Page 95 of Bound to the Shadow Queen
Isren inclined his head.
“But my mother’s mana didn’t need to be bound.”
“Your mother’s mana wasn’t mixed with Seelie fae.” Draven’s voice was taut with tension, each word weighed. “I’ve felt the echoes of your mana, and hers. It’s chaos. Seelie mana is all about control. They would destroy each other.”
“That is my hypothesis as well,” Isren said quietly.
The words hollowed me out. Of course. The people destroyed each other. Why not their magic, too? I was built from contradiction—chaos wrapped in control, destined to fracture.
My throat closed. I would never get my mana back. Never help his people. Never be anything but the wrong choice.
I turned to Draven, meeting his unreadable eyes. “Then we have our answer.”
I forced myself to turn back to Isren. My voice didn’t shake. “I need to know how to find the Dragon. I have to break the bond.”
Everly
“No.”
It was the first word Draven had said when I told Isren I wanted to find the Dragon, and he said it again as soon as the Archmage left.
Of course, Isren hadn’t helped that objection when he piled onto it with his own sage advice.
Dragons are particular creatures. If he allows you to find him, you must be sure of what you want. And even then, you must be willing to accept the consequences, should he decide you unworthy.
“What other choice do we have?” I said it like it was easy, like it wouldn’t destroy something inside me even if I did live long enough to destroy the bond. I felt it now more than ever, like it sensed the urgency, the finality of the decisions we were about to make.
The ring pulsated, the pull between us almost painful in its intensity.
“You risking your life to go to the Dragon is not a choice, Everly.” He said my name in three clipped syllables, each one edged with a mixture of panic and rage.
“You said that you would help me break the bond if I couldn’t fix my mana,” I reminded him. The words stabbed coming out, the ache of them catching in my chest.
His mana flared, like jagged shards of ice, snapping into the air between us. The room itself seemed to hold its breath as it rippled across the walls and ceiling.
And yet, Draven burned, his body radiating heat that seared through the chill.
“I said that I would help you find a way,” he ground out, voice rough with restraint. “The obvious implication being that I meant a way in which you didn’t face near certain death.”
I thought about Isren’s words again. I had to be sure of what I wanted. Even if I found the Dragon, would I doom myself from the start if the bond was tugging me in the other direction?
Did I have any other choice? Without a queen to balance out the heartstone, Winter would fall.
And Draven with it.
The thought froze the air in my lungs. “I know that there’s a risk to Winter?—”
“I don’t give a single forsaken damn about the risk to Winter,” he snapped. “There is a risk toyou.”
The silence that followed was potent, trembling with unspoken words, with everything the bond refused to let either of us bury.
“The bond—” I tried, desperate for something steady to cling to.
“The bond?” He echoed, taking a step closer. “Like the bond forced an attraction?”
He gestured between us, his hand cutting through the charged air. “Tell me, is this the bond,Morta Mea?”
My pulse thundered through my veins, sweeping beneath my skin in hot, treacherous flames. I thought of his hands on myskin, the brush of his mouth at my throat, the desperate way I wanted him even when I tried to tell myself I didn’t.
