Page 61 of Fated to the Frost King

It shouldn’t have stung.

Not when he was a monster. Not when I hadn’t wanted to marry him either.

My chest tightened, a flicker of something unwanted flaring to life and then twisting. Shame, maybe. Or the bond. Some traitorous thread rebelling against the idea that either of us might wish for something else.

For now, I would have to content myself with the fact that the longer he kept me alive, the longer my sister was safe. And I would do whatever I could to keep her that way.

Finally, I sat up with a huff and leaned my head back against the headboard, eyelids gritty with fatigue.

If I was being completely honest with myself, I was also disappointed that I hadn’t seen Nevara after the ceremony. We weren’t precisely friends, but she had been…warmer, until the attack. Then she had closed off entirely.

Because of something she had Seen?

Batty squeaked irritably from her perch above my bed, clearly tired of my spiraling. She stretched her wings before dropping from the curtain to land in my lap. I gave her a weak smile, one that didn’t quite reach my eyes.

“Yes, I know,” I muttered. “I’ll stop thinking. It’s not helping anyway.”

Mirelda’s knock sounded at the door earlier than usual. And when she entered, she wasn’t alone.

Draven followed her into the room. His expression was even more shuttered than it had been the night of our marriage, his mana tightly coiled and just as impossible to read.

I sat up straighter, instinct sharpening my posture even as the rest of me felt like a spool of unraveling thread.

Even the unflappable maid paused for a fraction of a second, her gaze flicking between us like she wasn’t quite sure which of us was about to be executed.

“You,” Draven said, voice low and flat, “are to be ready within the hour. Mirelda, pack her things for a journey.”

I went cold.

“To go where?” I asked, aiming for calm, hitting something closer to brittle.

Was he willing to let me live in exile now? There was a curious swooping low in my abdomen that didn’t feel nearly enough like relief.

Draven didn’t answer immediately. He moved into the room like a stormcloud, casting a brief glance toward the window, as if he could already see the path carved through snow and ice, see the fate he was dragging me toward.

“We’re leaving for the mountains,” he said flatly. “For the Veilreach Sanctum.”

I nearly laughed. A full-on, verge-of-hysteria, laugh.

The exhaustion was really getting to me. That had to be the reason I hadn’t considered this before… I should have guessed my husband would think this was an option, hells, hisonlyoption.

“The mages?” It wasn’t really a question so much as a curse. There was no other reason to go to the Sanctum.

Draven nodded anyway, not bothering to look back at me.

I shook my head, my muscles and the scars on my back twitching with sharp memories of pain.

Of course it would be the mages. They were always the response to Hollows.

A shiver raced down my spine, and my hand began to tremble as I considered what sort of tactics they might employ on a fae who made it to adulthood without mana. How much crueler and exacting their methods might be, if such a thing were possible.

I might not have had the unfortunate experience of visiting Veilreach myself, but mages were the same the world around. They all answered to the same Archmage.

I flinched as memories filled my mind, one after another. My uncle taking me from my home, locking my mother away so she wouldn’t interfere when the mages tested the limits of my pain, my sanity, all to force the mana from my veins.

Mana that never came.

This is for your own good, Everly…. You know what happens to Hollows….

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