Page 25

Everly

O nce again, I hadn’t slept.

Not for lack of trying but because sleep required peace, something I hadn’t known from the moment I was summoned to this palace.

From the beginning, it had been about survival. About hiding the truth. About staying one step ahead of discovery, of death.

But now… he knew. The king knew, and he hadn’t killed me. Yet.

I rolled over in the oversized bed and stared up at the ceiling.

Shadows danced along the moulding, each one looking more and more like an axe waiting to fall.

For the cold finality of my life. Night after night, I watched those shadows, waiting for it to fall.

And night after shards-damned night, it didn’t.

And now… here I was, still waiting even though my secret was out there, exposed like a raw nerve.

Should I be relieved? Or more afraid?

The not knowing gnawed at something inside me.

I turned over in bed a few more times before angrily fluffing my pillow and laying back down.

Each passing hour somehow deepened my exhaustion, and made me more restless. My thoughts swirled uselessly, tangled in threads of dread and disbelief. Every time I started to drift off to sleep, the memory of his voice would cut through me like a freshly sharpened blade.

“Do you think any part of me wanted to marry you?”

It shouldn’t have stung.

Not when he was a monster. Not when I hadn’t wanted to marry him either.

My chest tightened, a flicker of something unwanted flaring to life and then twisting. Shame, maybe. Or the bond. Some traitorous thread rebelling against the idea that either of us might wish for something else.

For now, I would have to content myself with the fact that the longer he kept me alive, the longer my sister was safe. And I would do whatever I could to keep her that way.

Finally, I sat up with a huff and leaned my head back against the headboard, eyelids gritty with fatigue.

If I was being completely honest with myself, I was also disappointed that I hadn’t seen Nevara after the ceremony. We weren’t precisely friends, but she had been…warmer, until the attack. Then she had closed off entirely.

Because of something she had Seen?

Batty squeaked irritably from her perch above my bed, clearly tired of my spiraling. She stretched her wings before dropping from the curtain to land in my lap. I gave her a weak smile, one that didn’t quite reach my eyes.

“Yes, I know,” I muttered. “I’ll stop thinking. It’s not helping anyway.”

Mirelda’s knock sounded at the door earlier than usual. And when she entered, she wasn’t alone.

Draven followed her into the room. His expression was even more shuttered than it had been the night of our marriage, his mana tightly coiled and just as impossible to read.

I sat up straighter, instinct sharpening my posture even as the rest of me felt like a spool of unraveling thread.

Even the unflappable maid paused for a fraction of a second, her gaze flicking between us like she wasn’t quite sure which of us was about to be executed.

“You,” Draven said, voice low and flat, “are to be ready within the hour. Mirelda, pack her things for a journey.”

I went cold.

“To go where?” I asked, aiming for calm, hitting something closer to brittle.

Was he willing to let me live in exile now? There was a curious swooping low in my abdomen that didn’t feel nearly enough like relief.

Draven didn’t answer immediately. He moved into the room like a stormcloud, casting a brief glance toward the window, as if he could already see the path carved through snow and ice, see the fate he was dragging me toward.

“We’re leaving for the mountains,” he said flatly. “For the Veilreach Sanctum.”

I nearly laughed. A full-on, verge-of-hysteria, laugh.

The exhaustion was really getting to me. That had to be the reason I hadn’t considered this before… I should have guessed my husband would think this was an option, hells, his only option.

“The mages?” It wasn’t really a question so much as a curse. There was no other reason to go to the Sanctum.

Draven nodded anyway, not bothering to look back at me.

I shook my head, my muscles and the scars on my back twitching with sharp memories of pain.

Of course it would be the mages. They were always the response to Hollows.

A shiver raced down my spine, and my hand began to tremble as I considered what sort of tactics they might employ on a fae who made it to adulthood without mana. How much crueler and exacting their methods might be, if such a thing were possible.

I might not have had the unfortunate experience of visiting Veilreach myself, but mages were the same the world around. They all answered to the same Archmage.

I flinched as memories filled my mind, one after another. My uncle taking me from my home, locking my mother away so she wouldn’t interfere when the mages tested the limits of my pain, my sanity, all to force the mana from my veins.

Mana that never came.

This is for your own good, Everly…. You know what happens to Hollows….

Nausea rolled through me, and I clenched my fists to keep from shaking. I had prepared for death. But of all the terrible things Draven could have done in response, this was the one I should have been concerned about.

In so many ways, death would be preferable to the mages.

The force of my nails reopened the puncture wounds on my palms, and I used the pain to ground myself, sucking in a breath.

“No,” I bit out the word, and he slowly turned to face me.

His expression hardened even more than before. The sharp angles of features were more prominent as he worked his jaw.

“No?” he repeated, and it was less a question than a challenge.

Mirelda’s hasty footsteps echoed through the bedroom until she disappeared into the bathing chamber, shutting the door with a soft click. Even Batty crawled away to hide behind the pillow.

“What possible point could there be in going?” I hissed under my breath. “Your very own Heartstone just confirmed that I am, in fact, a Hollow.”

I kept my voice pitched low, conscious that Mirelda was on the other side of the door. Draven had no such concern. His voice was the same deep timbre as always when he responded.

“Whether either of us likes it or not, you are the queen of Winter. Fate would not have chosen someone without a shred of mana,” he reasoned, his fists clenching at his sides just long enough to let me know even he wasn’t sure about that.

There was no way Mirelda hadn’t heard him. Perhaps he trusted her explicitly then, or just didn’t care if the whole frost-damned palace heard about his magically defunct bride.

“Yet here we are,” I gestured sarcastically around us, not bothering to keep my voice down either now.

“Yes, here we are. And soon, here we will be at the Sanctum, finding a way to access your frost-blasted power.” His tone was solid authority made of chiseled ice.

I nearly laughed, disbelief swallowing my panic in the only defense I could dredge up for myself.

“Sure thing,” I said blithely, throwing the bedcovers to the side and rising to stand in front of him.

“I’ll just close my eyes and think really hard until I can call upon all the mana I don’t possess .

” I took a deep, irritable breath. “You may control this kingdom, but even you do not control the Shard Mother. And you cannot simply will mana into my veins when she has already refused it.”

Batty hissed at him from behind the pillow, and I appreciated the show of solidarity.

Draven stared down at me, his shoulders rising and falling in time with his breaths. He took another step closer, and I resisted the urge to back away.

Pure, unadulterated power rolled off of him in waves. The strength of his mana was so intense, so heady, it nearly crushed my lungs. And I wondered, just for a moment, if I was wrong. If he really was strong enough to will the Shard Mother into giving me the mana she had denied me until this point.

“You will find a way, or the mages will help you do so,” he said, his baritone rumbling through me.

“And when they can’t? I have been subject to mages before, and they have done more harm than good, so when you realize that history is repeating itself, what will be your grand plan then?”

“More harm?” He narrowed his eyes. “What could possibly be worse than being a Hollow?”

I reared back like he had slapped me. There was no way in all of the hells he didn’t know what methods the mages employed. A gust of wind didn’t blow through this palace without his permission.

Did he honestly think that a tortured, scarred child was an improvement over a healthy one without mana because at least they had tried to access the power they were denied?

“Well, marriage to you was certainly a start,” I spat, not about to give him a single other vulnerable piece of myself.

A muscle clenched in his jaw. “I feel exactly the same about you, Morta Mea. Regardless, you will go willingly or I will drag you behind the sledge, but one way or another, you will accompany me to Veilreach Sanctum.”

There was nothing I could say to that. He had all the power here, and as usual, I had none. No mana. No authority over him. Not even the paltry defense my dagger would have offered.

I refused to give him the satisfaction of nodding, but he must have felt my resignation all the same because he spun on his heel and left the room without bothering to make any more threats.

For as much as I had once begged the Shard Mother to get me out of that frost-forsaken palace, I was on the verge of begging her to return there now.

The sledge lurched like a drunken kelpie on ice, rattling over another unseen rut while the wind shrieked around us like it was trying to tear the world in two.

Snow slammed against the windows in thick, blinding waves, and whatever road we were following had long since vanished under a sea of white.

We were crawling blindly through the mountain pass, and it felt like the storm was daring us to keep going.

And, of course, I was trapped inside with the blizzard’s favorite progeny.

I tugged my fur-lined hood tighter, though it did nothing to guard against the chill in the air, or the one across from me. I could practically feel the frost radiating from his cloak, from the set of his shoulders, from the scowl fixed permanently on his face.

He hadn’t looked at me once since we left the palace.

Which was fine. Preferred, even. If he did look at me, I might throw something at his chiseled, arrogant face, just to see if I could make that expression flicker.

Would he remain just as stoic while I writhed in pain? Would he nod with that same unruffled expression as the mages explained why each slice into my skin was a necessary evil to achieve a better end?

I supposed I only had myself to blame for forgetting who he was, even for a fraction of a moment, all because he didn’t let something else kill me before he could use me to my own ends.

I had known better. Hadn’t my uncle always made sure I stayed alive, too?

He was the one who taught me that safe was relative. Only alive was absolute.

Outside, the enchanted lamps along the road flickered like they were rethinking their posts, barely holding back the encroaching darkness. The trees bowed low under the weight of ice, their limbs creaking in protest like they, too, were ready to snap.

I jumped at every shadow, dread curdling in my stomach until I could make out the shape of Draven’s wolves instead of a Mirrorbane.

Though, lately, Lumen had felt less like the king’s and more like mine. Even outside the Hall of Stars when Draven and I were together and he could have chosen to be between us, he had stayed on my side of the hallway, like he wanted to make his allegiance known.

After our encounter with the frostbeast in the gardens, I could hardly stomach knowing he might come face to face with another one, or something worse.

Another jolt of the sledge had me bouncing off the seat. I bit down on a yelp as my elbow cracked against the wall. Batty hissed and fluttered up to the handrail along the ceiling, her claws gripping the handlebar to avoid another unwanted flight across the sledge.

The king, of course, was impervious to the ride. He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch or react, just glowered ahead.

I was half-convinced this was his storm and he was doing it on purpose. Because why wait for the mages to torture me when he could start so much sooner?

“I don’t suppose you could make it stop?” I bit out the words, my voice slicing through the silence. “You know, maybe rein in the weather a bit, keep the snow from flaying us alive. That sort of thing.”

The scowling intensified.

I gestured vaguely toward the swirling white chaos outside. “You are the Winter King, right? Or is that just a title they gave you because ‘Blizzard Bastard’ didn’t have the same ring?”

There it was, that furious muscle once again ticking in his jaw. “Is it your lack of mana that makes you so ignorant to its limitations, or is it simply a choice you’ve made to be uneducated?”

A bitter laugh scraped past my teeth.

“So you can’t control it,” I said with mock pity. “That must be difficult for you. I know how much you despise things you can’t control.”

His expression darkened, and he leaned forward, lightning zapping from his body to mine.

“And where would we be, without my control?” His eyes flashed with something I couldn’t read.

I clenched my jaw, not sure if he was taunting me about having no choice in coming here or referring to the Winter Court. Not willing to respond to either.

Batty let out another disgruntled squeak before hiding her face behind her wings like even she was tired of this back and forth.

I turned back to the window, abruptly tired of baiting him. If I kept looking at my husband’s unyielding features, I was liable to be the one who lost control. So I focused on the view, even though the snow blurred everything.

For a moment, the storm thinned just enough for me to glimpse the Velgrun stags pulling our sledge. They were still beautiful, damn them. Snow-pale, antlers gleaming with crystalline frost, their steps graceful and unwavering, despite what the jolting sledge might suggest.

One of them tossed its head, exhaling a puff of mist like it was enjoying itself. Too calm. Too sure. Like they knew they were made for this.

A feeling churned in my gut, bitter and unfamiliar.

“I don’t think they like it,” I lied, watching them longer than I meant to.

Envy. That’s what it was. For creatures that had somewhere they belonged when I never had.

Draven’s eyes flitted to mine. A flicker of something passed over his face before he turned away again, back to the window, back to pretending I didn’t exist.

The sledge rocked again. Harder, this time.

Still, Draven didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Just sat there, staring at the storm like it owed him something.

Maybe it did.

Maybe it whispered the same taunts to him that it whispered to me. That survival was a choice, and we’d already made the wrong one.