Page 17 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
“If by ‘fled from my duty’ you meant to say, for my life before your precious mages could end it, then yes. I suppose I wasn’t the obedient child you’d been hoping for.”
Pain lanced through my back, at least the memory of it. It tugged at the skin beneath my wings, following the path of each carefully placed scar.
My uncle went as still as the mountains beyond the longhouse. Shadows stretched around him, blocking the light from the setting sun. I had pushed him too far, but I couldn’t bring myself to back down.
He had seen me humbled enough for a shards-blasted lifetime.
My mother cut in again, but this time, her voice was taut to the point of breaking.
“I think we can all agree that Everly had her reasons to stay away. Regardless, nothing has to be decided right now.”
My uncle’s glare said otherwise, but I took the small reprieve she gave me. Time. There was still time to…do something. At the very least, time for them to realize I was right about the bond.
“Whether anyone would accept that I had no mana or no access to mana isn’t the point. Why wouldn’t you want me to unbind it?”
“Because it cannot be unbound!” My mother was closer to yelling than I had ever heard her, just this side of pleading. For forgiveness? For understanding?
Hope was a funny thing, the way I had believed I could keep it at bay. But it had taken root.
For a handful of weeks, I had started to believe that I wouldn’t always be this.
Weak. Useless.Hollow.
I shook my head slowly. “That’s not possible. You know how it was done, so we can figure out how to undo it now.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Everly, it took years to bind your mana. It would take years to break down those walls, and the risk to you…I won’t put you in that kind of danger.”
I sat forward, digging my talons into the carved arms of my chair.
“Don’t you think that’s my choice to make, if I want to at least try to live my life with a small degree of normality? To be able to defend myself?”
Not to mention Winter, but I couldn’t very well explain that to her right now.
She lifted her chin, shoulders squaring. “We aren’t the Seelie, we are quite capable of living our daily lives without mana, and even if we weren’t, it wouldn’t be worth your life.”
“The life that has been in danger from the moment you bound my mana?”
She flinched like I had slapped her, and guilt flooded through me. I knew that wasn’t fair, that my life would have been forfeit far sooner if she hadn’t taken the measures she did.
But she didn’t begin to understand the life I had been subject to since then.
“I have always been defenseless,” I said in a more subdued tone.
My uncle sighed like he grew weary of this conversation. “Which is why you have been sparring all week.”
“Well, if the Frostgrave King decides to take me back, I’ll be sure and hurl a dagger at him then.” It was the only card I had to play, the only threat he couldn’t realistically deny.
Even if my ring trembled like it wanted to challenge the very idea.
The Thane cocked his head, studying me like he could read every convoluted thought running through my mind. “Would you fight him if he did?”
I felt hands tracing my scars. Breath on my skin. Then endless, icy fury, strong enough to transcend kingdoms.
Morta Mea.
I fisted my hands in my lap, resisting the urge to run them nervously along the warrior’s braid woven along my scalp.
“Not without mana,” I said in as neutral a tone as I could manage.
