Page 49

Everly

T he blood was congealing

Not just the blood, but the thick tar-like substance that oozed from the monsters, and the mangled remains of the dead covered my sister’s home. It clung in tar-like streaks to the floorboards and pooled in the grooves of the cracked tile.

And on me. Sticky chunks of flesh slid through the locks of my hair like they were still half alive, mingling with fluids I didn’t want to think about.

But my sister was alive.

That was the only thing that mattered.

After seeing to the more pressing wounds, we dragged the Tharnok carcasses from the kitchen. It was the room we needed access to the most since it was where the pantry and Wynnie’s tonics were stored.

Shattered glass glittered on the stone floor like ice, and the air still pulsed with echoes of screams. We had traded the odor of decay for the sharp tang of herbal tonics scattered across the counter.

My sister moved stiffly across the room, favoring her left leg. A jagged gash ran along her shoulder, half-covered in a poultice that stained the linen wrap beneath it green.

The rest of us were in similar shape, our injuries slathered with the same foul-smelling balms and covered in poultices.

There was no chance to bathe when we were trapped in this room while my husband cleared the rest of the house, but we wiped away the blood as well as we could, cleaning at least our wounds.

Once the adrenaline from the attack had worn off, pain had crept in. My arm burned where the Tharnok had bitten it, and my head pounded from when I was thrown up the stairs. But the tonics were helping, at least, along with the salves.

Wynnie opened a tall, narrow cabinet, plucking a few more vials from her apothecary. Her eyes drifted over to the three remaining members of her staff, and she added several more to her stack.

We numbly sorted them, in oppressive silence, while we waited for Draven to return.

Two of the servants quietly scrubbed away what blood and tar they could manage, while the third sat in the corner, rocking back and forth and muttering quietly under her breath.

And each of us was holding our breaths, flinching at the sounds of shattering glass and scraping wood. Each of us waiting for another shriek of a monster, another crack of bone.

Our movements were mechanical. Every breath tasted of ash and frost.

But my sister is alive, and that is enough.

I repeated the words over and over again in my head, finding a rhythm in the repetition. It all still felt surreal. Like we were caught in a breath between moments, just waiting for the next unspeakable thing to happen.

Especially when I remembered the tears shining in Nevara’s eyes. She wouldn’t have cried for this, not after seeing the other attacks? All the different villages, right?

It couldn’t be over, yet…

Then again, how many times had she said she couldn’t See everything? Maybe she Saw my sister lying on the ground covered in blood, or Saw one future where that happened.

That made sense. It did. So why couldn’t I breathe?

“So…” Wynnie swallowed, her eyes skipped hollowly over the stains we hadn’t yet scrubbed from the walls.

“What do we do now?” she asked. Her voice was rough with disuse.

I forced myself to breathe, even as her question echoed in my own head.

What were we supposed to do now? The kingdom was crumbling. The people were suffering. The Unseelie were creeping in.

And the monsters were winning, shards damn it all .

Draven’s mana curled around my skin, less like its usual battering ram and more like a pile of blankets.

“The ward stones are holding, but we need to get back to the palace,” he said, striding back into the room.

Right. One step at a time.

He still surveyed the room with wary eyes, like another monster would come bursting through at any moment. Which, in fairness, maybe they would. How did we ever really know they were gone?

They were never gone.

“Do you have horses?” he directed the question at Wynnie.

Right. Because he could only take me through the ice.

She blinked, turning to look out the window. Draven and I both followed her gaze to a ruined building bathed red in the moonlight.

“So, on foot it is, then, at least to the nearest village.” My voice sounded far away, even to my own ears.

Or maybe they were only clogged with the blood crusting over my skin.

“Then we’ll need to clean up first.” His gaze flitted over me, jaw clenching before he looked away. He managed to look nearly as clean as he had directly after his bath, save for the few wounds that were already all but closed up. “The blood will only draw more monsters.”

I took a moment to study him, the deep lines on a face that was even paler than usual. His mana echoed faintly around the manor house with the wards he held in place.

He wouldn’t have let the wards around the palace drop when he wasn’t there, so he was maintaining both—after he had traveled across half the kingdom with me in tow and then disintegrated countless hoards of monsters.

He would hurl himself from his towers before admitting it, but his strength was waning. He couldn’t afford for us to draw more beasts into our midst.

“We should sleep here for the night.” I felt like a monster myself for suggesting that my sister sleep in a house full of dead servants and her husband’s half-eaten corpse, but we hadn’t come this far just to be eaten on the way home.

Wynnie squared her shoulders, tightening her grip on my hand.

“I’ll find us some rooms that are…clean.” Of body parts, she meant, monster and fae alike.

She dropped my hand, hesitating only a moment before she turned away from the corpse in the hall, drawing upon the infinite well of strength she had always possessed.

I tried to focus on that strength, on the determined spark in her hollow eyes, the life that still coursed through her veins, instead of the prickles of dread that wouldn’t quite leave me.

I wasn’t convinced this was over. But I would pay the price of saving her in blood, time and time again, if I had to.

My hair would not come clean.

I sucked in a breath through my mouth, trying not to inhale the scent that had only festered in the heat of the steaming bath.

Three times, I had drained and refilled the tub through the system of pipes and crystals that fed water through my sister’s home, just like the one at my father’s estate.

But the water was still tinged pink. And my hair was still matted with things worse than blood.

My mind raced from one horrifying image after another, moving portraits that played out each new nightmare on an endless loop with sounds that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

The maid’s scream, the sound of ripping flesh, Yorrick’s lifeless eyes, the weight of the Tharnok, the tug at my wrists as I wrenched my dagger free from the Wretch’s flesh, the look on my sister’s face as she wiped the remains of her valet from my skin.

I wanted to be sick.

I scrubbed harder, trying to control my breathing as my fingers got stuck in the mess, trying not to wonder if it was part of a Tharnok, or the Wretch, or the valet, or the maid...

Trying not to think about the male who had thrown himself from the balcony or wonder if I would have done the same in his place.

Bile rose in my throat, and I tore through the congealed mess, ignoring the pinpricks of pain. It didn’t help. There was so much more.

My skin crawled with each new texture, each new visible sign of the horrors of the day. I kept scrubbing. Furiously scrubbing.

Why hadn’t I stayed with Wynnie? Argued when she showed me to a room with my husband and left to wash with the assistance of her maid. I needed her.

I needed to remember that she was alive.

I reached for the bar of soap. It was stickier than it should have been, less effective than I needed it to be. My hands shook. Nothing was working.

Frost damn everything .

I hadn’t held myself together this long to fall apart now, with Draven just on the other side of a privacy screen. It was just hair. It didn’t matter. It didn’t.

Except, I saw my mother’s hands again. Remembered the comforting way her nails scraped along my scalp. The way she braided each lock, infusing it with all the love she rarely spoke aloud.

Look where that love had gotten her, had gotten us all. Thanks to her, I was useless against the attacks that ravaged this kingdom and tried to take my sister.

Useless .

I ripped a comb through my hair, yanking the strands from my head. It slipped from my grasp, landing in the tub with a small splash.

A strangled sob escaped me as pain lanced from my scalp through the rest of me. I grabbed the comb again and raised it back out of the water, prepared to wrench every bloody strand at its root just to be rid of this sick, contaminated feeling.

A warm hand covered mine, halting it in its path.

I hadn’t even heard him approach. I swallowed down a lump in my throat, opening my mouth to tell him to leave me. Hadn’t he seen me weak more than enough for one lifetime?

Wasn’t I always that way?

But he gently wrested the comb from my hand, and the words died on my lips. Steady fingers grasped the bar of soap, and his shadow lowered behind me.

Kneeling.

The Frostgrave King was on his knees for me.

I sucked in a breath. Silent, scorching tears streamed down my cheeks for so many convoluted reasons that I couldn’t begin to pick through them. My heartbeat pounded through my chest, thudding in time with the power that stretched from his soul to mine.

I didn't turn to face him. Couldn’t. But neither did I stop him as he dragged the bar of soap along my hair, setting it down to reach for a bottle of oil. He worked that through my hair, too, then started in with the comb.

It was painstaking work, punctuated only by the even sound of his breathing. In. Out. I matched the pattern, grounded myself in those breaths, wrapped myself in his mana, and didn’t stop to care about all the reasons it was wrong.

That we were wrong.

Those things did not exist outside this space. Only in and out and his knuckles grazing my skin and the steady sensation of a comb pulled softly through each endless lock of my hair.

He reached across me to switch the lever for the drain, and there was nothing left in me to care that I was bare before him in every imaginable way.

Frigid air scraped along my skin but I couldn’t quite feel the cold, not with his body hovering so close to mine. His bare arm brushed along my shoulder, and I registered distantly that he must have taken off his shirt so he didn’t get it wet.

Warm water poured in, flowing freely down the drain. He held a glass pitcher under the stream until it was full. Gently, he placed a hand on my neck, thumb grazing up to my chin and pushing lightly. I obeyed the silent command, tilting my head backward and squeezing my eyes shut.

To keep out the water. To keep from getting a glimpse of his face that I was sure would undo me.

Heat spread from his thumb like molten lava, washing over my skin as surely as the water did, searing me straight through to my core. Every rivulet of water that slid along my skin felt like an extension of his touch.

An icy gust swept through the room, ghosting along the bare skin of my breasts in a heady contrast to the steaming water.

My lips parted, a gasp escaping me before I could stop it.

Draven froze. Hitched in a breath.

Then his fingers brushed across my skin, swiping away the excess of water on my brow. My cheeks. Dragging his thumb along my neck, lingering on the pulse that pounded with the need to spill every last one of my secrets.

He leaned forward again, though I could swear he was closer this time when he brushed against me.

The water came to a halt. I opened my eyes, but I still didn’t see him.

My body thrummed with energy that had nothing and everything to do with the bond.

He pulled back softly, returning to work a soft towel over my hair. Then he handed me one that was dry.

I got to my feet, stepping out of the tub and wrapping the towel around myself, keeping my eyes fixed solidly on the pale wooden floors while I pretended I couldn’t feel his gaze burning along my skin.

I saw him turn in my periphery, and finally, I forced myself to look at him. His aurora eyes blazed every shade of green and teal, possession and fury and remorse, all against a backdrop of pure, unrelenting need.

My heart skipped a beat, then stopped entirely.

It was a mistake to look at him. Reckless and careless and utterly unavoidable because shards , he was beautiful in a way that made my chest ache. Raw in a way that called to the darkness under my skin.

Mine .

“I’ll leave you to dress.” His words were far away, and entirely wrong.

Leave ?

Every inch of me rebelled at the word. My breath seized in my chest, sharp enough to crack the bones.

He must have felt that same reluctance because he turned away slowly, like he was facing down a winter storm. Like it cost him everything to leave.

I didn’t think. I darted out my hand and clasped it around his arm. He froze, only his shoulders moving with the force of his ragged breath, so different from the even ones that had tethered me to the world minutes or hours or a lifetime ago.

“Morta Mea.” It was a warning. A demand. A plea.

“Yes.”

Yes, I want you to stay.

Yes, I will be the death of you.

I will be the death of us both.