Page 60 of Fated to the Frost King

“It doesn’t bother you that she lied? That she hid an Unseelie dagger?”

“The dagger that saved my life? No, I can’t say that I’m overly offended by it. And we all have secrets, Draven. Perhaps if you’d give her even half a chance, you’d realize she isn’t the punishment you think.”

This time when she turned to leave, I didn’t stop her. But I didn’t drink any more gin, either.

I pulled out my wife’s dagger, turning it over slowly in my hand. Amethysts winked from the grip, the stones dark and polished like bruises. The crossguard curved outward in wicked, elegant arcs, its edges nearly as lethal as the blade itself.

I closed my eyes and saw her again, barely clinging to consciousness in the courtyard. The rage that had swept over me.

The soul-deep need to protect her. The rare urge to comfort when she had screamed in the infirmary. All things fueled entirely by the shards-damned bond, but inescapable nonetheless.

But then I had seen it. The edge of a sheath, just barely visible, tucked into the blood-stained fabric of her soiled gownand set neatly aside for her. It hadn’t taken me long to find the dagger after that, embedded in the dirt beneath a pome tree like a fallen piece of rotted fruit.

My wife had an Unseelie dagger. Not because she was a traitor, but because she was a Hollow. It was her only defense.

And she had used it for Nevara.

If you’d give her even half a chance.

Something uncomfortable shifted in my chest before it was smothered by another wave of rage at the many lies told by my bride and the vague, cryptic comments from the female who asked me to trust her.

More than is to be found in that bottle.

Nevara kept her secrets, but couldn’t outright lie. No true Visionary could.

You’d realize she isn’t the punishment you think.

I carefully parsed through everything else she had said. And more importantly what she hadn’t.

If my wife wasn’t the punishment I thought, then there was still something that could be done. Nevara had told me to give her a chance.

And she had never once confirmed that Everly was a Hollow.

Chapter 22

Everly

Once again, I hadn’t slept.

Not for lack of trying but because sleep required peace, something I hadn’t known from the moment I was summoned to this palace.

From the beginning, it had been about survival. About hiding the truth. About staying one step ahead of discovery, of death.

But now… he knew. The king knew, and he hadn’t killed me.Yet.

I rolled over in the oversized bed and stared up at the ceiling. Shadows danced along the moulding, each one looking more and more like an axe waiting to fall. For the cold finality of my life. Night after night, I watched those shadows, waiting for it to fall. And night after shards-damned night, it didn’t.

And now… here I was, still waiting even though my secret was out there, exposed like a raw nerve.

Should I be relieved? Or more afraid?

The not knowing gnawed at something inside me.

I turned over in bed a few more times before angrily fluffing my pillow and laying back down.

Each passing hour somehow deepened my exhaustion, and made me more restless. My thoughts swirled uselessly, tangled in threads of dread and disbelief. Every time I started to drift off to sleep, the memory of his voice would cut through me like a freshly sharpened blade.

“Do you think any part of me wanted to marry you?”

---