Page 79 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
I opened my mouth, then closed it, having no response that wouldn’t feed into her assessment. She took another step toward me.
“Did you know that I can feel your rage…in my body?”
Wynnie snorted, abruptly reminding me that there were other people in the room besides my inebriated wife.
Everly shot her a sideways glance, then returned her attention to me. “In my bones, I mean. From your mana.”
“Does mana have feelings?” Soren asked, tugging Nevara to her feet.
If I could move past the presence of another male in my wife’s bedroom, I might concede that he had a point, one I had considered more than once of late. Especially since my wife’s mana was firmly locked away, but her feelings were decidedly less so.
“Draven’s does,” Everly insisted. “Angry ones.”
She looked up at me with wide, earnest eyes. In spite of everything, in spite of the frostbeasts and the Unseelie and Lord Redthorne’s smug face far too close to my wife…for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt the unexpected urge to laugh. She leaned closer to me, and I stepped away.
Dangerous. All of this was.
“I trust you can see yourselves out,” I said to Lord Redthorne and my still-smirking Visionary, spinning on my heel to head back to my own rooms. And away from all of this.
But of course, my wife followed me into her bedroom.
“Draven.”
I paused, turning reluctantly to face her. She stumbled forward, and my hand shot out on instinct to steady her. Her skin was warm to the point of being hot, her arm slimmer than it should have been. Her blue eyes were wide when they met mine, brimming with things I couldn’t afford to decipher right now.
Just like I had felt her panic thrumming through the palace, and later her desire echoing in my soul, I felt her now, radiating something that was strangely close to grief.
“I’ll return your dagger in the morning when I can be sure you won’t stab yourself with it.”
A faint smile tugged at her mouth. “That wasn’t what I was going to ask. Did you find anything? Do you think it was my family?”
Her family. Had she ever referred to them that way?
“The Shadow Clan, I mean,” she added quickly.
“I know who you meant.” The words were more clipped than I meant them to be, both because of the reminder of what she was and the reminder of what we weren’t.
Not for the first time, I wondered how things would have gone if the Shard Mother had chosen a different bride for me. Any other bride. Would things be easy now?
Or was I always destined to be chained to someone who would rather be anywhere else?
Everly blinked, tugging her plump lower lip between her teeth, and I had a visceral memory of those same teeth clamped around my lower lip. Grazing along my shoulder. Her nails on my skin.
Talons.
Shards, I needed sleep.
I forced myself to focus on her question, parsing through what I had seen this evening and comparing it to the flickering of the wards. Did I think it was the Unseelie?
“No.” I dropped my hand from her arm, stepping abruptly back. “I believe it was something far worse.”
Then I turned to go, trying to pretend I didn’t feel her disappointment thrumming through the air.
That it wasn’t echoing in my own soul as well.
Everly
The room was on fire.Engulfed in flames that pounded with every beat of my heart.
