Page 41 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
A blade on my skin. Ice through his bones. Both were unrelenting agony, inflicted with intention.
“No, not me.” I balled my hands into fists, willing my talons not to emerge. “But I saw what you did to Alaric.”
The temperature in the room dropped, and Draven advanced several steps forward. “If you mean the male who was spying in my kingdom, who helpedkidnap my wife, then I hope you’ll forgive me when I fail to spare him a single moment’s remorse.”
A huff of air escaped me, though it might have been closer to a sob than a scoff. Zerina’s haunting scream echoed in my mind in time with the icy shattering of Alaric’s bones. Through it all, I could feel Draven in that moment, the way he had wanted the Unseelie to suffer.
“Don’t pretend you killed him for my sake,” I spat. “I felt how you enjoyed it.”
Another glacial wind swept through the room, and I suppressed a shiver, crossing my arms over my chest. He took another step forward, slow and deliberate.
“Whether it was for your sake or because of you, the result is the same.” His voice was even colder than this arctic room we stood in. “If you hadn’t been so attached to your secrets and your lies, I wouldn’t have had to torture your whereabouts out of the traitors hiding in my kingdom.”
The blood drained from my face as another meaning to his words landed.
“Wynnie?”
He scoffed as his mana pulsed again, frost crackling along the floor and up to the ceiling.
“Your sister is safe, or she was the last time I saw her, when I left her behind to stop you from dying at the hands of the people you’re so eager to defend from me.”
I let out a slow breath. Relief for my sister. Something else I couldn’t quite name.
Yes, he had saved me, but I was not foolish enough to believe that I was safe now. I could feel the hostility radiating from him, the same icy rage that had frozen an entire battlefield.
A heartbeat passed,then another, while I reminded myself that if he wanted to kill me, I’d be dead by now.
Not like this, his words came back to me, and I almost laughed. So, not without his permission.Or had I imagined all of that?
My feet pulled me toward him unbidden, a moth to a volatile flame. It was strange to remember the last time I had been this close to him, the way the air had been taut with an entirely different kind of tension.
Now, the only thing I felt from him was the resentment reflected in my own soul as we were forced to reconcile with the truth. I was anabomination, and he was a monster.
So why had he gone to such lengths to save me, and what in the forsaken hells did he plan to do with me now?
“If it was such an inconvenience for you, why did you bother?” I demanded.
The bond? The Heartstone? Something in me needed to hear him confirm it.
He clenched, then unclenched his fists, the motion shattering the frost that had formed over his ring. It was shimmering to the point of glowing, just like my own. The marriage bond thrummed between us, relishing in our proximity, utterly oblivious to all the ashes it had already left in our wake.
Abruptly, the air went still, an icy hush replacing the veritable blizzard that had been forming from the moment he walked into the room.
A bitter laugh escaped him. “Try though you might to escape it, you are bonded to me and to Winter. I won’t damn my entire court, not even for the sake of finally getting rid of you.”
I sucked in a breath, not at his confirmation of what I already suspected, but because heknew. Somehow, he knew that I had been looking for a way to break the bond.
Did he see it, the way I had seen him kill Alaric? Or had Nevara told him?
He left before I could ask, slamming the door and coating it in a thick layer of frost—sealing the room up like a tomb. Silent, cold, emptier than it should have been. I glanced at the window that was still frozen shut, but there was nothing else on the other side.
Batty was gone, and I was alone.
Draven
The doorto my chambers slammed behind me, the echo cracking through the halls like a blade striking stone. I didn’t care who heard. Not my guards. Not my generals.
Perhaps I should have been more concerned with all of the whispers echoing through the palace halls in the days since I had returned. The curious or accusing stares, the not so subtle inquiries about my bride, their queen.
