Page 7 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Everly

That evening, I prepared myself to shatter the fragile truce I had been forced into, trying not to wonder what the fallout would be.

Tension hung in the dining room, so thick I could all but see it filling the air around us, like the bloody shards of ice that settled around my sister’s estate with each Tharnok that met its end.

The rest of the clan felt it too.

Each scrape of cutlery dragged through the stillness, each bite taken too cautiously, as though those eating feared the sound might draw the attention of their Thane.

I stared past the haunch of meat resting between us, its charred skin splitting where my uncle had carved away the first slice. The tang of smoke and fat mixed with the faint sweetness of berry-wine, heavy on my tongue.

It was suffocating. I was suffocating.

Or at least, I would, if I had to get through another day pretending that I didn’t want to slowly eviscerate the male across the table every time I looked at him.

“Problems, my niece?” His voice was as condescending as his smile.

My mother’s emerald eyes flared briefly, subtly, though she continued eating her meal in silence.

I gritted my teeth, reminding myself that I had nowhere else to go. I was at his mercy.

Again.

But that didn’t mean I had to be in the dark, too.

I gripped my mug a little tighter and drained the remaining wine as if it would offer either the courage I needed to speak up or perhaps some eloquence at the very least.

I had given my mother every chance to find me and give me some shards-blasted answers, but she hadn’t yet sought me out. Hadn’t offered a single shards-damned explanation for any of it.

Her lips parted, her brows knitting together like she was prepared to speak, maybe even to stop me before I could.

“Everly—”

“I want to know about my mana,” I cut her off quickly, directing my words to my uncle instead.

If I thought it had been quiet before, it was nothing compared to the silence that fell at my words, a poisoned arrow sinking into flesh.

“To what end?” He asked after a beat.

Disbelief flooded through me. To what end??

“It meant enough to have me tortured for weeks on end but now matters so little that it’s below your notice?”

He sighed, sitting back in his chair.

“It’s past time you let that go,” he gently chided, as if I were little more than a petulant child. “We all do what we must. Had your mother been forthright, there would have been no need to go to such measures.”

My mother’s hand clenched around her fork in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. The Thane tracked the motion, but continued on as though he hadn’t.

“As it stands…now that we know you have mana, that the Shard Mother has not cursed you, that will be enough.”

“Enough for who?” Certainly not for me.

“For a potential match, obviously.” He waved his hand dismissively and returned to his meal, as if the conversation was over.

My ring seared into my skin, like the very notion was offensive to it. All of the sudden, too many pieces came tumbling into place.

Why he had wanted me to come willingly.

Why it didn’t matter that I was a Hollow in practice, as long as I wasn’t one in truth.

Because Hollows could only breed Hollows, but my child would be perfectly normal—for a Seelie abomination, anyway.

Was it a small price to pay, knowing you had stolen the bride of the Frostgrave King? Unseelie only mated with their own kind, but there were plenty of Skaldwing clans in the Wilds. Had the others bid on the right to own me?

“I can’t match with anyone,” I bit out, trying to quell the unreasonable panic rising in my chest. “The bond can’t be broken.”

“All marriage bonds can be broken,” my mother cut in, her tone reassuring.

“No, this one is different,” I assured them.

My uncle scoffed through a mouthful of charred meat and root vegetables. “Who told you that?”

“Draven did.” As soon as I said the words, I heard how they sounded, even before my mother’s gaze filled with something close to pity, my uncle’s with scorn.

But I felt the veracity in my soul.

I am many things, Morta Mea, but I have never once lied to you. The ring would have vibrated if that had been a lie.

Whatever else he was, Draven was not a liar. Could not have been.

“You don’t understand?—”

“That’s enough, Everly. You might have fled from your duty once before, but you’re old enough now to know better.”

An anger like I never knew before flared to life. All I saw was red, the color of flames. The color of my blood staining the floor and the mage’s pristine robes.

“If by ‘fled from my duty’ you meant to say, for my life before your precious mages could end it, then yes. I suppose I wasn’t the obedient child you’d been hoping for.”

Pain lanced through my back, at least the memory of it. It tugged at the skin beneath my wings, following the path of each carefully placed scar.

My uncle went as still as the mountains beyond the longhouse. Shadows stretched around him, blocking the light from the setting sun. I had pushed him too far, but I couldn’t bring myself to back down.

He had seen me humbled enough for a shards-blasted lifetime.

My mother cut in again, but this time, her voice was taut to the point of breaking.

“I think we can all agree that Everly had her reasons to stay away. Regardless, nothing has to be decided right now.”

My uncle’s glare said otherwise, but I took the small reprieve she gave me. Time. There was still time to…do something. At the very least, time for them to realize I was right about the bond.

“Whether anyone would accept that I had no mana or no access to mana isn’t the point. Why wouldn’t you want me to unbind it?”

“Because it cannot be unbound!” My mother was closer to yelling than I had ever heard her, just this side of pleading. For forgiveness? For understanding?

Hope was a funny thing, the way I had believed I could keep it at bay. But it had taken root.

For a handful of weeks, I had started to believe that I wouldn’t always be this.

Weak. Useless. Hollow .

I shook my head slowly. “That’s not possible. You know how it was done, so we can figure out how to undo it now.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Everly, it took years to bind your mana. It would take years to break down those walls, and the risk to you…I won’t put you in that kind of danger.”

I sat forward, digging my talons into the carved arms of my chair.

“Don’t you think that’s my choice to make, if I want to at least try to live my life with a small degree of normality? To be able to defend myself?”

Not to mention Winter, but I couldn’t very well explain that to her right now.

She lifted her chin, shoulders squaring. “We aren’t the Seelie, we are quite capable of living our daily lives without mana, and even if we weren’t, it wouldn’t be worth your life.”

“The life that has been in danger from the moment you bound my mana?”

She flinched like I had slapped her, and guilt flooded through me. I knew that wasn’t fair, that my life would have been forfeit far sooner if she hadn’t taken the measures she did.

But she didn’t begin to understand the life I had been subject to since then.

“I have always been defenseless,” I said in a more subdued tone.

My uncle sighed like he grew weary of this conversation. “Which is why you have been sparring all week.”

“Well, if the Frostgrave King decides to take me back, I’ll be sure and hurl a dagger at him then.” It was the only card I had to play, the only threat he couldn’t realistically deny.

Even if my ring trembled like it wanted to challenge the very idea.

The Thane cocked his head, studying me like he could read every convoluted thought running through my mind. “Would you fight him if he did?”

I felt hands tracing my scars. Breath on my skin. Then endless, icy fury, strong enough to transcend kingdoms.

Morta Mea.

I fisted my hands in my lap, resisting the urge to run them nervously along the warrior’s braid woven along my scalp.

“Not without mana,” I said in as neutral a tone as I could manage.

My mother leaned toward me, placing her hand over mine and gently prying my talons from the wood.

“You’re safe now,” she whispered, reaching across me to disengage my other hand. “I will keep you safe this time.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it before I could speak the truth aloud—that it had been a long time since I could trust anyone with my safety, let alone her.

A deep voice echoed through my mind, through my soul.

I protect what belongs to me .

But I hadn’t truly belonged to Draven, not then and sure as hells not now.

“No one is ever truly safe. Isn’t that what you taught me?” What my childhood would have taught me, even if you hadn’t drilled the words into my head like a warrior’s mantra.

She wrapped her arms around me, shielding me from my uncle’s disappointed gaze.

“I just need you to trust me, Everly. Please.”

Her low murmur sounded so desperate that I squeezed her tighter, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to agree. Perhaps my unwilling husband had rubbed off on me somewhere along the way.

I wasn’t sure that I trusted anyone anymore.