Page 22 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
Nevara’s betrayal piling on top of my wife’s. Crystal-blue eyes narrowed in defiance, fists clenched until they were bleeding. Was she staring down her captors now with the same infuriating combination of idiocy and bravery?
The road ahead of us ended at a wall of black pines. Their trunks rose like jagged shards of ice, but their shadows were too tangled to be natural.
There was no path around or through them, or any sound of creatures stirring behind the trunks. Only a heavy, expectant silence.
I scanned the moonlit forest for movement. For silhouettes that might be hiding in plain sight.
Noerwyn pointed toward a bundle of gnarled branches that hung from a tree in the center of the copse. “I think that’s what we’re looking for.”
I dismounted the stag, my boots crunching through the packed snow as Noerwyn followed close behind.
I blinked and was no longer in the forest. Instead, I saw a male with a teasing smile, a carved wooden cup in his hands.Well I liked the nightdress, but the leathers might be more appropriate for flying.
Amusement colored the vision.Appropriate is overrated, wouldn’t you say?
Then the image was gone.
What in the ever-loving shards-damned hells was that?
The air around us sharpened, wind whipping through the trees while frost whispered outward with each step. It furthercoated the ground and the base of the forest, solidifying the snow into a sheet of ice.
A shadow fluttered in my periphery just before the faint sound of a bowstring being drawn echoed from the treetops.
I turned just as the arrow sliced through the air.
Rowan wood. My lip curled into a snarl at the scent, and I caught the faint sheen of iron worked into its tip. My wound was all but healed now, but a phantom pain echoed with the memory of the night I was shot.
The night she was taken.
Ice leapt from my palm, a shield rising in an instant. The arrow splintered against it, bursting into a cloud of glittering shards that hissed into the snow.
The archer had barely shifted to notch another arrow before frost climbed the tree he perched on, racing up the trunk to wrap his legs. He struggled, wings flaring, a cry working its way up his throat.
With one precise flick of my wrist, the ice snapped inward, folding his body in on itself until he fell shattered to the ground, shards of wing and blood scattering across the roots.
Noerwyn flinched and covered her face to protect herself from the icy shrapnel.
Two more shadows broke from the treeline, their blackened blades gleaming. They lunged for Noerwyn.
I was faster.
The first Skaldwing swung low, his blade catching only air as I stepped into him. My hand closed around his face. Ice surged outward, crawling over his skull until his scream cut off in a brittle crack.
The second struck from Noerwyn’s blind side. I raised a wall of ice, thorned with jagged spires. The female’s blade scraped uselessly against it before the wall burst outward, crystallineshards scoring her arms and wings, blood steaming where it touched the frost.
She screamed in pain as I darted forward. Ice coalesced in my hand, twisting into the shape of a long, gleaming blade, its edges glimmering with a cold light that bled mist into the air.
With one precise thrust, I drove the frost-forged weapon through her chest. The glow in her eyes dimmed as frost spread from the wound, veins turning glassy beneath her skin before she collapsed at my feet in a cascade of glittering ice.
The present shattered, this time with a memory I was all too familiar with.
Crimson-soaked snow covered the ground,and the air was thick with smoke and iron.
My mother fell to her knees, her breath torn raggedly from her throat as a Skaldwing loomed behind her. Her eyes widened as they locked onto me, her lips mouthing words I couldn’t hear.
A blackened blade wrenched free from her torso, her blood warm as it rained down on my face. She pitched forward, reaching for me with trembling fingers that never closed around mine.
I stood still,letting the memory settle into my bones and letting the hunger in my mana twist tighter.
