Page 53 of Fated to the Frost King

“He also told me it takes place after the coronation. On the solstice,” I fibbed. “We shouldn’t disrupt tradition?—”

“It takes place at the king’s command,” Draven growled, his voice cutting through the air like a blade. “And I command that it take place today.”

There was something behind the words, more than authority or irritation, an undercurrent that made my skin prickle.

I tried again, weaker this time. “But my head…” I reached for the faint line of the completely healed scar above my brow.

“Is completely healed,” Draven snapped, stepping closer to me.

The way he looked at me made my heart stutter, like he was daring me to run. Like he’d already decided I would.

I opened my mouth, reaching for something, anything?—

But he didn’t give me the chance. He moved a step closer, speaking before I could muster another feeble excuse.

“The Heartstone doesn’t require effort from you.” He said the words as much like a threat as an explanation, encircling his hand around my arm in a grip that was firm but not painful.

His mana was even stronger with the contact, crashing over me in wave after wave of all the fury he wouldn’t quite voice aloud.

I tried to dig my heels in, still searching for a better excuse.

“Right,” I finally rasped out. “It’s just…not a good day for that. I can’t…”

I can’t protect your people. I can’t even protect myself.

He didn’t wait for me to finish, didn’t even glance in my direction as he pulled us both toward the doors. “It finds your mana with or without your consent, along with your intention.”

My stomach turned to ice. The stone would reach for me, for whatever mana it thought I had, and when it found nothing, the ceremony would fail. Failure meant exposure. Exposure meant ruin. It meant death.

Then I caught onto his last word.Intention.

Because the stone would not accept a traitor. Two hundred years ago, the Autumn Queen had been flung across the dais for plotting against her king, and summarily executed thereafter.

Would my secrets make me treasonous, in the stone’s eyes? For that matter, could the stone even read my intentions, evenwithout mana? Was it possible that I would both fail the mana part of the ceremony and be marked a traitor in a single go?

There was something almost challenging in the king’s demeanor that worried me nearly as much as the ceremony itself, like he had been expecting this reaction from me. Like he already suspected I would fail.

I needed more time. I needed to think of a reason, a lie, that was convincing enough to get out of this frost-blasted mess, without sentencing myself to an earlier death than expected.

“I suppose I’m just…nervous,” I finally blurted out. “I didn’t grow up near any of this, as you’re so fond of reminding me. My upbringing didn’t exactly lend itself to familiarity with royal ceremonies, and you’ve already been furious with the way things have gone with the court.”

That, at least, was true. Draven stopped walking, and I finally took a deep breath.

He clenched his left hand and studied my features for several heartbeats too long, not a single twitch of his eyebrow to reveal whether he believed me or not.

Then the doors to the hall creaked open, and I realized he had stopped, not because of my excuse, but because we had arrived.

A smattering of familiar faces from the Winter Court awaited us, dressed in icy finery, their eyes fixed on me. They weren’t sneering, this time. Not exactly, at least.

The attack had shaken them, rattled something beneath their carefully cultivated elegance. And now they watched me not like I was tonight’s entertainment, but like I might be the answer to a question none of them dared to ask aloud.

Instead of the downfall of their entire royal line.

Chapter 20

Everly

Draven was quick to capitalize on my distraction, slipping my hand around his arm and holding it in place with his vise-like grip as if we were just a normal couple who had happily strode here together. Of their own free-will. Both of them.

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