Page 86 of Fated to the Frost King

She held the sky in her hands that night.

I remembered the way I’d clapped, how I’d begged for more. Her laugh echoed, warm and wild and real, as the butterflies rose and spun like living constellations, weightless and beautiful.

I reached out to touch one. Its wing brushed my finger. It was warm. Then cold.

Then, a sting. Just a pinprick. A glass-thin edge across my skin. Barely enough to bleed.

My mother’s attention snapped toward me. I think. I was watching the butterfly. Or maybe the blood.

But I remember her expression. Not startled, horrified.

She crossed to me in an instant, faster than she should have, her hands already reaching. Not for the wound.

For me.

The scene changed from a memory to something less tangible, impressions rather than images. The air grew heavier, thicker, like something was pressing against it from the inside.

The last thing I heard was an echo of her telling me to run.

Deep purple light flared beneath the obsidian’s surface, streaking like veins of lightning through stone. Smoke curled from the edges, and the surface cracked, the sound echoing through the room. I jerked back, heart pounding.

Lumen pressed his head against my leg, letting out a low, questioning whine, and Batty trilled into my ear.

I could barely hear it over the sound of my own breath, ragged and shallow. I stared down at my hand, the memory of my mother’s panicked voice, the flash of panic burning in her emerald eyes, still flickering behind mine like an afterimage.

Isren exhaled slowly, gaze fixed on the crystal. His voice, when it came, was steady but low with reverence.

“Well,” he said. “It seems His Majesty was correct.”

I looked at him, then to Draven, then back again. “What…what does that mean?”

The Archmage leaned forward, more serious now than he’d been all morning. “It means you do have mana. Powerful mana. But it’s not dormant, My Queen.”

He paused, letting the words settle. “It’s bound.”

I blinked, my throat dry. “Bound?”

“Caged,” he added a moment later. “Whatever is inside you, someone didn’t want it found, so they built walls around it.”

The crack in the crystal still glowed faintly on the table.

“Can it be…undone?” Draven voiced the question that was building on my lips.

“Everything can be undone,” Isren replied gravely. “But there are more pressing matters at hand.”

He looked between me and Draven, and his voice dipped even quieter.

“Who bound it?” His eyes met mine. “Or more to the point, why?”

Chapter 30

Everly

The crystal still smoked.

A thin tendril of violet mist curled toward the ceiling, and I stared, transfixed. My pulse thundered in my ears. My fingers were numb.

I wasn’t a Hollow.

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