Page 52 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
“Draven.” My voice was a low warning growl.
He arched a dark brow.
“Of course, her presence here will need to remain quiet for the time being, since we don’t need any more questions about anyone in your family. So she could stay in the dungeons,” he suggested casually, “or she could stay in your rooms.”
I might have believed he truly was nonchalant if not for the persistent echo of fury swirling around the room in a blizzard of mana and frost.
“So if I’m your good girl, you won’t punish my sister, is that it?” I scoffed. “Tell me again how the Unseelie are monsters.”
He raised his eyebrows, managing to look down on me even from his lower vantage point. “Once again, I have never claimed to be the hero, Morta Mea, but I will do what I must to keep my kingdom from falling, and you’ve proven amply that you can be trusted with neither their safety nor your own.”
“What difference does it make?” I threw out my arms in frustration. “I haven’t magically manifested the ability to access my mana in the past few weeks, and my mother has already told me that it can’t be unbound.”
A muscle worked in his jaw.
“We’ll see about that. With the facts at hand, the Archmage might prove to be useful this time around.” His features darkened, and I couldn’t help but wonder at his ability to command a room from his shards-blasted bed. “So if you have any other secrets that put my entire court at risk, feel free to reveal them when he arrives. I’d like to believe you are capable of telling the truth, though the evidence would certainly suggest otherwise.”
Frustration flooded my veins. “Surely even you can see that I had no choice?”
He let out a small scoff, but there was not a single trace of amusement in the cold lines of his face.
“There is always a choice.”
My lips parted. “Spoken with all the privilege of a king.”
He clenched his jaw hard enough that the cracking sound echoed on the frosted walls. “Yes, how privileged I am to be shackled to my ravaged kingdom along with an ordained bride who would rather risk her life and damn my court in the process than tell the shards-damned truth.”
An easy accusation for someone who had never spent each day wondering if they would survive to the next because their very existence was outlawed twice over.
“Right, how silly of me,” I spat the words. “I should have exposed my wings the day you summoned me, so you could have fulfilled your own frost-blasted law to kill me on sight.”
Ice curled outward from his unmoving form, pulsing in time with his furious breaths.
“Lie to yourself, Morta Mea, but don’t lie to me. You could have revealed the truth at any point, but you weighed your own life against every single one of my people and deemed the risk unnecessary until someoneyouloved was in the line of fire.”
Shame burned through me, chasing away some of my anger.
Was he wrong? Hadn’t I weighed the risk against myself and Wynnie when I chose to keep my secrets? Would the Archmage have been able to find some sort of solution if I had only been willing to tell him the truth?
Was it my fault that my sister’s estate had been slaughtered, nearly taking her with it?
Would it be my fault if something happened to her now? She had only ever broken the law for my sake.
I squeezed my eyes shut, wrenching them back open before another visceral memory could assault me.
“Funny, I thought the Unseelie were incapable of love,” I said rather than respond with something that the ring might register as a lie.
His lips parted again, eyes flashing with a deep green consternation.
“What exactly did you see?” he growled.
A bitter huff of air escaped me. “Nothing I didn’t already know.”
I turned to go before I could cave to the bone-deep desire to throw something at him.
Or worse, to cry.
Draven
