Page 82 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
He walked away before I could find my voice, leaving me with the echo of his accusation ringing in my ears, along with all that it implied.
Everly
Books were safer than people.
At least, until the bond decided to make me a spectator in the king’s latest outburst.
One moment, I was tracing ink across a page, and the next, I was pulled under and dragged into Draven’s consciousness with all the subtlety of an avalanche.
“We all miss the queen’s company. I’d be happy to lend the assistance of my personal healer. Is she convalescing here?” Lady Thessara’s voice rang sweet as poisoned honey as she laid a hand on his arm.
A spike of rage ripped through me. His? Mine? The bond blurred the line.
Draven didn’t bother pulling away. Instead, he let frost bloom across his sleeve, the ice spreading as quickly as wildfire until it crawled over her painted fingers. Lady Thessara jerked back with a hiss, as though she’d been burned.
She glared down at her fingertips, then up at my husband, before scuttling away without waiting for an answer.
Nevara stepped into view, a wry smile curving her mouth.
“Can you See when the frost-damned Archmage will be here?” Draven’s voice was low, brittle with annoyance.
“No. The Shard Mother grants him his privacy.” Her smile tilted higher, though tension threaded beneath it.
Draven scoffed. “Perhaps one day she’ll extend me the same courtesy.”
I almost laughed as the tether snapped, and I tumbled back into myself.
No, the Shard Mother hadn’t seen fit to grant either of us privacy. Which left me wondering, not for the first time, what he might have seen through my eyes.
I leaned back in my chair, stretching into the weak afternoon sun. The motion jostled Batty, who took wing in a flurry of frost, sprinkling snowflakes across my open books.
Shooing her gently toward the rafters, I tried not to think about Thessara’s boldness…or what it meant that courtiers were brave enough to corner the king they all feared.
Soren had told me already about the gossip, but if they were bold enough to approach the king they were terrified of, that spoke to a whole different level. Things couldn’t continue on as they were.
Even he had to see that.
Then again, I supposed that was why he wanted the Archmage, to fix his defective former-ish, sort-of wife. Whatever I was to him now.
I shifted uncomfortably. I didn’t want to think about that, or the mana I would probably never unlock, or all the implications therein.
So, instead, I read.
For two days, I buried myself in ink and parchment. When nightmares, or worse, visions of Draven facing down larger and more brutal monsters than I wanted to imagine, drove me from my bed, I ventured into my study, losing myself in tomes that contradicted each other at every turn.
The frostbeasts had been reduced to afterthoughts—footnotes at best, and bedtime stories at worst.
The Mirrorbane cropped up in a few places, described with all the consistency of a drunken and illiterate scribe.
Tharnoks were no better…
And then there were the Korythids.
Something tugged at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t place it. According to one moth-eaten textbook, they were frost-spiders the size of carriages. Another claimed they dragged their prey under frozen lakes, keeping them alive for years as they slowly drained them of blood. A third author waved them off entirely, insisting no creature that grotesque could exist.
A shiver racked through me, and I itched for my old compendium. For the notes I’d left behind at my father’s estate the day I’d left for the palace.
Somewhere in my notes, I knew that I had read something about the shards-blasted wards. Still, I dutifully read every book the library sent me, and I didn’t throw a single one across the room. No matter how great the temptation became.
