Page 10 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
And now I was here, with my mother’s strong arms and my uncle’s calculating gaze, and I was drowning in the endless contradictions that had dictated every moment of my life.
I dug the talons in harder, feeling the familiar sting, reopening the wounds on my palms.
Home. Safe.I wasn’t sure I knew what either of those words meant anymore. Maybe I never really had.
But I knew that they didn’t quite ring true for whatever the hells was going on here.
Draven
“This is taking too long,”I growled.
We had been on the road east for the better part of a week, trudging toward the Unseelie that Lady Noerwyn swore could lead us to my dear, fated bride.
The Skaldwings that were apparently hiding in my own damned court.
Noerwyn ignored me, and I dug my heels into the Velgrun’s flanks, urging the stag into a harder trot that tugged at the still-healing wound in my shoulder. At least without a sleigh weighing us down, we weren’t shackled to the main roads, but the beasts were still a far cry from my Aldrath steeds back at the palace.
If I could have risked abandoning Lady Noerwyn to the frostbeasts, I would have already icewalked back to the palace to demand answers from my Visionary and reinstate the wards around my home. Instead, we trudged along the countryside like we had all the time in the world.
Like it hadn’t already been nearly a fortnight since the Unseelie stole my bride.
And to what end? To lure me across the border? To officially start another war? Or was this abouther? Somethingshehaddone? Some debt her family owed? Or was it to finish whatever the hells they had started with the mages?
None of that answered why she had been outside to begin with, meeting with them. Had she known they were coming? Kept in touch? Spied for them?
I ground my teeth, a muscle in my jaw clenching at the thought. Did she realize the cost of her lies, that my palace was vulnerable to monsters while I took off after the promised salvation for my kingdom?
My companion tipped from her saddle, scrambling to right herself for at least the twelfth time in an hour.
“Though it might go faster if you could keep your shards-damned seat,” I muttered, tugging irritably at the too small cloak that pressed against my neck.
Her dead husband’s cloak, to be precise.
She tracked the motion, eyes darkening before she looked away.
“Well, feel free to explore one of our many other options.” Her voice was weary, but no less sarcastic for it. “I’m sure you’re swimming in them.”
She grunted, straining yet again to keep her seat as her stag leapt over a tree that had fallen onto the path. “That must be why you consented to make a bargain with me, after all.”
The temptation to abandon her to the monsters and return to my palace swelled to a breaking point. And perhaps I would have risked it, if I could have trusted that traveling through the ice wouldn’t rip apart the wound in my chest.
If I could have trusted a frost-damned word my Visionary said…
I grimaced and shoved down thoughts of Nevara and the betrayal that coiled between us.
“I might have made a bargain not to kill your sister, but I made no such promises about you, wench,” I growled.
Frost coated the reins where I gripped them, creeping up across the stag’s sweeping antlers, adding to the layers of ice that had already formed along the sharp tines that peppered the ridges.
Noerwyn’s profile disappeared from my periphery, her mount coming to a stop just before the next ridge.
Shard Mother help her if she drags this out any longer.
“For someone with a vested interest in finding their sister, you really are in no hurry,” I said, tugging on the reins of my stag.
Noerwyn’s blue eyes ignited like winter flames, her mouth curling into a snarl as she glared back at me.
“No one wants to find my sister more than I do,” she hissed. “Do you think I am not painfully aware of what they might subject her to every moment she’s with them?”
