Page 23 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
I turned back to the pines. My hand pressed against the cluster of ancient branches, frost crawling outward in jagged veins. The glamour cracked, splintering with a sound like breaking glass.
Pale wood emerged from the illusion. Deep violet runes carved into the trunk pulsed faintly, as though sensing the hunger in my mana.
I didn’t bother with subtlety. Fury burst from my veins, shattering the door into icy splinters. The roots beneath us groaned, the living wood trembling as the passage split wide.
Let them hear me coming. Let them feel the storm descending.
The den opened before me, hollowed through the heart of the trees. Knotted roots curled along the walls like ribs, dripping with sap that gleamed in the faint gutter of faelight.
Shadows warped across the chamber, broken by the restless stir of onyx wings. Skaldwings. Their eyes caught the glow, sharp and unblinking, shifting from suspicion to recognition to fear.
The air itself recoiled when I stepped inside. Frost quickly spread over the walls, crystals blooming outward as to coat the walls and floor and ceiling. I filled the hollow with nothing but hatred, nothing but vengeance.
“Where is she?” I asked, my voice slicing through the silence like one of their shards-damned blades.
The nearest male sneered, his lips curling in an ill-fated attempt at bravery or defiance.
His mistake.
Ice covered him instantly, racing up his limbs until he glittered like a statue. I closed my fist, and he shattered with a sharp crack.
With a flick of my wrist, spears of ice shot outward, skewering the others and slamming them against the walls at their backs. Their wings spread in agony as the frost drove them into the living wood. One by one they froze in place, displayed like pinned specimens in some grotesque collector’s box.
Violet runes glowed around one of the Skaldwing bastards, flaring to life the more he fought against his restraints.
Another doorway, then?I stepped closer, and the Unseelie writhed and cursed even more. Their diaphanous wings strainedagainst the ice, but their struggles only made the display more pitiful.
I took another deliberate step forward, the hush of my boots on frozen ground louder than their cries.
“Speak.”
The closest male roared as the frost dug deeper into his flesh, the sound echoing through the chamber like the cry of something already half-dead.
Before he could break, another voice rasped through the dark. Recognition stirred within me. He had been at the estate. He had restrained my wife.
And now his gaze was fixed on her sister.
“You’re her, aren’t you?” It was less of a question and more of a realization. “Her sister. She asked about you. She is safe.”
Noerwyn took a step forward, relief radiating from her small frame.
“Shut it, Alaric,” snarled the male at his side.
“Where. Is. She?” I bit out each word with quiet lethality.
The one named Alaric set his jaw. “Just because you claimed her doesn’t make her yours.”
Fury coiled inside me, dark and endless, like a storm that refused to still. Frost snaked from the shackles on his wrists, blackening his flesh from the tips of his fingers inward, each vein turning brittle under the weight of my mana.
“But luring her into a trap that nearly got her killed is fair game?”
His expression was confirmation enough. The Unseelie were responsible for every bit of carnage at the estate.
“Tell me where she is.” My voice was a low, dangerous rasp, an icy blade slicing into skin.
A surge of mana burst outward, slamming him back against the root-walls, frostbite spreading up his wings until themembrane split and flaked like old parchment. His groan was ragged, teeth bared against the agony.
“There is nothing you can do,” he panted, “that would make me betray the people I love.”
