Page 46 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
My gaze snapped up to meet his. I drifted back to the first time I met the healer, after the Mirrorbane attack.
There was something in the way he spoke, the things he left unsaid that made me wonder if perhaps he understood more than I had ever meant for him to.
Had he known what I was this entire time? Did he despise me for it but was too polite to let that show?
I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
“They’re fine,” I said too quickly.
As much as Kyros had wanted to draw my wings out, I had managed to keep them safely locked away. It wasn’t without effort, but the darkness and blood loss had saved me on that front. It wasn’t possible to shift while unconscious.
Amias inclined his head in quiet understanding, not pressing the matter. “Well, remember to eat. And rest as much as you can.”
Rest. The word seared along my bones.
Because rest meant waiting, again. It meant being stuck in a holding pattern while life continued on without me. While I didn’t get a say, and didn’t have the power to demand one.
I must have let something of that slip into my expression, because the healer’s mouth curved into a sad, sympathetic smile.
“I’ll return to check on you later, in your own rooms.”
Just as he opened the door, a blur of ice shot past his head, ruffling his mossy hair.
He jerked back in surprise, but I recognized the sound before I saw her.
“Batty?” My voice cracked.
The skathryn hurled herself at me, all wings and silver-edged fur, her tiny body quivering with frantic energy. Her claws snagged at my nightgown as she burrowed into me, pitiful chirps breaking from her throat as if she’d been searching the world for me and only just found her way back.
That was why she had disappeared earlier—to find another way to me.
I hadn’t realized how hollow I’d felt without her until that moment, how much it had been like walking with half my soul missing. Relief flooded me so sharply it hurt, leaving me clutching her small, trembling frame as though she were the only tether keeping me upright.
I curled protectively around her, whispering half-formed apologies, nonsense words, anything to soothe her. Her frosty wings shivered against my skin, her breath feathering fast and shallow at my throat.
I barely heard the click of the door as Healer Amias excused himself, but the turn of the lock in the key registered all the same. Did he think that he was keeping the world out?
Or did he know, as I did, that he had just closed me into the cage of my husband’s making?
Everly
My suites were exactlythe same.
Still sparkling with the rays of frosted sun that filtered in the windows, still utterly devoid of color. Only, there was no tray of food left conspicuously by the bed, no fire roaring in the hearth.
Did Mirelda know that I had returned? Did she know what I was? Did she hate me for it?
I shook the thought away, slowly picking my way through the space that had been mine for just a few short months. The gilded cage I hadn’t known how to escape, before wondering if I even wanted to.
But now… Now I knew my mother was alive. Now, I’d had a small taste of something close to freedom and had flown after a decade of hiding my wings…
I pushed open the door to my study, my gaze flicking from the empty hearth, to the frosted windows. I wasn’t even sure why I tried to open them when I knew they’d be sealed just like the others.
Batty gave a sad chirp, her claws scraping my wrist as she tried to slide free of my sleeve.
I pulled her from my wrist, holding her up to study her.
“At least you can use your wings whenever you want,” I said, running a finger over her tiny fuzzy head.
