Page 84 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
“Oh, nothing,” I said, snapping the book shut. “Just wondering if I’m a joke to the seers. ‘Let’s tell everyone this half-breed with no access to her mana will be the savior of kingdoms and clans, and see how many corpses pile up while they wait.”
Wynnie shook her head, though a grin tilted her lips. “I think everything is a joke to the seers. Most of the time I think they’re doing it on purpose, but I don’t know why anyone would base their life choices off of them.”
A stab of guilt gnawed through me.
I couldn’t quite put Nevara in the same category as the other seers. I didn’t see her as a manipulator, a liar, or just another seer twisting me like a pawn. I hoped she was better than that.
But hope was dangerous.
Then again, if the book had taught me anything, it was that even dragons abandoned the realm when hope finally ran out, and mine had been in short supply enough as it was.
I shut the book on dragons at last. Some part of me had hoped that the palace had given it to me in the same way the oddly opinionated closet sometimes threw out just the outfit I needed. I had thought perhaps the book might provide some unexpected answers about the monster getting through the wards, or my mana, or literally anything.
But I was out of books and out of options. I needed my frost-damned compendium.
Draven
I felther before I saw her.
I had already leapt to my feet after yet another puncture against the wards, when the pull between us grew even more taut than usual. Then the door swung open on its hinges, and she stood in its frame.
Her navy hair was piled on top of her hair in a haphazard style I was certain Mirelda hadn’t approved. Several waves sprung free to frame her delicate features.
She must have been bundled in her blankets—warm—because she hadn’t thrown a dressing gown over her silky nightgown. But she wasn’t warm anymore, evident by the hardened peaks straining the thin silver fabric.
A rush of heat cut through the cold that coursed through my veins, sharp and unwelcome.
She followed my gaze before she hurriedly crossed her arms over her chest, a pale pink blush spreading across her cheeks.
She stepped inside, shutting the door behind her with her hip. Then she turned to face me, silhouetted by the river of green and teal lights shining from the night sky.
“I need you to take me to my father’s estate.”
Of course she came here to throw everything to hells, right as I finally had word that the Archmage would arrive tomorrow.
All at once, I saw her standing in the hall between our rooms.
We have to get to Thistlerun Keep. You have to take me there now.
She wasn’t panicked now like she had been then, but there was a subtle desperation coming through all the same that I didn’t begin to trust.
“No.” I told her what I should have said the first time, if I hadn’t been too distracted by her tears and the emotions rolling off of her.
Or more accurately, if I hadn’t been distracted by the fact that I cared about those things, the unsettling awareness that my wife had the power to make me act against every sense of reason.
I knew better now.
She tilted her chin in the obstinate way that meant she was about to push back, and I cut her off, crossing my arms.
“Need I remind you what happened the last time you begged me to icewalk you somewhere?”
Her lips parted, and she stood to her full, yet still insubstantial, height. “No, you don’t need to remind me of my capture and subsequent torture, though I do appreciate the offer.”
Sarcasm coated her tone like snow on a broken window, obscuring the jagged edges of her words.
A muscle worked in my jaw at the reminder that she had been hurt there. The air came to life around us, swirling in a menacing icy arc that dislodged several more wavy strands of hair from Everly’s messy bun. I forced myself to take a breath, to remember that whatever else had happened to her, she had told me more than once that she would rather be there.
That she wasn’t above working toward that end.
