Page 71 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
“Even I struggle with my faith, Draven. Especially now.” Her voice cracked once, soft enough that the tower swallowed the sound. “And I am so tired of watching the people I love die one horrible, gruesome death after another.”
I leaned back to wrap an arm around her as if I could anchor that tiredness, or at least weigh it. She rested her head against my shoulder, and for a moment, the absurd familiarity of thegesture, the way childhood habits refused to die, made the room tilt.
The truth of her sacrifice, her burden, sat heavy between us.
“I know you are,” I said evenly. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”
“I didn’t tell you because I’m still trying to get you the ending you deserve, Draven.” She said it plainly, as if it were the most ordinary of admissions. "Your knowing the future could change it. So if I have to keep playing my games and keeping my secrets for the sake of hearing you laugh again one day, then I will damn well do what I must, and you can hate me later.”
A muscle clenched in my jaw. It wasn’t a solution, by any stretch. Not when she didn’t always have all of the pieces, and the choices she made could lead to my wife being taken.
I wasn’t sure I was capable of trusting anyone with my life and my kingdom when I had no say.
Still, there was one thing I knew. “I could never hate you, Nevara.”
Twenty-Eight
Everly
It happened again.
The ominous, scraping sensation, like claws raking along the shadows of my soul. I gasped, and my water glass slipped from my fingers, shattering on the ground at my feet.
An echo of Draven’s mana pulsed once, then twice, before something…punctured. The wards flickered, then flared to life again.
Wynnie didn’t call out from the bath, so I knew that, once again, she hadn’t felt it. Before I could begin to make sense of it, the door between my room and Draven’s crashed open on a burst of ice and snow.
I froze, my breath still ragged from the bone-deep sense of dread still pressing in.
Draven’s gaze raked over me, his teal eyes carefully examining every exposed inch of my skin as if he were looking for something.
I hadn’t seen him since the early hours of the night… when I had crept into his room and let myself forget that we were enemies for several, several minutes too long.
Minutes that would have been longer if my talons hadn’t emerged, reminding me of every reason we were impossible.
Something like shame burned through me.
For letting myself go to him? For having the nerve to want to break the bond I never wanted to begin with?
I wasn’t sure. I had left his room with more questions than answers.
His gaze swept over the room, then back to me. Power radiated off him in waves too intense to pin down, but there was an undercurrent there, curiously close to…panic.
My eyes flicked down. Shattered glass glittered across the floor at my feet. Before I could move, a chill stirred the air and Draven’s mana reached out. Frost laced each shard, binding them in a neat lattice of ice.
With a subtle flick of his hand, the frozen pieces lifted from the stone and drifted soundlessly to the nightstand, where the ice melted away to leave the glass whole again.
“Did you feel it, too?” I asked, my attention flitting from the glass back to the worry etched into Draven’s perfect features.
His lips parted, drawing more of my attention than I wished they did. “You can feel the wards?”
I nodded. “They feel like you.”
His eyes darkened, and heat spread to my cheeks, my unease from before giving way to an entirely different sort of feeling.
Shards.
“Like your mana,” I corrected hastily. “Why are they flickering?”
