Page 38

Everly

A s soon as the meeting in the war room was over, Draven walked me back to my rooms. I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was about to unravel around me.

The Unseelie were attacking. Why now? Did they want another war?

And, of course, it wasn’t just any clan… but Skaldwings. It couldn’t be a pack of Lupines or Thornharts?

Bile coated my tongue as my mind conjured images of malevolent shadows and leathery wings and claws as they razed one village just to steal from another. They wanted to confuse, and scatter chaos. To stretch borders so thin the cracks could no longer hold.

And once that happened… they didn’t back down. They devoured.

A chill prickled beneath my skin, and it had nothing to do with the cold. The mention of Briarhollow had sunk into my bones. It was also too close to home.

Too close to Eisbarrow.

My father would likely be safely ensconced in one of his favorite whores, and not at home, so I was mostly certain he would be fine. And Wynnie’s estate was far enough west that she wouldn’t be anywhere near it.

I still hadn’t heard from her.

I needed to write her again, to warn her about the frostbeasts hunting during the day.

I hated how it always came back to this—this feeling of perpetual threat. Like I was always standing in place, blindly waiting for the axe to fall.

The hallway stretched ahead, unnaturally silent. There was no soft padding of paws along the marble. No rhythmic breath of a giant wolf at my side.

It was strange how quickly I’d gotten used to Lumen’s presence, how much safer I felt when he was here, too.

“How will the wolves get back?” I asked, breaking the silence before it could smother me completely.

“They know the way,” he said quickly, his voice low and composed. “They’ll return by tomorrow.”

It was a surprisingly civil answer. Or maybe not. He had been distinctly milder since the mages.

Since he saw my scars.

So maybe that’s what we were now. Civil.

Somewhere between the lies and bloodshed, the answer felt distinctly wrong, but neither did I have an alternative that didn’t make life here even more miserable.

“And you?” I wasn’t sure why I cared, or why I thought he would tell me, so I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t respond.

We passed the guards and came to the circular foyer that contained doors to each of our rooms.

His mana hummed along my skin, and I hated the way my body warmed in response. Just because he had decided to be a monster on my behalf didn’t make him less of one. Right? Hadn’t he admitted as much himself?

More than anything, I despised that it was one more choice that was taken from me. Wynnie had been sold into marriage, but her body didn’t betray her at every turn.

Somehow, it felt even more grating, knowing that my mana hadn’t been denied by the Shard Mother. I wasn’t lacking on some fundamental level.

It, too, had been stolen.

He stopped outside my door, turning to me with an inscrutable expression.

“I don’t know yet when I’ll return.” his voice startled me from my thoughts, so it took me a moment to realize he was answering my question, after all.

“In the meantime, trust no one but Nevara and Mirelda. And Eryx, of course, but I doubt you’ll have dealings with him.”

Meantime.

What did that even mean for me now?

We still weren’t sure I would ever unlock my mana, and even if I did, it had never occurred to me that my marriage to Draven might actually be permanent. If not actually real.

That thought was likely to send me spiraling so I focused on the rest of his words.

I had known he didn’t trust easily, but three people in an entire court was…intense.

“You suspect threats from the palace?” I wasn’t sure why I was surprised after my personal experiences with the ice-dragons in this palace.

Draven nodded sharply. “I wouldn’t rule it out. And you can’t access your mana,” he added, after what I might have called a hesitation from anyone else.

I blinked at him, slowly.

“Yes,” I replied dryly, “I’m aware.”

That muscle in his jaw ticked again, like he was trying not to frost the floor out of sheer frustration. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out…a dagger, tucked neatly inside a sheath.

My sheath. And my achingly familiar dagger.

The black twisted steel called to me, my fingers itching to hold it again, to run my fingers over the distinctive grooves on the amethysts.

This dagger was the last thing I had of my mother. I froze just short of reaching for it.

Had he been carrying it around all this time?

My eyes flitted from the blade back up to meet his blue-green stare. His expression was guarded, like he was half expecting me to ask, but the question touched too close to wounds that were still half-raw and bleeding.

So I asked something else instead.

“Why did you kill the Elder mage?”

He held my gaze, the full weight of it landing like a blow I hadn’t braced for. “Because he threatened to harm something that belonged to me.”

There was no hesitation in him, no shame or second-guessing. Just that unshakable certainty he always wore like armor.

I swallowed, trying to feel nothing but offense at his words. “I told you already, I don’t belong to you. You can’t just treat me like your possession and then murder people on my behalf.”

He tilted his head slightly. “Would you rather I had let him live?”

I opened my mouth to answer reflexively that I didn’t want anyone to die on my behalf, but Draven closed in.

“Him, and his room of shackles and branding irons and knives? Do you wish that he had gone on to torture another day?”

No. No, I didn’t.

But neither was I foolish enough to think that Draven had killed him for that reason.

The quiet stretched between us like a living, tangible thing. It devoured the air and made me wildly aware of the lack of space between us. The way his breath smelled faintly of mint, and the dusting of snow that hadn’t melted from his ice-blond hair.

He shook his head, seeming to take my silence as confirmation enough.

“Doesn’t it make you happy, Morta Mea, to know that he died with some small amount of the pain he inflicted on others?”

The scars on my back prickled.

“No,” I lied. And I wasn’t sure what that made me.

The corners of Draven’s lips tilted up like he had heard the truth anyway, and I tracked the motion, wondering how someone so steeped on the dark side of morally acceptable was still so shards-damned beautiful.

“Would you care if I was happy,” I demanded quietly. “As long as I found a way to be useful to you?”

A muscle worked in his jaw, those perfect full lips pursing. He leaned in as though on instinct, mana thrumming wildly from his body to mine.

His gaze flicked down to my mouth, like he was studying each curve and arc of my lips, as if he were remembering what they tasted like.

“No.” He answered. The word was a low murmur, uttered with half the conviction of his usual taunt.

I was so transfixed on the narrowing gap between his body and mine that I almost didn’t notice a vibrating sensation on my left hand.

I snapped my attention to it, honing in on my wedding band.

Though it was a general bane on my existence, it was usually unobtrusive at least. Once, it had pulsed with cold, but it definitely hadn’t vibrated before.

Draven cleared his throat, regaining my attention. He had straightened to his full height, putting several more inches of space between us, and I was not disappointed.

I wasn’t.

“Your happiness notwithstanding, I do have a vested interest in your safety.” He flipped the dagger until he was holding it by the sheath, handing it to me hilt-first.

I reached for it slowly, wrapping my hand around the familiar hilt and letting out my first real breath since losing it. Whatever mana I had trapped on the inside damned sure hadn’t stepped in to save me when it mattered. My defenses were precarious at best, dangerous at worst.

This blade was the only thing that had kept me feeling anywhere close to safe from the moment my mother had pressed it into my hands.

I opened my mouth, then closed it, not sure what to say. I couldn’t bring myself to thank him for returning what was rightfully mine. Neither could I throw that in his face when it was technically illegal to own a weapon at all.

I settled for deflecting. “Not concerned I’ll stab you with it?”

He raised his eyebrows in a way that could only be described as cocky. “You’re certainly welcome to try.”

There was a dangerous undercurrent to the words, one that danced the line between threat and invitation.

My breath caught—just slightly—but it was enough. Enough for his gaze to linger a moment too long, for the air between us to shift from icy silence to something warmer and charged.

Before I could decide how to respond, he turned and walked away, the echo of his footsteps swallowed by stone and silence.

I was left standing in the corridor, still holding the blade… and trying very hard not to think about the fire he’d left behind.

Mirelda was already in my rooms, fluffing pillows like she needed to keep her hands busy. All the while she studied me from the corner of her eye.

Her gaze narrowed on the dagger.

“A gift from the king,” I told her. “Since my mana is being difficult.”

He had named her as one of the few people he trusted, and she had already overheard our conversation before we left.

It would make my life easier, not having to lie about all the reasons I couldn’t do things, but I also sensed that she had been genuinely bothered at the idea that I might not return safely…or alive.

Sure enough, her shoulders sank in the smallest amount of relief, and I couldn’t help but tease her. It was, if nothing else, a solid distraction from the attacks and the king and the strange energy still coursing through my veins.

“Were you…worried about me, Mirelda?”

She bristled at the very notion. “I was concerned for his Majesty, of course, and the implications…”

I smirked. “Yes, naturally. How silly of me.”