Page 54

Draven

I stumbled back from the force of her strength, strength I hadn’t known my wife even possessed. Pain lanced through my shoulder. Sharp, blinding, and white-hot.

But it was nothing compared to the shock I felt staring at the silver-laced wings on Everly’s back.

Unseelie.

One of the bastards wrenched her backward, and something feral flared to life inside of me. I tried to take a step forward, but my legs wouldn’t work, my bones locking into place.

I called for my mana, and the snow around me shifted to answer, then fell.

What in the hells?

One of them slammed shackles over her wrists while another yelled, “Take her!” Then they launched into the sky, dragging my wife—my Unseelie wife—along with them.

My rage was a storm beneath my skin, dying to break free. I called on my mana again, a growl ripping from my throat. This time the ice came to me, a gust of wind sweeping through the ruined gardens, knocking over the two remaining Unseelie.

Then I blinked, heavy and slow, and the scene shifted. The Unseelie were gone. The grounds were empty. And the wards were flickering.

I couldn’t move or think past the molten rage surging through my veins, a deep, righteous fury that filled me with a visceral need to lay waste to everything and everyone.

Traitor .

The word echoed through my mind, and I flinched away from it.

Unseelie Traitor.

My vision was swimming now. But I managed to turn toward the source of my pain at last. The arrow lodged in my shoulder was made of Rowanwood.

The wood was like poison to the Fae, but it shouldn’t have accounted for how quickly it had weakened me.

Slowly, I forced my hand up across my chest, the strain making my vision even more hazy. I gripped the shaft with my fingers and ripped it free from my flesh.

The pain intensified, burning through muscle and into my bones.

I stumbled, crashing to my knees as the arrow slipped from my grasp and landed in the snow with a sharp hiss.

My vision swam as I tried to focus on what I was seeing.

The arrowhead was the color of dying starlight and glowed with a quiet sort of malevolence. Veins of tarnished silver laced through the metal, catching the moonlight in strange ways, the refractions wrong, like it wanted to bend away from it.

Of course.

A bitter huff of air escaped me as I registered what they’d done.

Rowanwood shaft. Cold-iron tip.

The perfect sort of poison. One crafted for kings. One that would have killed me if she hadn’t pushed me out of the way.

My thoughts began melting away, words dancing just out of my reach. All save for one.

Liar.

And then the world went black.