Chapter 10 Draven
Draven
The infirmary was like a tomb.
Death clung to the air from too many bodies dragged in too shards-damned late, too many last breaths already spent. The stench only deepened once I sealed us inside my ice, privacy settling like a lid over a coffin.
Amias bent over Nevara’s unmoving form, his mana reaching into her in careful, silent probes while Noerwyn gently cleaned the blood from her hair. She spoke in low murmurs to Everly, recounting what had unfolded on the battlefield, each word measured, as if sound itself might do further harm.
I stiffened. The space was too crowded with the four of us crammed around the narrow cot.
Then again, perhaps that was only the oppressive presence of my wife’s newly-released mana making regular threats to bury us in ice and darkness. Where it had almost abated in my rooms, it had flared up like a furious beast again at the sight of Nevara.
My Visionary.
I swallowed hard. It was easier to think of her that way instead of as my oldest friend, lying too still on an infirmary bed, no trace of her sardonic smirk or the twitch of her lips that belied a rare bout of laughter, back before our lives and Court had been overrun by monsters.
All at once, I was trapped in a distant memory.
Nevara was clasping her hand over my arm, her mouth doing that quivering thing it always did when she was seconds away from losing her composure.
“Would you care to share what you find so amusing?” I asked.
“You’re the only one who ever notices,” she said with a trace of chagrin.
I sighed. “A lifetime of practice. And you’re avoiding the question.”
Her mouth twitched again. “We’re almost there.”
I narrowed my eyes. “So this has something to do with your impromptu request to go to the gardens?”
Though she couldn’t see the vast array of plants and flowers that the palace groundskeepers managed to coax to life with mana and sheer devotion to their queen, she always liked the smell and the general peace the gardens offered. But her request today had been more urgent than warranted.
Unless there was something she wanted me to observe.
We rounded a hedge, and I stilled, frost coating my fists at the male only a few paces from us. “We should leave. Lord Halberg is here.”
He was pacing frantically back and forth, muttering to himself. Behind him were three pale frostwisps, floating in slow, ominous circles like tiny, glowing motes of doom.
“Just wait,” Nevara hissed, her lips tilting into a full smirk.
“…Nevara.”
“Hmm?” She blinked innocently.
“What did you do?”
She shrugged a slim shoulder. “I may have indicated that I saw a few frostwisps in his future, and of course… they only appear to those marked for an unfortunate fate.”
I stared at her. “And which fate would that be?”
Another shrug. “You know… the one where the wisps drain your breath a little more each night unless you cleanse your soul by publicly confessing every lie you've ever told.”
I blinked. “Nevara.”
“What?” she asked innocently. “Don’t tell me he is being followed by frostwisps at this rather auspicious and completely untimed moment…”
She feigned shock when I didn’t answer.
Before I could respond, Lord Halberg clapped both hands over his mouth like he was afraid the wisps might crawl inside. Then he dropped to his knees and raised his face to the sky, loudly uttering prayers to the Shard Mother while courtiers scrambled back to avoid him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.
“A future Visionary does not jest,” she said wryly. “But, perhaps this newfound piety will help him remember where he placed that ledger he was so concerned with last week.”
The one he’d openly accused me of stealing…
My father hadn’t bothered to ask questions; he never did. One of the worst-kept secrets within the palace was how quick he was to… discipline his son. Instead, he waited until everyone was dismissed from the Great Hall to teach me a lesson in ‘obedience’.
The memory ghosted across my back, phantom bruises prickling beneath my tunic. Nevara must have felt the shift in my breathing. She squeezed my arm gently.
“As an aside, did you know that frostwisps happen to love juniper honey? As I understand it, they are completely intoxicated by the smell and will travel for miles just to have a taste.”
“Does Lord Halberg harbor a fondness for juniper honey?” I guessed.
“Oh, I wouldn’t know,” Nevara said in the serene voice she used as the Visionary.
“I don’t See everything, you know, and the Shard Mother has been kind enough to shield me from the horrors of Lord Halberg’s bathing habits, though I do recall Mirelda mentioning that she would instruct the maids to…
bolster his shampoo with that very thing. ”
I choked on a laugh. “Only you could get Mirelda to assist with a practical joke.”
Just then, one of the frostwisps bobbed in front of Halberg’s face, and the lord screamed before flinging handfuls of dirt in its direction.
The glowing blue orb pulsed faintly and drifted backward, completely unbothered. Halberg lurched to his feet just as it descended again.
“Fine!” he cried before stumbling backward. “I claimed the title early. The ceremony wasn’t… finished!”
I stared. “What is he doing?”
“Trying to avoid the curse,” Nevara said, her expression the portrait of sincerity. “Obviously.”
She straightened, forcing us to move forward once again. The lord froze as soon as he saw her, his hands trembling at his sides.
Nevara’s voice was as solemn as a priestess delivering last rites when she spoke. “May your conscience find peace, My Lord.”
Halberg whimpered before launching into another confession.
“The prince didn’t steal my ledger. I lost it in a game of snowdice… and the stablemaster still owes me a goat.”
Several of the courtiers murmured disparaging comments, their gazes filled with scorn as they passed Halberg.
And Nevara tried to hold in her laughter as we walked away, but a strangled sound escaped anyway, scandalously loud.
I arched an eyebrow, tugging her deeper into the hedge maze. “Did you just… snort?”
“Absolutely not. I would never be so—”
Behind us, the lord continued screaming. “It’s not fae pox… and the Healer says it’s persistent!”
“—indelicate,” she finished, cracking completely.
She doubled over, laughing so hard she nearly lost her balance.
I yanked us around the corner, away from the male’s prying eyes just before I met the same fate, my low chuckles sounding in time with her chiming laughter.
I blinked, and the vision of her bent at the waist in mirth was replaced with the reality of her before me, ethereal hair coated in blood, chest rising and falling too erratically to be peaceful.
The tips of her braids and her fingernails were edged with an ominous darkness, like they’d been dipped in swirling ink, the stain spreading in faint, vein-thin tendrils. An effect of the Korythid’s venom?
I ground my teeth, a muscle in my jaw aching with the intensity of it all.
Don’t be selfish, Nevara. You can die when I say it’s time, and this sure as hells isn’t it.
A violent surge of mana erupted from my wife’s slight form, snapping my attention back to her. It barely had time to spread before I drew it into myself, siphoning the excess through our bond, my own ice closing around it until the surge broke and faded.
It wasn’t as if we needed the reminder of all the ways this day had gone to the seventh level of hell and back again, but her newfound mana was, once again, eager to oblige.
It pulsed unevenly, straining as those vast reserves she had nearly died to claim pressed outward in protest. I muttered a low curse as I held the connection steady.
Frost threaded back around her arm under my guidance, soothing the erratic flare until her breath stuttered, and a reluctant shiver traced a line down her spine. The darkness coiling in the air loosened, then withdrew, leaving her contained, if not yet calm.
Was she even aware of how often her mana had tried to destroy itself—and her—and the entire shards-forsaken room at this point? How many times it had done so since she landed in the middle of a bloody and frozen battlefield?
Could she feel it clawing at her skin the way I felt it scraping at mine? Like creeping frost searching for faultlines, or shadows pressing against thin ice, waiting for the moment where they could break through?
But of course, that wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t allow it. And if the Shard Mother valued any life in this Court, then she wouldn’t allow it either…
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I registered Noerwyn speaking to her sister.
Words like ‘impaled’ and ‘stable for now’ drowned in the crashing wave of guilt and fury that overtook me standing between the two females who had both carelessly risked their lives tonight. And there hadn’t been a frost-damned thing I’d been able to do to protect either of them.
Not Nevara when we shared the same battlefield, and sure as hells not my wife when she absconded from the palace walls, alone, without so much as a word.
Just like I hadn’t been able to protect my mother.
I heard her scream echo in my head, saw Nevara flinging herself in front of the shards-damned emissary, smelled the blood pouring from the wounds on Everly’s body when I found her in the frost-forsaken cave.
She squeezed my arm like she could sense my distress, like she was willfully oblivious to the way she had caused it.
A muscle ticked in my jaw. Shards help Winter, help all of Aerivelle, if I lost her now. There was nothing in this realm or the next, not in the past or present, not in any court or kingdom, that could stop me from grinding the world to ice and dust if it tried to take my wife from me.
I clenched my fists before remembering that my hand was still clamped around her arm to keep the shadows at bay. She didn’t flinch beneath the pressure, didn’t move from where she was fixated on the Visionary’s unmoving features.
Nevara sucked in a breath that was more like a wheeze, and Everly stretched out a hand to comfort her.
I gently tugged her arm backwards to stop her, still not looking in her direction. I wasn’t even sure why I did it. Was I afraid of what she could do to Nevara if she lost control of her mana? Afraid that death was catching and that my bride might be next?
Her navy waves still smelled like moonshade berries beneath the potent scent of ashes, and her perfect features were marred by scrapes and soot and all the evidence of what could have so easily taken her life.
Finally, Amias took a breath in that patient, healer’s way of his, but he was the only one here with a scrap of patience left.
“Will she survive?” I asked flatly.
His eyes were too soft for the court of monsters he found himself in and entirely too easy to read. My stomach hollowed out before he uttered the first word.
“I cannot say.”
Blood rushed through my veins, icy and furious.
“Is it not your job to know?” I snapped. “Is that not your entire purpose in being here?”
I stopped just short of reminding him that he had once begged me for sanctuary, and I had granted it, a decision I had never once regretted until I stood over my best friend’s unmoving body while he told me he didn’t know if she would live or die.
Noerwyn stepped forward, already sucking in a breath to speak, but Amias held up his hand.
“Indeed, it is. But all mana has limits.” He looked at me pointedly when he said that last part, his deep green gaze lingering on mine like he was cataloguing every red vein and every purple shadow that belied the tremendous weight of the day.
“Nevara’s mana is guarding her. It’s impossible to know whether she is blocking the healing in the process, or perhaps finding a way to expedite it. It is my hope that we will know more in the morning, once everyone has had time to rest.”
Rest.
The word landed like a shot of Shivermark Gin, and exhaustion tugged at my limbs. My head was throbbing, my body stiff and aching, but there was too much to be done before rest was even an option.
The wards needed to be reinforced. The Archmage needed to be called back to deal with the mess my reckless wife had made.
And I wasn’t foolish enough to believe we had seen the last of the ancient monsters.
For all of those reasons and a hundred more, I needed to leave this room. To stop watching my best friend suffer once again, for the choices of kings she had never been allowed to refuse.