Page 4

Everly

I t was harder than it should have been to let go of my sister’s hand when the guards came to escort me to the tower. Only the realization that she would be safer gone allowed me to pry my numb fingers from hers.

My gaze bored into hers, reminding her of my only request. Leave before the ceremony. She swallowed before giving me a single resolute dip of her chin.

She would go. She would hate me for it a little, but she would do it because I asked. Her eyes glossed over with tears as she hugged me one last time before tearing herself away.

I swallowed back the lump in my throat. This was for the best. It was. Because no matter what happened, she wouldn’t be in the king’s immediate wrath.

I lifted my chin and watched her descend the grand stairs while I took them up, the divide between our lives, our worlds, growing wider and wider until I could no longer hear her footsteps on the marble.

The guards led me up the winding staircase. The higher we climbed, the smaller the world became, until the faces in the courtyard were little more than indistinguishable blobs.

I was so focused on the tiny courtiers below, I nearly slammed into the back of the guards as they came to an abrupt stop.

In perfect unison, they swept to either side of the doorway at the top of the stairs revealing a grand balcony. Four silver wolves stood along the narrow walkway that served as a makeshift aisle, the fifth on guard between the king and his Visionary.

The king looked exactly as he had an hour ago.

A crown resting on frost-white hair, rings glinting from his pointed ears.

The light from the auroras danced across his ethereal features, highlighting the cruel peaks of his cheekbones, and the sharp edges of his jawline in shades of amethyst, sapphire, and turquoise.

Midnight leathers wrapped tightly around his broad shoulders, down to the frost crystallizing at his fingertips.

He was ice incarnate. Cold, deadly, and devastatingly beautiful.

When I met his eyes again, it was to find him studying me in return. A low growl rumbled from his chest, and I ignored the shiver that raced through me in response.

Only the Unseelie had the ability to shift, but there was something about the Frostgrave King that was more beast than fae. As though, if given the option, he would choose to become one of his wolves—choose to rip my throat out with his canines and leave me bleeding out on this balcony.

“At least you look the part, now,” he said, his unearthly gaze slowly raking over my form.

The Visionary let out something suspiciously close to a sigh but didn’t comment.

“That’s high praise coming from a male who had to ordain his bride,” I said the words without thinking.

It would prove to be a deadly habit, judging by the furious expression he was giving me now.

A delicate throat cleared behind my back. King Draven’s shoulders stiffened, whirls of white, misty clouds huffing from his nostrils. He tilted his head to the side, stretching his neck briefly in irritation.

“It’s a shame that the rest of the ceremony requires complete silence, so I’ll have to forgo the dulcet tones of my bride.” Full lips twisted into a cold smirk.

Irritation coiled in my chest, and I fisted my hands in my skirts. When I parted my lips to respond, my breath caught in my lungs. I tried again, but no sound came out. The frost-bastard must have been telling the truth about the silence. That was fine, as long as it worked in both directions.

I assumed it did since I was sure he’d be rubbing it in my face if he could still talk.

The wind picked up as he took a single step forward. It encircled us in a small blizzard, howling like one of his wolves, while flurries of ice and snow bit at my exposed skin.

Was this his way of getting the last word in? Calling on the elements to be just as brutal as him?

A flash of bright silver light pulled my attention toward the sky as a giant sheet of ice was conjured in the air just beyond the balcony. Rustic runes flared to life across its border, glimmering like pale, frozen moonlight, just before the surface shimmered and solidified into a mirror of frost.

Our image stared back at me, every movement captured, every hitched breath projected for the crowd gathered below.

His massive frame towered over me like one of the snow-capped peaks surrounding his cursed palace. He was all broad shoulders and rigid grace, and the same promise of a beautiful death.

Next to him was someone I barely recognized. The gown turned my every movement into snowfall. With the crown that glittered like imposing glaciers, I almost looked like I belonged at his side.

Which was absurd. Terrifying.

A shiver slid down my spine, but I kept my expression neutral. I took another breath, holding onto it like it was my last when he closed the distance between us. A heartbeat passed before he stretched out his hand expectantly. He let out a low, feral growl when I didn’t immediately offer him mine.

I didn’t budge. My palms were just another part of me I was used to concealing, even if I had wanted to touch him.

The Visionary’s voice filled the air as she chanted in the ancient tongue. Her words carried like wind through stone. The air shifted around us, wrapping itself around my arm and lifting it without my consent, until my hand hovered inches away from his.

He spread his long, elegant fingers wide, and frost bloomed in the space between our palms, curling and coalescing into a blinding white cloud.

It twisted like breath caught in a storm, ice crystals spinning in its heart. Flurries shimmered and danced, collapsing inward until the shape of a dagger formed between us, honed from nothing but snow and starlight.

I didn’t have time to react.

The blade sliced through his palm first, then mine, right across the half-moon wounds from my nails. Pain bloomed like fire along my palm and the wind howled in answer—rising into a scream as it tore down from the peaks, dragging even more snow and shards of ice into the whirling cyclone around us.

Then, the world vanished.

There was only him—the Frostgrave King. His breath, his blood, his presence crashing into mine like a tide of winter.

Our blood mingled in midair, drops spiraling into one another until they fused and were indistinguishable. Mana seized them and spun them through the air, forging them into something new. Something deadly and, somehow, still delicate.

Two rings.

One slid over my finger, a delicate band of silver with jagged diamonds that branched out like a starburst, while the other claimed the king.

His frozen, merciless eyes locked onto mine just as frost spread over the cuts in our palms, sealing our skin with ice.

I waited for the ceremony to call upon my mana, to falter before it could take hold, but something powerful and ancient snapped into place between us.

There were no spoken vows, just a silent promise carved into the marrow of our bones and sealed with our blood, carried on the mana of the land itself.

I drifted closer to him, pushed by the raging winds, or pulled by death’s enigmatic lure, I couldn’t be sure.

My heartbeat drummed a furious rhythm as the Visionary continued speaking. Pressure built behind my chest, beneath my skin, filling every part of me until I was sure I would combust.

It was different from my usual panic. It was more, so much more than that–like every part of me was reacting to every part of him. As if the blood in my veins flowed toward him now. As if my heartbeat was changing to an unfamiliar rhythm, one that matched the furious beat of his own.

Startlingly warm fingers slid in between mine, and my gaze snapped up to meet the king’s.

The shock of his touch pulled me from the endless questions flitting through my mind, and all I could feel, all I could focus on, was the solid weight of his hands, and the callouses I wouldn’t have expected from a king.

He tugged me closer, and the breath in my lungs seized as my body pressed against his.

He wasn’t supposed to feel like this, to feel so… mortal . Not when he was a monster. A murderer.

Then he was lowering his face to hover just above mine. My breathing hitched as his breath ghosted across my lips, warm and more inviting than it had any right to be.

His gaze dropped, fixating on my mouth, and there was nothing polite in the way he looked at me.

It was territorial. Predatory. As if he was already imagining how I would taste. He closed the gap between us, pressing his mouth to mine.

My mind went blank as the soft curve of his cruel lips wrapped around mine, moving in an unspoken command that I was powerless not to obey.

Every instinct that had kept me alive for so long betrayed me in this moment. My eyelids fluttered shut as I melted into the kiss, into him .

Shivers raced through me, chased by a heat I didn’t want to name, a stolen warmth that seeped into the cracks of carefully held walls.

I didn’t know how long the kiss lasted. A breath. An eternity. Long enough to forget, for one shards-damned moment, who he was.

It took more effort than it should have to step away from him. His eyes flared in response, his pupils blown wide like twin pools of obsidian.

Bright light burst from the horizon, igniting the sky in a white glow that glinted off of every surface of the palace. It surrounded us, even blinding us, before wrapping us in the gauzy haze of dawn.

And just like that, the solstice was over, the longest night of the year fading like an echo with the break of day.

I glanced back at the Frostgrave King—my husband— wondering if he too had just felt the weight of the world shift on its axis.

And if it felt as ominous to him as it did to me.