Page 9 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
I pictured Draven’s furious features when he saw my wings. A body shattering on the ground at his feet. His deep voice promising that he never let anyone hurt what belonged to him.
It was impossible to say which version of my husband would have emerged in the end, so I didn’t bother to deny it. I didn’t say anything at all.
My uncle nodded like that was answer enough. “I won’t pretend I didn’t consider it, but your mother reminded me how valuable family is.”
She looked at him, a muscle in her jaw just barely tensing. “Yes, well, you always see reason in the end. I know you never would have left her to that fate, just as I never could have.”
There was an undertone of steel in her words, a warning of her own. More pieces in a puzzle I couldn’t quite put together.
Tension crackled through the vast room, the silence suffocating all at once.
“Yes,” my uncle finally said. “It was fortunate that our aims were aligned, and now the clan will see the benefit.”
I shook my head, a sound just short of a scoff escaping me. While my uncle had been holding meetings in his longhouse, he must have missed the cheerful reception that greeted me every time I walked into a room.
“The Skaldwings will never?—“
“The Shadow Clan will do as I command,” my uncle cut me off, casually ignoring the fact that there were far more skaldwings than just our clan.
His tone was every bit as unyielding as it had been when he said those same words to me as shackles clamped around my wrists.
When I had begged him to let me go.
You are my heir and a member of the Shadow Clan. You will do as I command.
“All of the Skaldwings are survivors at heart,” my mother clarified, her voice so delicate I might have believed she knew exactly what memory I was stuck in. “But the Shadow Clan in particular. They will come around when they see it is in everyone’s best interest. I will not tolerate your life in danger. Not again.”
Her hand squeezed mine once more, her voice dropping low in earnestness.
I gasped for breath, drowning in the airy, sunlit room as surely as if I had been chained to the bottom of a lake. This was too much, too fast.
I should have been happy, or at least relieved, right? Wasn’t this everything I had ever wanted?
My mother back. A rightful place among my clan. A normal life where I didn’t have to live in fear.
And Alaric was checking on Wynnie. Would he bring her here? Would that be safer for her?
It was so close to perfect. If only the pieces had fit, or if my uncle hadn’t been one of them. Instead, every part of me rebelled instinctually at what she was saying, a wrongness that echoed down to my soul.
Then I reminded myself it didn’t matter. My life had already been claimed by the Frostgrave King, my very being tethered to his for eternity.
“You don’t understand,” I told my mother quietly, squeezing my eyes shut. “Draven will never let this stand. He will come for me.”
For better or worse.
My mother ran her thumb across my knuckles, a comforting gesture that stopped as she brushed along the ring that was seared into my skin. A muscle feathered in her jaw, her features morphing to unrelenting stone.
“And we will be ready for him if he does.” She blinked away her fury, meeting my eyes earnestly. “Everly, whatever happened to you there, you don’t have to go back to him ever again. You’re home now. You’resafenow.”
The room spun around me, and I clenched my fists, my talons digging into my skin.
Whatever happened to you there.
How did I explain that I still wasn’t sure myself what had happened in the Winter Court?
The father who wouldn’t look at me was so at odds with the sister who became my everything. Nevara’s insistence that we couldn’t be friends lived at war with the starlit tears that streamed down her cheeks. There were monsters with gaping jaws in one moment, and a warm chest sheltering me in the next.
Then there was the small venomous creature that had made itself mine.
