Page 80 of Fated to the Frost King

The Elder looked at me and at the hook in my hand.

He shook his head back and forth as I stepped closer. I held his gaze as I drove the sharpened tip into his stomach.

He gasped, hands trying to reach for the hook, blood blooming warm across my knuckles before the cold took it. Ice spread like veins across his robes.

I leaned in close. His breath hitched in panicked puffs against my collar. “By whatever means necessary, right?”

Maybe Everly was right to call me a sadist because I enjoyed every single ounce of his agony when I twisted the hook and ripped it from his flesh.

My wolves followed as I walked out, frost curling behind us like a shadow.

I didn’t look back once. Not as I slammed the doors to the torture chamber, and not as I emerged from the bowels of the Sanctum covered in blood, with no trace of regret tugging at me.

Chapter 28

Everly

By the time the summons arrived, I’d already given up on pretending to sleep.

A thin slip of parchment, delivered without a word. The script was elegant and sharp—too sharp—and at the bottom, signed in a style I didn’t recognize but understood all the same.

The Archmage will receive you.

Veilreach Hightower Suite, midmorning. Do be punctual.

Of course. Because tardiness—not torture—was clearly the greater offense.

I sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders curled in like I could fold myself out of existence. My hair was still damp from yesterday’s bath, and my skin felt just as sodden—like I’d been wrung out and left somewhere too cold to dry. The circles beneath my eyes had turned a bruised sort of lavender, and every inch of me felt scraped raw.

Draven hadn’t said a word since last night. Not when he left to fetch dinner. Not when he returned, quietly slipping thescreen around the tub and taking his time cleaning up before collapsing into bed. Nightmares had plagued me, memories of torment melding with the realities of this place.

I didn’t know if Draven had shared them. He didn’t say, and this time I woke up warmed only by blankets.

He hadn’t so much as glanced in my direction by the time the summons arrived.

Which was fine. I wasn’t sure I could look at him either.

The hallways of Veilreach were too bright, too echoing. The mages we passed skittered out of our way like startled insects, heads down, eyes averted. It was a stark contrast to their eagerness the day before.

So. They had heard, then, about theirHollow Queen.

How long before the rest of the kingdom knew?

Batty curled deeper into the crook of my neck, her tiny talons threading through my collar as she nuzzled under my jaw. Her silken wings pressed close, and I felt the faintest trill of warmth at the base of my throat. I brought my fingers up to stroke along her back.

At least one creature in this forsaken place didn’t recoil from me.

Lumen pressed his head against my leg as if he’d been summoned by the thought.

Okay, so two creatures, then.

We stopped before a pair of intricately carved doors. They were high-arched and bone-white, with sigils etched into the wood that shimmered faintly in gold. The threshold itself thrummed with old mana, the kind that made the air feel too still, too watchful.

Draven pushed the doors open without so much as a knock, and I reluctantly followed him into the lion’s den.

The Archmage’s suite was not what I expected.

It was warm. Not inviting, exactly, but not sterile or cruel. Books lined the shelves along the walls in untidy stacks. In between them were various crystals, pulsing softly with mana.

---