Page 33

Everly

B y the time the summons arrived, I’d already given up on pretending to sleep.

A thin slip of parchment, delivered without a word. The script was elegant and sharp—too sharp—and at the bottom, signed in a style I didn’t recognize but understood all the same.

The Archmage will receive you.

Veilreach Hightower Suite, midmorning. Do be punctual.

Of course. Because tardiness—not torture—was clearly the greater offense.

I sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders curled in like I could fold myself out of existence.

My hair was still damp from yesterday’s bath, and my skin felt just as sodden—like I’d been wrung out and left somewhere too cold to dry.

The circles beneath my eyes had turned a bruised sort of lavender, and every inch of me felt scraped raw.

Draven hadn’t said a word since last night. Not when he left to fetch dinner. Not when he returned, quietly slipping the screen around the tub and taking his time cleaning up before collapsing into bed. Nightmares had plagued me, memories of torment melding with the realities of this place.

I didn’t know if Draven had shared them. He didn’t say, and this time I woke up warmed only by blankets.

He hadn’t so much as glanced in my direction by the time the summons arrived.

Which was fine. I wasn’t sure I could look at him either.

The hallways of Veilreach were too bright, too echoing. The mages we passed skittered out of our way like startled insects, heads down, eyes averted. It was a stark contrast to their eagerness the day before.

So. They had heard, then, about their Hollow Queen .

How long before the rest of the kingdom knew?

Batty curled deeper into the crook of my neck, her tiny talons threading through my collar as she nuzzled under my jaw. Her silken wings pressed close, and I felt the faintest trill of warmth at the base of my throat. I brought my fingers up to stroke along her back.

At least one creature in this forsaken place didn’t recoil from me.

Lumen pressed his head against my leg as if he’d been summoned by the thought.

Okay, so two creatures, then.

We stopped before a pair of intricately carved doors. They were high-arched and bone-white, with sigils etched into the wood that shimmered faintly in gold. The threshold itself thrummed with old mana, the kind that made the air feel too still, too watchful.

Draven pushed the doors open without so much as a knock, and I reluctantly followed him into the lion’s den.

The Archmage’s suite was not what I expected.

It was warm. Not inviting, exactly, but not sterile or cruel. Books lined the shelves along the walls in untidy stacks. In between them were various crystals, pulsing softly with mana.

Above it all, suspended from the ceiling like a constellation frozen mid-breath, hung a floating orb of starlight. It hummed faintly with power I didn’t understand.

I continued to scan the room, the hairs on the back of my neck standing at attention, my entire being tense and on alert. Lumen shuffled closer again, his head coming up beneath my arm to force me to wrap it over him.

It helped a little, grounded me, even. Before I could help myself, my fingers were sliding through his fur, and my heartbeat slowed to something less frantic.

It was a welcome reprieve from the constant state of panic I’d been living in, even if it evaporated a second later when a throat cleared behind us.

I turned slowly to find the Archmage watching us from the doorway.

He didn’t look like a monster, but sadists rarely did.

He was tall, composed, elegant in a way that didn’t feel forced.

Like most fae, he had an ageless quality that placed him close to thirty.

His dark skin gleamed with violet undertones, contrasting sharply with the burnished gold of his eyes.

Gold robes fell to the floor, belted with black silk and embroidered with silver.

I couldn’t place his court, but he wasn’t borne of Winter.

“Your Majesties,” he said smoothly, taking a shallow bow. “It is a pleasure to have you here, though next time, do send word ahead if you plan to ascend the mountain. I prefer to be in residence when royalty is dropping bodies in my halls.”

Draven’s voice was flat. “I assumed word would travel faster if you understood the stakes.”

What? I glanced between the two males. Was it my exhaustion clouding my mind with confusion? Or had I missed something?

The Archmage made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat before he stepped closer.

He studied my expression for a long moment, and I had the distinct feeling he was looking through me, seeing each thought unfold inside my head somehow.

I shifted uncomfortably, and Lumen pressed his head against my side a little more firmly.

“Apologies, My Queen,” he said after a moment. “I am Master Isren Vaelryn, Archmage here at the Veilreach Sanctum.”

He offered me a smile that I didn’t return. He pursed his lips, and nodded as if he’d been expecting as much.

“And what is this about the bodies dropping in your halls?” I asked when it became clear that no one was going to bother to explain that.

“Ah yes. Imagine my surprise when I returned to discover one of my Elder Mages rather gruesomely executed in a room that has been outlawed for decades.” He nodded warmly, like it was a grand joke.

“You killed him?” I asked Draven.

He nodded like I had asked if he wanted milk with his tea, not whether he had taken a life. Not that I mourned the mage. Stranger still was that the Archmage didn’t seem to mourn him either.

“Though, I am surprised you found him so quickly,” Draven said darkly. “I must not have sealed the threshold with enough ice.”

“Yes, well, curiosity tends to get the better of people,” Isren said evenly. “And once it’s piqued, there’s no telling how far someone will go to find their answers.”

I would think about Draven’s execution of the vile male later when I could piece together his motives. I might have thought he was only punishing the male for his ineptitude but for the crucial part about the room in which he was killed.

A room that had been outlawed, apparently. It wasn’t hard to guess what it was.

I turned my attention away from my enigma of a husband, back to the Archmage.

“Outlawed?” I clarified. “Before, you said the rooms were outlawed… For how long?”

His expression turned somber. “The Shard Mother does not condone the torture of children, your Majesty, however slow her followers may be to understand that.”

“And you?” I pressed.

“I am the one who outlawed it,” he said simply. “So you can rest assured, you will not receive that treatment from me. Pain does not create power. It only creates monsters.”

I bristled. “Is that what I am, then?”

He shook his head kindly. “Forgive me, My Queen. I meant out of those who would choose to inflict it.”

I nodded, unsure if I believed him, unsure if he was forgiven, but eager to get the rest of the conversation underway regardless.

“Now.” He brought his hands together, tapping his fingertips against one another. “We come to the matter of your mana.”

“I have no mana.” At least now Draven would be forced to admit that as well.

“Indeed.” Isren managed to make the word sound less like an agreement and more like a gentle rebuttal.

I let out a sigh, tired of fighting to confirm my own inadequacy. The Archmage gave exactly no sign that he had heard me.

“Interesting thing, mana.” He gestured to the endless mountains.

“More sentient than people realize.” He swept his gaze around the room, pausing briefly on the skathryn clinging to my neck.

“Tied to the land and many of its creatures, yes, but also to emotions.” Finally, he honed in on Draven, voice turning grave.

“And it can be an exacting master. When you take from it, it tends to take back.”

A muscle worked in my husband’s jaw. “Your point?”

“Winter’s mana is increasingly unstable,” he said like it was an answer.

My lips parted, but Draven nodded impatiently. That wasn’t news to him.

“So you see, then, why our visit is a matter of some urgency?” His tone was clipped, just this side of respectful.

I sucked in an irritable breath. “Pain might not create power, but neither does urgency. He can’t just make me not a Hollow because the kingdom demands it.”

“No,” the Archmage agreed. “But I am quite inclined to agree with His Majesty’s assessment. The Shard Mother seeks to assist in the unbalance, not to further it.”

He wasn’t quite as pretentious as the Elder Mage had been about it, but his assertion had my hackles raising all the same.

“Forgive me, Master Isren, but I’m afraid your devoutness is clouding your judgment. The Shard Mother has never had any love for me, and she must feel similarly about His Majesty.” I shot a sarcastic smile to the majesty in question.

Instead of glaring as I expected him to, I could have sworn his lips twitched in something close to a smirk. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had theorized on the Shard Mother’s general disfavor of us.

Batty gave a small, disapproving squeak. For my commentary on the Shard Mother? Or the fraction of solidarity I’d just shared with the king? When she nestled her head a little closer, wedging herself more obviously against my neck, I went ahead and assumed the latter.

The Archmage only raised his eyebrows. “I can see you are unconvinced, and I must say that I am not overly surprised to find it so.”

He took a step away from the door and leaned against one of his large disheveled bookshelves. “Allow me to take a different approach, then, as I firmly believe in one’s right to make informed decisions, and soon I will ask your permission to perform a test of my own.”

A muscle worked in my jaw, but I refrained from telling him that I would decline. He was the first person who had implied I had a choice, so I would hear him out.

And then I would tell him no.

“Fine,” I allowed.

He smiled like he knew what I was thinking, but nodded graciously all the same.