Page 12 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
Either way, I had to findher.
The bond throbbed in my chest, drumming in time to a bitter and accusing beat. Without Everly, there was no stopping themonsters. No saving my kingdom. And if the Unseelie killed her…
I clenched the reins tighter and turned to Noerwyn.
“What do you know of the Unseelie’s treatment of your sister?”
Her lips thinned. Her gaze flicked from mine to the path ahead.
It wasn’t the first time I’d questioned her on our route, but it was the first time I had asked directly about my wife.
And the first time she hesitated.
“There are things you’d be better off asking your wife.”
My lips parted, a bitter response balancing on the tip of my tongue when the world around me faded to a warm dining hall. A crackling fire blazed in a hearth, and silver talons dug into a wooden table.
When I blinked, the vision was gone, and once again, I was surrounded by snow. I cleared my throat and returned my attention to Lady Noerwyn.
“She doesn’t have a history of being forthcoming,” I countered. “Nor a bargain that compels her thusly.”
The vow flared between us, seizing her tongue. Anything that would help us get to my wife or understand how she was being treated was in the parameters of our bargain. She pulsed with mana a heartbeat later, cursing under her breath.
With a glare, she dragged in a breath and forced the words out. “My sister was half-dead when she came to us. Burns and cuts everywhere. Her feet destroyed from walking for days on bare snow. I don’t know how she survived it.”
“The mages…” The words slipped out more growl than voice, rough enough to scrape the back of my teeth.
“I never asked her,” Noerwyn said quickly, “but I pieced it together over time. She was terrified of being dragged back there. Terrified enough that when it came down to it, she showedup for your summons rather than return to that life.” She swallowed. “And?—”
“What?”
The vow caught her again, forcing the truth loose.
“She talks in her sleep sometimes. She knew someone was looking for her. And that they would kill to find her. That’s why I made sure I could find them first.”
Everly
My motherand I were never alone.
After breakfast, she took me to the arena to train. Tavrik joined us. We went for a fly, and my uncle wanted to check on my form. We headed to the baths, and Zerina had an urgent need to soak her already-healed injury.
If my mother noticed the intentionality, she didn’t let on. Neither was anyone brave enough to sneer at me when she was in earshot, so at least the whispers of traitor and monster and abomination had abated.
It was unreasonably frustrating, having her close enough to finally ask all of the things I wanted to know, with no opportunity to let the questions out.
Had she been the one to bind my mana? I was almost certain of it. She was insanely powerful, and I couldn’t think of anyone she would have trusted with her secret. I had early dreams, or memories, I had dismissed for years, of mana bursting out of me years before most children saw the beginning of theirs. Had she hidden it because it was edged with frost?
But why hadn’t she unbound it once I was safely at my father’s estate?
For that matter, why hadn’t she come with me when she freed me? All this time I had assumed she had stayed behind to fight off the other skaldwings, but now she was here.
And where was the seer who had led them to me?
I couldn’t ask her any of it, though.
The closest we came to any illusion of privacy was when she took me to the Valbough tree to light a petal for the dead.
I didn’t object as she led me up the mountainside, even as my wings cried out in protest. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to distract me from my panic and my questions by keeping me busy, a familiar tactic from my childhood, or if she was desperate to cram as much of the past decade into the day as we could.
