Page 9 of Bound to the Shadow Queen (Frostbound Court #2)

Draven

The days since the cabin blurred together, village after village, ruin after ruin. Smoke that smelled of hearth fires one morning, charred flesh the next. Every league we rode tasted like ash on my tongue.

With each mile, Noerwyn grew quieter. She only ever answered when I pressed her, like now.

“My father was a drinker,” she said, a low and brittle explanation of how she knew about this hideout. “Most nights, he could barely stand. But in his stupors, he muttered names. Mirevyn most of all. Others I didn’t recognize.”

Her hands tightened on the reins, her breath forming frozen clouds in the thin night air.

“Eventually, I forced the truth out of him. He had a way to find Everly’s family— her other family .

He could reach them if he wished. But I never did.

My sister didn’t want to be found, and I didn’t want to put her in more danger. ”

The memory of Everly’s scars edged into my vision, this time on a much smaller frame, each one new, still healing. I forcibly shoved them away.

“The only time I was tempted was when you summoned her to the Winter Palace.” Noerwyn brushed back an errant tuft of silver fur from her deep green cloak, a breath catching in her throat that was half-laugh, half-sigh. “But I never imagined she’d be chosen.”

The comment dripped with accusation.

“Neither did I,” I muttered darkly, the memory touching too close to all the things I refused to think about.

Nevara’s betrayal piling on top of my wife’s. Crystal-blue eyes narrowed in defiance, fists clenched until they were bleeding. Was she staring down her captors now with the same infuriating combination of idiocy and bravery?

The road ahead of us ended at a wall of black pines. Their trunks rose like jagged shards of ice, but their shadows were too tangled to be natural.

There was no path around or through them, or any sound of creatures stirring behind the trunks. Only a heavy, expectant silence.

I scanned the moonlit forest for movement. For silhouettes that might be hiding in plain sight.

Noerwyn pointed toward a bundle of gnarled branches that hung from a tree in the center of the copse. “I think that’s what we’re looking for.”

I dismounted the stag, my boots crunching through the packed snow as Noerwyn followed close behind.

I blinked and was no longer in the forest. Instead, I saw a male with a teasing smile, a carved wooden cup in his hands. Well I liked the nightdress, but the leathers might be more appropriate for flying.

Amusement colored the vision. Appropriate is overrated, wouldn’t you say?

Then the image was gone.

What in the ever-loving shards-damned hells was that?

The air around us sharpened, wind whipping through the trees while frost whispered outward with each step. It further coated the ground and the base of the forest, solidifying the snow into a sheet of ice.

A shadow fluttered in my periphery just before the faint sound of a bowstring being drawn echoed from the treetops.

I turned just as the arrow sliced through the air.

Rowan wood. My lip curled into a snarl at the scent, and I caught the faint sheen of iron worked into its tip. My wound was all but healed now, but a phantom pain echoed with the memory of the night I was shot.

The night she was taken.

Ice leapt from my palm, a shield rising in an instant. The arrow splintered against it, bursting into a cloud of glittering shards that hissed into the snow.

The archer had barely shifted to notch another arrow before frost climbed the tree he perched on, racing up the trunk to wrap his legs. He struggled, wings flaring, a cry working its way up his throat.

With one precise flick of my wrist, the ice snapped inward, folding his body in on itself until he fell shattered to the ground, shards of wing and blood scattering across the roots.

Noerwyn flinched and covered her face to protect herself from the icy shrapnel.

Two more shadows broke from the treeline, their blackened blades gleaming. They lunged for Noerwyn.

I was faster.

The first Skaldwing swung low, his blade catching only air as I stepped into him. My hand closed around his face. Ice surged outward, crawling over his skull until his scream cut off in a brittle crack.

The second struck from Noerwyn’s blind side. I raised a wall of ice, thorned with jagged spires. The female’s blade scraped uselessly against it before the wall burst outward, crystalline shards scoring her arms and wings, blood steaming where it touched the frost.

She screamed in pain as I darted forward. Ice coalesced in my hand, twisting into the shape of a long, gleaming blade, its edges glimmering with a cold light that bled mist into the air.

With one precise thrust, I drove the frost-forged weapon through her chest. The glow in her eyes dimmed as frost spread from the wound, veins turning glassy beneath her skin before she collapsed at my feet in a cascade of glittering ice.

The present shattered, this time with a memory I was all too familiar with.

Crimson-soaked snow covered the ground, and the air was thick with smoke and iron.

My mother fell to her knees, her breath torn raggedly from her throat as a Skaldwing loomed behind her. Her eyes widened as they locked onto me, her lips mouthing words I couldn’t hear.

A blackened blade wrenched free from her torso, her blood warm as it rained down on my face. She pitched forward, reaching for me with trembling fingers that never closed around mine.

I stood still, letting the memory settle into my bones and letting the hunger in my mana twist tighter.

I turned back to the pines. My hand pressed against the cluster of ancient branches, frost crawling outward in jagged veins. The glamour cracked, splintering with a sound like breaking glass.

Pale wood emerged from the illusion. Deep violet runes carved into the trunk pulsed faintly, as though sensing the hunger in my mana.

I didn’t bother with subtlety. Fury burst from my veins, shattering the door into icy splinters. The roots beneath us groaned, the living wood trembling as the passage split wide.

Let them hear me coming. Let them feel the storm descending.

The den opened before me, hollowed through the heart of the trees. Knotted roots curled along the walls like ribs, dripping with sap that gleamed in the faint gutter of faelight.

Shadows warped across the chamber, broken by the restless stir of onyx wings. Skaldwings. Their eyes caught the glow, sharp and unblinking, shifting from suspicion to recognition to fear.

The air itself recoiled when I stepped inside. Frost quickly spread over the walls, crystals blooming outward as to coat the walls and floor and ceiling. I filled the hollow with nothing but hatred, nothing but vengeance.

“Where is she?” I asked, my voice slicing through the silence like one of their shards-damned blades.

The nearest male sneered, his lips curling in an ill-fated attempt at bravery or defiance.

His mistake.

Ice covered him instantly, racing up his limbs until he glittered like a statue. I closed my fist, and he shattered with a sharp crack.

With a flick of my wrist, spears of ice shot outward, skewering the others and slamming them against the walls at their backs. Their wings spread in agony as the frost drove them into the living wood. One by one they froze in place, displayed like pinned specimens in some grotesque collector’s box.

Violet runes glowed around one of the Skaldwing bastards, flaring to life the more he fought against his restraints.

Another doorway, then? I stepped closer, and the Unseelie writhed and cursed even more. Their diaphanous wings strained against the ice, but their struggles only made the display more pitiful.

I took another deliberate step forward, the hush of my boots on frozen ground louder than their cries.

“Speak.”

The closest male roared as the frost dug deeper into his flesh, the sound echoing through the chamber like the cry of something already half-dead.

Before he could break, another voice rasped through the dark. Recognition stirred within me. He had been at the estate. He had restrained my wife.

And now his gaze was fixed on her sister.

“You’re her, aren’t you?” It was less of a question and more of a realization. “Her sister. She asked about you. She is safe.”

Noerwyn took a step forward, relief radiating from her small frame.

“Shut it, Alaric,” snarled the male at his side.

“Where. Is. She?” I bit out each word with quiet lethality.

The one named Alaric set his jaw. “Just because you claimed her doesn’t make her yours.”

Fury coiled inside me, dark and endless, like a storm that refused to still. Frost snaked from the shackles on his wrists, blackening his flesh from the tips of his fingers inward, each vein turning brittle under the weight of my mana.

“But luring her into a trap that nearly got her killed is fair game?”

His expression was confirmation enough. The Unseelie were responsible for every bit of carnage at the estate.

“Tell me where she is.” My voice was a low, dangerous rasp, an icy blade slicing into skin.

A surge of mana burst outward, slamming him back against the root-walls, frostbite spreading up his wings until the membrane split and flaked like old parchment. His groan was ragged, teeth bared against the agony.

“There is nothing you can do,” he panted, “that would make me betray the people I love.”

Again, I saw Everly’s scars. Her fists clenched and bleeding. My mother’s blood staining the snow.

“The Unseelie are not capable of love.”

The male on his left snarled, thrashing against the ice. I turned my mana on him instead. The veins under his skin rose to the surface, hardening as his blood turned to ice. The fight drained from him with one last twitch, frost fogging his lungs until he was nothing but a statue.

Alaric shouted, straining against the shackles, his shredded wings flaring in helpless fury.

I let my mana flow back to him. Slowly. Purposefully. Frost curled across the ground, climbing his legs, cracking through skin and sinew. His talons split as the ice pried them apart. His wings twisted in their sockets, the bones groaning before snapping under the pressure.

He screamed, and the sound threaded through me like fire. I thought of Everly’s scars, carved into her skin by Unseelie hands. I thought of the night my mother fell to her knees in blood-soaked snow, her eyes lifeless and unyielding as the Skaldwing blade tore free from her back.

I pressed harder. His breaths broke, shallow and wet, his eyes rolling back with pain.

The tree shuddered. A gale ripped through the chamber, slamming frost and blood into shards that glittered in the faelight. Roots cracked. Wood splintered. Iridescent light flooded the hollow, dazzling and cold.

“Don’t.” The single word echoed across the cramped space.

I didn’t need to look to know who had come. The mana was familiar, threaded into mine from the day I took the crown. The voice even more so.

I hadn’t gone to my Visionary, so she had come to me.

The clicking of Nevara’s staff heralded her entrance. Her ethereal hair was pulled back in a simple traveling braid, her pale pink cloak a jarring contrast to the carnage she delicately stepped around. She held out her hand somewhere between a plea and a warning.

The warning she hadn’t bothered to give me when she let me crown a traitor as Queen, then allowed that same bride to be taken by those whose lives Nevara was so desperate for me to spare.

I didn’t hesitate. With a clench of my fist, the male exploded into a cloud of blood and snow.

Only his necklace remained, falling to the ground with an ominous clatter.