Page 119 of Fated to the Frost King

Bile swam over my tongue as something slopped down onto my head, and down my neck. It was wet, and cold, andwrong.

So very wrong.

Wynnie gasped as she climbed over me, her hands reaching out in quiet, trembling movements. When I could finally sit up, it was to see my sister pulling a member of her staff off of me. Or what was left of them, at least.

Her expression was stoic as she gently placed them against the wall, her hands were trembling more violently once she let them go.

I grabbed her by her shoulders, forcing her upright, just as she had done for me so many times.

“Breathe,” I whispered, trying to pull her from her panic, while being mindful of whatever could hear us.

She did, and I tried to follow suit.

Then the wind exploded. It blasted through the dining hall, so forceful it ripped the doors from their hinges. My ring burned with cold again, just as I looked up to find Draven in the kitchen surrounded by five Tharnoks. Bodies littered the floor around him like broken toys.

I screamed his name like a prayer. His head snapped toward me. A mix of relief, fury, and fear danced across his features.

A Tharnok’s jaws snapped down on his arm.

He stumbled, and I ran forward.

Wynnie grabbed my arm, wrenching me back. “There’s nothing you can do, Ev. There are too many of them.”

Her voice was hoarse, broken even, as her crystal blue eyes searched mine.

I shook my head, resisting her tugging.

It didn’t make sense. Not when I had come here to save her, not when I knew he was stronger than us both. But another shriek rent the air, and I knew with a certainty that there was no part of me that could walk away and leave my husband to these monsters.

I tore free just as another wave of mana blasted through the room.

My husband’s face was twisted in sheer, unrelenting fury. The monsters were flung back. One of them hit the wall so hard it crumbled. The others scrambled to regroup, but he was already moving.

A haze of frost. A blur of ice, sharpened like a blade.

He flitted between them, ice ripping through limbs, mana lashing out. One monster shattered into a thousand shards of ice and blood. Another was frozen mid-lunge, then ripped apart by sheer force of will.

He was rage and storm and salvation all at once. And then, he was here.

Bleeding. Limping. Breathing hard.

The final Tharnok hadn’t even hit the ground when Draven crossed the space between us and pressed his bloodied forehead to mine.

It should have felt strange, but it was instinctual. I leaned into him, needing to feel that we were both still here. Both still alive.

I closed my eyes and took my first real breath, pulling him into my lungs and clinging to the scent of frost and juniper thatsomehow still clung to him after everything. Slowly, something close to relief settled in.

Even though I knew this still wasn’t over.

Chapter 40

Everly

The 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.

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