Page 17

Draven

T he village was in ruins.

Splintered wood cracked beneath my boots as I stepped over what was left of someone’s life. A doorframe clawed clean off the hinges, blood frozen in violent arcs across the snow.

They hadn’t stood a chance.

It was the third village we had come across in a week. Each one was the same—homes gutted, corpses ripped open and discarded like scraps.

I ground my teeth, and the world grew colder.

I had killed more than this. Shattered armies under my heel and ripped souls from bodies with my bare hands. But this… this scraped at something raw. Not because I had grown soft. Shards, no.

But because these people were mine. My subjects. My kingdom.

Rage uncoiled in my chest, burning me from the inside out. I forced myself to exhale, slow and cold. I let frost thread out along the wreckage, curling like smoke from my fingertips. My mana was too volatile when I was like this, on the verge of losing control.

“Eryx,” I called for the Lord General without turning. “The fire. Is it new?”

He came to stand beside me, boots crunching softly over soot and bone. His armor was dusted in ash, streaked with the blood of beasts and fae alike.

“We checked,” he said flatly. “Not one of the monsters. The villagers fought back, burned something during the attack. It spread fast. They were already losing the fight when the fire took the rest.”

So not some new hellish beast from Autumn Court then.

“And the rest?”

“Same as the last,” he said, voice tight. “No survivors. Claw marks suggest another pack. At least five. Maybe more. No sign of any prisoners, either.”

Shards-damned Tharnoks.

We had already hunted down one pack, and now, there was another?

“Frostbeasts don’t take prisoners,” I muttered.

Then again, Tharnoks hadn’t hunted in packs before, either.

Before me.

Before I took the throne and my name became a curse on the lips of half the realm. Before the Frost Grave Massacre, where I painted the snow red with the blood of Unseelie.

Eryx’s words echoed, sharper now, like glass grinding against bone. I turned them over like pieces of a puzzle. Frostbeasts didn’t take prisoners, even now…but the Unseelie did.

“What have you heard?” I demanded.

The air trembled around us. Mana leaked from my veins like blood from an old wound, the wind responding in a howl that sent flurries spinning into chaos.

Eryx didn’t flinch. He had fought at my side for as long as either of us could remember.

“There’ve been whispers,” he admitted. “Movement near the border. It’s unconfirmed, but scouts say they’re seeing shadows in the skies. Shapes. Smoke where there shouldn’t be.”

“Rumors,” I growled, though the word tasted like the ash around us.

“Maybe.” He hesitated. “Or maybe they’re testing us. Waiting for the right moment.”

“To strike while my people are busy dying in pieces?” I growled. “While monsters tear through my villages and we scrape their remains off the snow?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. I could see the truth of it in his silence.

I turned my gaze to the wreckage. Charred timber. Shattered stone. And once again, I felt that old, familiar weight settle across my shoulders.

The weight of being the only thing standing between the Winter Court and absolute ruin.

I turned from the ruin. Frost bloomed behind me with each step, thick and silver and sharp as glass.

My wolves fell into step beside me, hackles raised like they, too, were eager to hunt down the beasts that had done this.

A flash of pain stopped me in my tracks. It was sharp and severe, like a spike of ice being driven straight through bone.

My ring—the blood-forged shackle tying me to my bride—was glowing bright white. The metal had turned to ice, but it seared like fire.

Like a warning.