Page 28 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
The Unseelie are not capable of love.
The words cleaved through me, almost cutting deeper than the vision itself.
Then Alaric was gone. Nothing more than a cloud of blood and ice and rage.
The cup slipped from my hands, clattering to the ground. Shadebloom liquor spilled across my leathers, dripping down to soak the dirt beneath my boots.
Alaric was dead.
“Everly,” Kaelen’s voice was concerned, his face closer to mine than I’d realized. “What’s wrong?”
No. I shook my head. Alaric couldn’t be gone. Was I imagining things?
Then a scream rent through the air, unhinged and desperate and filled with more grief than I could begin to fathom. Zerina was on her knees, clutching her chest, gasping for air. Tears streamed down her face as she clawed at her heart.
My mother was at her side in an instant, her sword forgotten by the whetstone. Others raced over, too. Casting shadows on the ground as they flew down, battle ready, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
All I could do was stare, and strain to make out her words between the sobs of pain.
“He’s gone. He’s gone.”
Pain lanced through me, sick rising in my throat. It was true then.
Alaric was dead. And my husband had killed him.
Kaelen lifted my broken cup from the ground, carefully studying me with eyes that saw too much. That saw things I couldn’t even begin to explain.
All I knew was that somewhere along the way, I had built up a vision of the male who had cradled me against his chest and casually forgotten about the Frost Grave Pass. The thousands dead with a single sweep of his mana.
The standing order to kill Unseelie on sight.
His blatant and unending hatred of everything that I was.
Maybe I was still too weak to let him die, but Kaelen wasn’t wrong…
Why was I so shards-damned protective of the bond I had been forced into to begin with?
And was it Draven? Was it this marriage bond sealed in blood and mana that was tricking me into feeling something I didn’t and shouldn’t want? Or was it the deep-seated need to be useful, to live in the hope that the Hollow Abomination could be the savior of a kingdom? Of anyone at all?
This was the only way I could see.
Maybe I had been wrong all along. Maybe what Nevara was trying to do was lead me here, to break this bond, so that Winter could find another savior.
Draven and I could be free of one another.
Would he leave me to live my life if he had what he needed for his kingdom? Could I finally have a shards-damned say in my own life instead of being chained to someone who thought I wasn’t quite a person?
I forcibly wrenched my gaze from Zerina, squaring my shoulders as I turned to Kaelen.
“I need you to tell me what you know about the Dragon.”
Draven
A chargedhush fell in the wake of the final Unseelie filth’s death.
From outside came the piercing cry of a griffon. My ears caught it instinctively, the sound twisting sharp in my chest. So, that was how Nevara had arrived here.
Noerwyn stared with wide eyes at the wreckage, while Nevara hung her head. My chest heaved with a breath too heavy for the minimal effort it had taken.
