Page 50 of Fated to the Frost King

Or wonder why I was thinking about any of it at all.

Chapter 19

Everly

It was two more days before I realized that I had forgotten something crucial.

Maybe it was the head wound, or maybe it was the distraction of rotating visitors and the lingering guilt that I hadn’t done enough to save anyone.

Seventeen had died in the attack. Three more were recovering in the infirmary, tucked at the far end of the wing, well out of sight. The East Gardens had been all but decimated, but the Bloom Stewards were already working to restore what was lost.

Soren was the only one who would even tell me that much since Nevara was being even more tightlipped than usual, and Mirelda had insisted that I needed to focus on healing.

Draven didn’t come.

Not that I’d expected him to sit at my bedside, but his absence still felt…intentional.

I knew he was in the palace. The snowstorms assaulting the palace at all hours of the night were evidence enough, even without the volatile pulse of his mana in my periphery.

It was a distraction in itself, which was the only excuse I had for failing to notice the missing weight on my thigh.

The dagger had probably been flung into the trees with the wave of Draven’s mana, where I could at least deny any knowledge about it if it was discovered. As long as no one had actually seen me throw it, which was likely enough since we were all pretty focused on the whole ‘not getting eaten by the creature that was slaughtering the courtyard’ thing.

But where in the hells was my sheath?

I swallowed back a wave of foreboding. I might be able to deny association with the dagger, but I would have no defense at all if someone had seen me wearing the sheath.

When the healer came to check on me to finally clear me to leave this place, I braced myself to ask him, even though it felt a lot like carving the darkest part of my insides out and putting them on display for the male.

Healer Amias had already seen so much more than I wanted him to.

The robe they gave me was thin and open to the back. It didn’t leave much to the imagination—least of all when it came to the roadmap of scars that littered my back. Ugly, unglamorous truths I didn’t want to explain.

He had never asked me about them. Maybe it was because, like all healers, he was from the Spring Court, and they were generally more reserved than the rest of the fae. Or maybe it was that healers took vows of secrecy, and he was weary of having things rest on his soul that were his to bear alone.

It was enough to make me feel guilty for bringing up the sheath and putting yet another secret on his back, but I had no choice. I waited to ease into it, greeting him as politely as I could with bile rising up in my throat.

“Are you ready to crawl up the walls yet, Your Majesty?” he asked with a patient smile.

As always, he looked like he’d stepped out of a moss-covered grove, his hair and lashes the deep green of wet forest, eyes to match. His kindness seemed genuine, if somewhat detached in the way that healers tended to be.

“More than,” I told him truthfully.

He gave me a patient smile, moving to begin his daily examination of my head.

His long, slender hands moved with an artful precision that only came from decades—maybe centuries—of practice. Pale green skin, soft as new leaves, stretched over long fingers marked by slow-moving vine tattoos that curled and shifted with every motion.

His touch was gentle, studying without prodding. Though my experience with healers in the past had been marred by the circumstances that landed me there, I had to admit I would much prefer the quieter nature of Spring Court to some smug Winter noble with frost in his veins.

He murmured about the lesion on my scalp being all but gone, and was moving along to my shoulder when I finally dredged up the nerve to ask him about the sheath.

“Could you tell me what happened to the things I was wearing?” I made an effort at discretion, at least.

Amias paused, pulling back to look me in the eye with a solemn expression. “Your maid took your gown, your shoes, and your underclothes to clean.”

The list was specific. Intentional.

My throat went dry, my fingers numb with dread.

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