Page 6 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
Again.
My uncle waitedin the longhouse, the central hub of the village. He was seated at the head of a table large enough for twelve, where he sat for every meal, insisting I join him like I was an honored guest instead of a prisoner.
It was too early for breakfast, so the room was empty, aside from a handful of slaves setting up for the day.
I hadn’t yet seen any of the child slaves they had taken from Winter, and no one would tell me where they were. When I had been here as a child, I had been naive enough to believe they only took adult slaves, but the crying child in the snow had shattered that illusion.
Shards.
The sight of the adult Seelie fae wearing iron shackles was hard enough to stomach without thinking about the blue-haired little boy.
Squaring my shoulders, I took the seat on the other end of the table, just as I always did. As far away from him as I could get.
My uncle, the Thane, Vaerin Skaeldruna. Whatever name he went by, he was still an icicle sucking bastard.
In the days I had been here, he had refused to share whatevermutually beneficial arrangementhe had in mind when he kidnapped me. Aside from shared meals in public, he had refused to see me at all.
Neither had he had me tortured or killed yet, but it was an uneasy stalemate to say the least.
He waved a hand to dismiss the servants, and I raised my eyebrows.
“Are you ready to tell me why in the frosted hells you dragged me back here?” I demanded, leaning back like every possible answer to that question hadn’t twisted my stomach into thorny, brambled knots.
He narrowed his eyes, just as I had known he would. He despised my Winter slang nearly as much as I despised every single thing about him.
“I had hoped you would be feeling more reasonable today.” His voice was light, but lined with something sharper. “Especially when I have gone out of my way to return you to your family.”
Family. I thought of my sister, who could be dead now if Draven had decided to punish her for the treason of my existence. Unbidden, I also thought ofhim, the monster who had almost started to feel like mine.
But I sure as hells didn’t picture the male who had given me over to mages to be tortured for the sin of being a Hollow, or the asshole Skaldwings who had done exactly nothing to stop it from happening.
A scoff escaped before I could stop it. “I have no family here. You saw to that.”
When you took me to the mages. When you killed my mother.
The words sat between us, cold and brittle, like all the ice I had left behind a week and a lifetime ago.
He tilted his head, eyebrows raising more in puzzlement than the anger I had expected. “Is that why you didn’t ask about her?”
I put my hands on the table, tracing the grooves of the wood to center myself. At least I didn’t have to hide my talons here.
“You don’t get to talk about her after what you did.”
A breath of air escaped him, almost like a laugh, if he had been capable of such things. He nodded to himself like he had put something together, a condescending smile gracing his lips.
“You were always an imaginative child. Here I thought you were just harboring the same childish grudge for her that you held for me. It never occurred to me that you believed I would harm my only sister.”
I blinked, trying to make sense of what he was implying. It couldn't be possible.
She wasn’t here. She had never come for me. And…
I pictured bodies, one after the other, everyone who had defied him.
He had chained her up. Had ordered her to stay. I could still hear her voice echoing in my head, thick with the traces of fear she had never before shown.
Run, Everly. Don’t stop, no matter what happens.
To her, she had meant. She had known that he would kill her.
