Page 93 of Fated to the Frost King

“You suspect threats from the palace?” I wasn’t sure why I was surprised after my personal experiences with the ice-dragons in this palace.

Draven nodded sharply. “I wouldn’t rule it out. And you can’t access your mana,” he added, after what I might have called a hesitation from anyone else.

I blinked at him, slowly.

“Yes,” I replied dryly, “I’m aware.”

That muscle in his jaw ticked again, like he was trying not to frost the floor out of sheer frustration. Then he reached into his coat and pulled out…a dagger, tucked neatly inside a sheath.

My sheath. And my achingly familiar dagger.

The black twisted steel called to me, my fingers itching to hold it again, to run my fingers over the distinctive grooves on the amethysts.

This dagger was the last thing I had of my mother. I froze just short of reaching for it.

Had he been carrying it around all this time?

My eyes flitted from the blade back up to meet his blue-green stare. His expression was guarded, like he was half expecting me to ask, but the question touched too close to wounds that were still half-raw and bleeding.

So I asked something else instead.

“Why did you kill the Elder mage?”

He held my gaze, the full weight of it landing like a blow I hadn’t braced for. “Because he threatened to harm something that belonged to me.”

There was no hesitation in him, no shame or second-guessing. Just that unshakable certainty he always wore like armor.

I swallowed, trying to feel nothing but offense at his words. “I told you already, I don’t belong to you. You can’t just treat me like your possession and then murder people on my behalf.”

He tilted his head slightly. “Would you rather I had let him live?”

I opened my mouth to answer reflexively that I didn’t want anyone to die on my behalf, but Draven closed in.

“Him, and his room of shackles and branding irons and knives? Do you wish that he had gone on to torture another day?”

No.No, I didn’t.

But neither was I foolish enough to think that Draven had killed him for that reason.

The quiet stretched between us like a living, tangible thing. It devoured the air and made me wildly aware of the lack of space between us. The way his breath smelled faintly of mint, and the dusting of snow that hadn’t melted from his ice-blond hair.

He shook his head, seeming to take my silence as confirmation enough.

“Doesn’t it make you happy, Morta Mea, to know that he died with some small amount of the pain he inflicted on others?”

The scars on my back prickled.

“No,” I lied. And I wasn’t sure what that made me.

The corners of Draven’s lips tilted up like he had heard the truth anyway, and I tracked the motion, wondering how someone so steeped on the dark side of morally acceptable was still so shards-damned beautiful.

“Would you care if I was happy,” I demanded quietly. “As long as I found a way to beusefulto you?”

A muscle worked in his jaw, those perfect full lips pursing. He leaned in as though on instinct, mana thrumming wildly from his body to mine.

His gaze flicked down to my mouth, like he was studying each curve and arc of my lips, as if he were remembering what they tasted like.

“No.” He answered. The word was a low murmur, uttered with half the conviction of his usual taunt.

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