Page 6 of Fated to the Frost King

A curse hissed past my lips as I slipped and landed hard enough on my backside that I saw stars.

I tried to scramble to my feet but stopped short when I realized that it wasn’t ice I had tripped over at all, but a frozen chunk of the shattered heiress. Her forearm lay broken on the floor at my feet, fingers skittering from where I had stepped on it.

Nausea roiled through me, twisting my gut.

The king truly was a monster. He let out a growl, a low, feral sound more suited to a frostbeast than this glittering ice palace.

“Apologies,” I snapped. “Have I lost my footing on the pieces offleshadorning your ballroom? How very careless of me.” I was too panicked to care how angry I made him now.

My throat was closing in. This was a literal nightmare—a palace of fresh corpses, wolves that wanted to eat me, and a king who would use me forbreedingwhile he looked at me with disdain.

And that was just the best case scenario.

The king let out an exasperated sigh, like my aversion to severed limbs exhausted him.

“If I dispose of this one, will another appear?” he asked his Visionary, rising from his throne and stalking toward me like one of his wolves.

“No.” The Visionary’s response was dry.

The king didn’t react, but ice erupted beneath me, curling into crystalline spines that shoved me upright. They weren’t sharp enough to draw blood, but close enough to threaten it.

I gritted my teeth as they shifted again, slipping beneath my boots just enough to glide me forward. I wasn’t walking so much as I was being delivered, like an unwilling offering the altar didn’t particularly want, but would settle for anyway.

King Draven’s piercing gaze stayed locked on mine, daring me to disobey again.

And shards-damn me, but it made me want to.

The force of his mana thickened in the air, growing heavier with every heartbeat. It was subtle at first, like the pressure in the air before a storm, then it swelled into a tempest that crashed over me again and again.

An avalanche of winter slammed into my senses—crushed juniper and snow. It clawed through my throat and burned in my lungs, thick as frostbite and unyielding as the king himself.

There was no escaping it. No escapinghim.

“You have precisely one hour to pull yourself together,” he growled, and the deep timbre of his voice rattled my bones. “At which time I will expect you to refrain from embarrassing us both at our wedding.”

A dagger formed in his grip, borne of frost and superiority. He tilted the hilt under my chin, less as a threat than a display of dominance. The cold scraped along my chin, sending a tremor through my veins. He leaned in the way he had done with the first female he executed tonight.

His tone was a soft contrast to his words, the quiet whisper of steel as a sword is drawn. “And don’t even think about running. There is nowhere you can go that I won’t find you, and there is nothing I won’t do for the sake of my kingdom. Even marryingyou.”

With that, he dropped my chin, turning to his guard. “Escort her to the queen’s suites. My wolves will clean this up.”

Bile rose in my throat at the picture my mind formed. I couldn’t even bask in the hollow victory that I had, in fact, forced the king to leave his throne.

I might have won the battle, but I sure as hells had lost the war.

Chapter 3

Everly

The walk was endless. Each step further into the icy labyrinth of the palace felt like one step closer to the gallows.

Would it have been easier if the Visionary had named me as a traitor instead of a bride? At least then, death would have been quick, instead of following me around like an indecisive reaper.

Maybe that would be what killed me in the end, the panic and fear that would slowly eat away at my sanity because there was nothing I could do but wait.

I swallowed the bitter thought as the guards led me to a room, shutting the door behind me with a soft click.

My heart thudded in my ears. It was too loud. Too fast. And without the king to bluster for, or his guards to babysit me, the cracks were beginning to show.

---