thoughts of Nevara and the betrayal that coiled between us.

“I might have made a bargain not to kill your sister, but I made no such promises about you, wench,” I growled.

Frost coated the reins where I gripped them, creeping up across the stag’s sweeping antlers, adding to the layers of ice that had already formed along the sharp tines that peppered the ridges.

Noerwyn’s profile disappeared from my periphery, her mount coming to a stop just before the next ridge.

Shard Mother help her if she drags this out any longer.

“For someone with a vested interest in finding their sister, you really are in no hurry,” I said, tugging on the reins of my stag.

Noerwyn’s blue eyes ignited like winter flames, her mouth curling into a snarl as she glared back at me.

“No one wants to find my sister more than I do,” she hissed. “Do you think I am not painfully aware of what they might subject her to every moment she’s with them?”

The bond twisted like a blade beneath my ribs, my marriage vow viscerally reacting at the thought of Everly being harmed. Already, it pulled at me constantly, urging me south toward the Wilds. I cursed the shards-damned ring for making me feel anything at all.

I circled back, until my Velgrun was next to Noerwyn’s.

“And yet…” I growled, gesturing toward her unmoving stag. “You’ve called the beast to a halt.”

I was stuck trekking through the kingdom at the speed of a wounded yak and relying on the dubious information of a female who harbored as many secrets as her sister did.

“No, he stopped himself,” she argued, nudging the Velgrun with her heels.

“Why would—” I didn’t finish the question. I didn’t need to.

There was only one reason that the stags came to a halt on their own.

The smell of blood.

Sure enough, my stag began stamping his hooves restlessly in the snow, hackles raised as he pulled away from the path ahead.

Every one of my senses was on high alert. I strained to listen to the sounds of the forest for signs that we weren’t alone. Though most of the villages we passed had been untouched, there had been several smaller sites of carnage along back roads like the one we were on now.

I took a deep breath of the frozen night air. It was still and uncharged, and tasted like fresh snow and pine. No scent of whatever had gotten the Velgrun riled.

There was nothing here other than the distant trill of common owlcat and the rustle of the tiny rodents they hunted in the forest's underbrush.

But there were no growls. No eerie silences where the night hid from itself and the frostbeasts lurking in its shadows.

I silently gestured for Noerwyn to stay seated before I dismounted my stag and made my way up the hill. Just over the ridge was a cabin nestled between towering pine trees, its pale logs gleaming with a coat of frost.

It might have been cozy, if not for the slim severed arm gracing the front porch, leftover scraps from a lazy predator. One who had gotten his fill and was only hunting for sport now.

The blood was old, a deep shade of brown, while the flesh was a mottled gray, half-covered by fresh snow. More limbs littered the ground next to the cabin, as if they’d been dragged away or killed mid-run.

I ground my teeth, scanning the rest of the clearing while wondering which of the frost-cursed beasts roaming my kingdom had grown bold enough to waste their kills.

Tharnoks were messy eaters, but in a pack they stripped a carcass down to nothing. Brakhounds sometimes left bones, though not much else. Even then, scavengers would have cleaned the carrion within hours.

Something tugged at the corners of my mind.

“We’re leaving,” I barked, spinning and jerking my chin toward Noerwyn.

For once, she didn’t argue, whether because she knew the look of a house with no survivors, or because she felt the shadow of a trap as keenly as I did.

I swung into the saddle, scanning the treeline as the Velgrun shifted uncomfortably beneath me. That was when I caught it, a line etched deep into the snow near the back of the cabin. It was jagged and wrong.

Like something massive had been dragged just beneath the surface of the ground.

What in the frozen hells…

My gaze swept wider. When I strained my eyes, I noticed trees bent at unnatural angles, their bark scored with clean gouges far too high for wolves and too precise for Tharnoks.

A patch of frost shimmered strangely where the snow had caved in, as though something had tunneled beneath.

Beside me, Noerwyn’s stag tossed its head, its hooves striking the ground. She stiffened, her lips parting slightly, while her eyes locked on that broken line in the snow. Still, she didn’t speak.

Every instinct inside of me said that this was wrong. Too wrong.

The estate had been…too coincidental. Enough that I suspected the Unseelie bastards had a hand in that as well.

I could almost believe it was just another of their ploys—one more distraction. One more mess meant to tear at my kingdom’s defenses until there was nothing left to stand against them, but this felt different. Older. Darker.

Either way, I had to find her.

The bond throbbed in my chest, drumming in time to a bitter and accusing beat. Without Everly, there was no stopping the monsters. No saving my kingdom. And if the Unseelie killed her…

I clenched the reins tighter and turned to Noerwyn.

“What do you know of the Unseelie’s treatment of your sister?”

Her lips thinned. Her gaze flicked from mine to the path ahead.

It wasn’t the first time I’d questioned her on our route, but it was the first time I had asked directly about my wife.

And the first time she hesitated.

“There are things you’d be better off asking your wife.”

My lips parted, a bitter response balancing on the tip of my tongue when the world around me faded to a warm dining hall. A crackling fire blazed in a hearth, and silver talons dug into a wooden table.

When I blinked, the vision was gone, and once again, I was surrounded by snow. I cleared my throat and returned my attention to Lady Noerwyn.

“She doesn’t have a history of being forthcoming,” I countered. “Nor a bargain that compels her thusly.”

The vow flared between us, seizing her tongue. Anything that would help us get to my wife or understand how she was being treated was in the parameters of our bargain. She pulsed with mana a heartbeat later, cursing under her breath.

With a glare, she dragged in a breath and forced the words out. “My sister was half-dead when she came to us. Burns and cuts everywhere. Her feet destroyed from walking for days on bare snow. I don’t know how she survived it.”

“The mages…” The words slipped out more growl than voice, rough enough to scrape the back of my teeth.

“I never asked her,” Noerwyn said quickly, “but I pieced it together over time. She was terrified of being dragged back there. Terrified enough that when it came down to it, she showed up for your summons rather than return to that life.” She swallowed. “And?—”

“What?”

The vow caught her again, forcing the truth loose.

“She talks in her sleep sometimes. She knew someone was looking for her. And that they would kill to find her. That’s why I made sure I could find them first.”