Page 12 of Fated to the Frost King

I might have been a bastard by birth, but King Draven was one by choice.

Still, I kept my expression even as I bit back a quiet response of my own. “You might command this castle and everything in it, but even you have no dominion over my expressions,Your Majesty. I don’t belong to you, whatever your Visionary says.”

“We’ll see about that.” There was a dark promise in his tone, one that unfurled something low in my gut.

I hissed under my breath, cursing whatever underlying effect the vow had on my body.

But even my new marriage bond wasn’t enough to make me worried about losing control on my wedding night. Just thethought of sharing my bed with the male who had slaughtered my family in his bloodlust was enough to make my stomach churn.

I had gotten through the ceremony without revealing myself. I could get through this, too.

I would hardly be the first bride to dread her wedding night. Shards only knew how my sister made it through hers. I had never asked. Selfishly, I hadn’t wanted to know, hadn’t wanted to bear the weight of the life that was so much less than what she deserved.

The Visionary spoke to the crowd, her voice carrying in the wind to reach their ears. While she spoke, I tried to center myself. To plan. I needed next steps.

I didn’t know what I deserved, but I sure as hells knew that I wouldn’t stand here and smile at the side of a male who taunted me with the wedding night I had no choice in. So I squared my shoulders and gave the crowd below a single nod, the closest I would come to playing their political games. Not for his sake, but for mine.

Any scene I caused would only have the people talking, and I didn’t need more attention, more questions. They didn’t need to think I was happy to be with their king, but neither could I afford to look like a traitor.

The king tracked the movement in my shoulders as he seemed to track everything, with all the predatory instincts of the wolves that surrounded us. I ignored him, spinning to walk down the stairs like I knew where I was going.

It gave me a small surge of petty satisfaction when he was forced to follow for the sake of his pride, even as he cursed when he fell in step beside me. His wolves followed close behind, the sound of their claws scraping against the marble echoed through the silence.

The king led me through the castle halls in a blur of stone and shadow, my already precarious sense of direction unraveling with every turn. Somewhere between the second tipped archway and the seventh identical sconce, I stopped pretending to know where we were. After an eternity, we reached what appeared to be the inside of a turret.

It was a round space with high domed ceilings made almost entirely of glass. There was a massive door on either side, identical, of course. He led me to the left, opening the door with a showy burst of mana.

I might have rolled my eyes if every modicum of levity hadn’t fled my soul the moment I caught sight of the room.

It was his bedroom. Orabedroom, in any event, though easily six times the size of mine at the estate.

Like the room I had dressed in, it was a cavernous space stripped of warmth and color, dressed in nothing but shades of silver, white, and frostbitten gray. The polished walls stretched high and wide, interrupted only by massive windows that let in the cascading colors of the auroras and every ounce of the cold. There were no curtains, no drapes, nothing to soften the starkness.

Even the wan fire in the hearth was unnaturally still, as if the flames themselves had been cowed into submission by the monster at my side.

I hadn’t thought it possible to be any colder, but that was because I hadn’t stood in my wedding chamber yet.

A hand at my lower back urged me forward, but I stalled just inside the doorway, the echo of my steps feeling loud enough to summon frostbeasts. It was one thing to consider my wedding night when I thought it was hours away, when it was only hypothetical.

Another to realize I would be trapped in a room with a male I had just watched slaughter two other females.

The bed loomed in the center of the room like a sacrificial altar—all carved silverwood and thick, luxurious furs that somehow looked more ominous than inviting. A basin of steaming water waited near the hearth, already perfumed with something far too sweet and cloying.

The touch at my back grew firmer, giving me no choice but to enter the room or lose even more dignity than I already had. Than I already would, by the time this night was over.

I forced myself to breathe. I had done this before. Not with a murderer, of course, or at least, not that I knew of. But if I could get through the stableboy’s clumsy fumblings in the dark while I held up my own skirts, then surely I could close my eyes and grit my teeth through this.

Even I heard how flimsy that was, as far as bolstering went.

A frigid gust of air closed the door with all the finality of a closing tomb, stealing my last chance to lie to myself.

The king stepped around me, tilting his head to regard me like a predator might regard something half-dead, as if he was already wondering how long I would last. It lent me enough anger to lift my chin and stare him in the eyes.

King Draven. My husband. And an utterfrost-twat.

He wasn’t fooled by my weak front.

“You’re trembling.” His mouth twisted into a sneer like there was something distasteful about my unwillingness to offer myself to his loftiness.

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