Page 37 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
I clutched Everly tighter against my chest, preparing to unleash my mana when she took another step into the moonlight…illuminating features that stopped me in my tracks. My wife’s angular cheekbones. Her full, stubborn mouth. And the emerald eyes I had only ever seen in our shared dreams.
I hesitated for a single heartbeat while Nevara’s words clamored through my mind like a curse:Your hatred will burn it to the ground.
This wasn’t hatred. It was practicality. It didn’t matter who this female was if she stood between me and the only exit. Ice coiled around me just as the female sucked in a breath to speak.
“You can’t get out this way,” she said, her voice low, and urgent. “Go north. The wards are down, but I can’t hold them for long.”
I narrowed my eyes, suspicion burning. Was she really helping me, or helping her own cause?
Then the trees shifted far behind her. The clang of steel and the stamping of boots signaled the arrival of more Unseelie.
Shards damn it all.
I glanced down at the pile of ashes before the female. She had intervened on our behalf, and her eyes were wide with concern at the sound of the newcomers.
Though it went against everything in me to trust a Skaldwing, I nodded once, spinning on my heel to go in the direction she had indicated.
“Wait,” her voice called after me, barely audible against the rustling of leaves.
I had barely turned back when I saw something sailing through my periphery, metal glinting in the moonlight. My mana came up instinctually, before I could register what it was.
An amulet.
“For her.” There was something resigned in the female’s voice.
Everly whimpered again and the sound of boots grew louder. There was no time to second guess. I brought the necklace to me on a gust of wind, then disappeared into the shadows just as I heard the Skaldwings burst through the treeline behind me.
Draven
Blood dripped steadilyfrom Everly’s limp body, hot against the ice of my arm, every drop another lash against my speed. The ring burned colder and colder, its bite worsening until it felt as if frost were crawling through my veins.
Her small sounds of pain scraped along my bones carving me from the inside out. I spread a thin coat of frost across her skin, soothing the wounds and trying to stop the bleeding.
Then I ran faster, cursing the Shard Mother and every last damned fae that led us to this moment. Light shifted through the trees ahead, a haze of violet shimmering faintly in the distance.
I prodded at the wards with my mana, cursing when there was no give. Ice flared against the wards before evaporating.
I tried again and again until finally I found it. There was a single point of entry, narrowing with each passing second. I slipped through the small opening just before it closed, snapping the wards back into place.
It was nearly impossible to travel through the ice here. Even with the marriage bond pulling me urgently in Everly’s direction from the moment I emerged in the Wilds, I had been forced to trek on foot for hours, jumping in short bursts against the chaotic mana that wanted to lead me astray.
But each jump was a risk to my wife. She should be safer than I would have been, shielded by my body as we traveled, but it would still take its toll. She couldn’t tolerate more than one.
So I closed my eyes and focused on the entrance to the portal, hoping the fact that I had been there before would make the transition cleaner.
Or that the mana here would recognize the presence of one of its own, allowing me to carve an easier path back to the portal.
I landed several hundred feet from where I wanted to, the wild mana pushing back against my own, but at least the portal was in sight.
Everly’s blood flowed faster now, spilling hot between my fingers, just as I had known it would. Traveling through the ice had torn her wounds even wider, dragging the life from her veins like a tide.
Frost-damned hells.
I stepped from the forest into the carnage of the hideout, the sounds of carefully controlled horror already bleeding through the walls.
Noerwyn looked up sharply from where she was straightening a row of tonics and bandages she had pulled from her pack.
“Lay her here,” she gestured to a small, broken sofa along the wall.
