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Draven

I couldn’t get the image out of my mind.

Scars. Carved into her back like someone had tried to map suffering onto skin.

So many marks—old, raised, jagged. Not from a single strike, either. No, they had wanted to draw it out. Wanted to let her begin to heal before ripping open her skin again and again. They were layered and deliberate.

It shouldn’t have affected me the way it had.

I was no stranger to injuries, had caused plenty myself, but even I wasn’t given to torture. And I sure as hells wasn’t prepared to see the evidence of it branded into my wife’s fair skin.

I had meant what I said. Whatever else she was, she was still mine .

The halls of Veilreach tilted around me as I stalked through them, frost bleeding from my body in silent waves.

I’d left Lumen and Vega to keep watch over Everly and took the other three wolves with me as I stormed down to the main level.

They kept pace easily, hackles raised, growls rumbling low in their throats.

They didn’t need to be told this wasn’t a walk. That it was a hunt.

The air thickened with cold, curling around windows and creeping over the stones. The torches hissed as my ice snuffed out each flame, leaving Veilreach in more and more darkness.

Mages stepped out of my path, robes rustling as they bowed, too slow to be anything but irritating.

“Send for the Archmage,” I barked at one of them. “Tell him the Frostgrave King demands his presence, now.”

The apprentice nodded and stumbled as he raced to do as I demanded. The Archmage may not answer to one kingdom alone, but everyone answered to power.

I turned down another hall until I made my way to the open staircase carved into the floor. For a moment, I did nothing but stare into the darkness and wonder how in the hells I hadn’t noticed before.

It was so clear now—the way her voice always tightened around the word mage like it tasted rotten on her tongue.

The way she had stood in that cursed crystal chamber, braced like a defiant lamb poised for the slaughter.

The way she had clenched her fists so hard that blood had splashed onto the stones below.

I took the stairs two at a time, practically sprinting to get to the bottom.

If I was familiar with one thing in this life, it was pain. I recognized it in her now, and I couldn’t look away.

A memory slammed into me like ice cracking underfoot. My father’s voice, thick with drink and rage. The snap of a belt. My mother, stepping in—always stepping in. Her arms around me, her voice calm while her cheek bled.

I shoved the memory aside, ground it down beneath my boots like ash. Yes, pain was an old friend, but I wasn’t here to visit.

The Arcane Chamber opened ahead. The Elder Mage looked up from a scroll, blinking behind his spectacles like I’d caught him mid-theory. He started to smile, then stopped.

“Your Majesty,” he greeted carefully.

“What were you planning to do to her?” The question spilled out of me on another wave of rage.

His brow furrowed. “Pardon?”

I took a step forward. “My wife. Earlier. You were about to say something before she cut you off. What were you going to suggest?”

He hesitated, then reached for the nearest pile of scrolls like their ink might save him. “Only the gentlest methods, I assure you. Crystal resonance. Breath channeling. Guided attunement?—”

“Do not insult my intelligence with courtiers’ language,” I growled, ice crystals forming around my fists. “What would you have done if I hadn’t been there? If she’d been brought in alone?”

The silence sat between us like a glacier.

He swallowed audibly. “There are… other options that often produce the most consistent results. Mana responds well to extremes. Pain. Fear. Heightened emotional states. It wakes things up.”

A slow, seething burn spread through my chest. “Pain. That you were going to inflict on your queen?”

“Well…not without your approval, of course.” His placating tone threatened to unravel what little control I had left. “But if the gentler methods fail, it’s worth exploring before we need to resort to more permanent solutions. After all, she is a Hollow, Your Majesty.”

His eyes darted to the door, just as they had earlier. Ice spread through my veins.

“Show me.” I barely forced the words out through my bared teeth.

He blinked. “Your Majesty?—”

“Now.”

The Elder scrambled from behind his desk, gesturing for me to follow him down a corridor. It was one I hadn’t walked in years. One of the older wings, long sealed, far from the ceremonial halls where mana was studied and praised.

The door was warded, but it opened at his touch.

The scent hit me first—metal and mildew and something worse beneath. Old blood, soaked into stone.

I stepped inside.

Long, narrow beds lined the walls, with straps bolted to their sides. Tables covered in neat rows of small, gleaming tools—ones forged of silver or steel. It was an array of instruments, some that I might find in a Healer’s infirmary, others would belong to a butcher.

The rage inside of me flared white hot as I glanced over the hooks and brands and sharpened coils. A drain rested in the center of the floor. Stained dark.

And this is where they would have brought her…

From the first time I caught sight of my wife, I had sensed the potent concoction of fear and disdain and accusation that rolled off of her in waves, but had she really believed that I would knowingly subject her to this ?

Something inside me went quiet.

I raised my hand and the frost answered. It snapped to my palm, coalescing into a hook of solid ice, just like the one on his tables.

He backed away, stammering something I didn’t hear.

I crossed the room in two slow, deliberate steps. I tilted my head, and the ice in my veins stretched out to wrap around his feet and hands, anchoring him to the wall just as he had done to so many others.

“Your Majesty—” he tried again.

If I wasn’t so angry, I would draw this out. Take my time with him, with every single mage in the Sanctum who knew about this room, who had ever set foot in it or used its tools . But instead, I caved to my fury, stoking its flames like a raging fire.

The Elder looked at me and at the hook in my hand.

He shook his head back and forth as I stepped closer. I held his gaze as I drove the sharpened tip into his stomach.

He gasped, hands trying to reach for the hook, blood blooming warm across my knuckles before the cold took it. Ice spread like veins across his robes.

I leaned in close. His breath hitched in panicked puffs against my collar. “By whatever means necessary, right?”

Maybe Everly was right to call me a sadist because I enjoyed every single ounce of his agony when I twisted the hook and ripped it from his flesh.

My wolves followed as I walked out, frost curling behind us like a shadow.

I didn’t look back once. Not as I slammed the doors to the torture chamber, and not as I emerged from the bowels of the Sanctum covered in blood, with no trace of regret tugging at me.