Chapter 12
Everly
It started with the faint memory of pain. Like someone was pressing on an old bruise that hadn’t quite healed.
Visions shifted in my mind, each one flashing brighter and louder than the last. No. Not just visions.
Memories.
The familiar tug of a scalpel dragging along my back, the burn of iron manacles against my wrists as I tried to pull away. My uncle’s deep voice telling me to be still and quiet ringing out louder than my screams, followed by a cacophony of voices.
The word Hollow echoed over and over again.
Hollow.
She’s a Hollow.
A Hollow.
Another Hollow…
Their verdict echoed through the stillness in my lungs, filling the place where air should have been and robbing me of the breaths I kept gasping for.
The pain intensified. It spread like a wildfire racing through dry leaves on a forest floor. Shadows tore through my veins, chased by a violent, bone-deep cold that left my body feeling brittle and fragile as glass.
I tried again to breathe, but even that felt dangerous, as if I might shatter at any moment.
A strangled gasp escaped me as I jolted awake. But the agony didn’t fade when I opened my eyes. Instead, it clawed up my spine and clamped around my heart, forcing my vision to blur at the edges.
Shadows swirled through the air as jagged towers of ice jutted from the floor and walls, rising like crystalline barricades around me on the bed. Frost crept along the carved posts, up the curtains, and across the pillows beneath my hands.
This was nothing like Draven’s mana, not even in the throes of one of his nightmares. It was chaos. Desperate and feral. Vicious, even.
A low growl scraped through the room as he shot upright on the other side of my self-imposed icy prison. His teal eyes flashed with a predatory glow as he took in the ice and shadows that I couldn’t control.
His mana rose to meet mine, slicing through it in crisp, precise waves as he fought to reach me.
“Everly—” he snarled, frost spilling from his entire person in a violent rush.
He pushed through the frozen barrier, shattering the icy towers in an instant. Then, his mana curled through the ice and threaded into the shadows hovering just above my skin, as if reaching for each of them by name. Like he knew them as well as he knew me.
He coaxed, commanded, and finally forced them to retreat enough so he could wrap me in his arms.
Shadows crept along his skin, then beneath it, flooding his veins, like he was siphoning the mana into himself to ease the pressure.
Slowly, agonizingly, the jagged pillars around the room began to withdraw. They thinned and softened until they melted into droplets that pattered against the marble floor like gentle rainfall.
It was over before it had truly begun.
Small white clouds fogged the air in front of me. Panicked, hitching breaths that slipped past my lips and jolted my trembling body.
What have I done?
The thought echoed through me as I watched Draven subdue the shadows writhing beneath his skin. His grip tightened around my waist, tugging me flush against his chest as we caught our breaths.
A faint scratching sounded at the windows, and with a flick of his wrist, Draven used his mana to force them open to allow Batty inside.
She swooped down to encompass my neck in her wings, nestling her head beneath my chin and making small comforting noises.
Breathe, Everly. I told myself. Just breathe.
The power that had raged so intensely before was quieter now that Draven had siphoned so much of it away, but I could still feel it churning deep inside of me, like a predator pacing the walls of its cage, waiting for the perfect moment to strike again.
As my mana’s hold on me loosened, so did Draven’s. Though he circled his fingers around my wrist, he eased back to his side of the bed, taking one heaving breath after another.
The air between us was heavy with all the blame we weren’t quite speaking into existence. But his unspoken accusations cut all the deeper for knowing they were true.
What if he hadn’t been here? What if I had returned to my own rooms and Wynnie had been the one lying next to me? Would it have hurt her? Killed her? Killed us both? Would it still?
And what would it cost Draven in the meantime?
Breathe.
I forced my gaze away from his pale, ridged skin and the phantom traces of my shadows still writhing beneath.
There was no choice, I reminded myself.
Yes, my mana was volatile, but it was still the only thing that had a single prayer of saving Winter. Of saving Draven.
That had never been truer than it was now without even the Visionary to guide us. Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I finally forced myself to speak.
“You said we can’t access the chamber without Nevara,” I said slowly, replaying his words in my head.
The ring hadn’t vibrated, and the truth of his words had reverberated through our bond, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other options.
“Why?”
Draven didn’t answer right away.
“She sealed it,” he said at last. “No one can enter without her.”
That gave me pause. “Why would she do that?”
He let out a long sigh, and for a moment the room fell silent. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes unfocused, as if weighing how much truth to give. Then he scrubbed a hand over his face.
“The Heartstone isn’t just ceremonial,” he said. “It’s anchored directly into the ley lines beneath the palace, to the mana that sustains all of Winter.”
My brow furrowed, and I ran a finger along Batty’s still-trembling form to comfort her.
“There are other locations within the Court that are more closely connected to the ley lines. Like Veilreach Sanctum,” he said, his gaze flicking to mine. “And the Frost Grave Pass.”
He shook his head as if to rid his thoughts of that place and the memories that haunted him from that day before continuing.
“But the Heartstone isn’t just connected to the ley lines,” he added. “It truly is the heart of Winter. Every current of mana that moves through this Court flows through it. Stable or unstable. Contained or feral. All of it.”
A chill slid down my spine.
“If the Heartstone were destroyed,” he continued quietly, “it wouldn’t just cripple the Court. It would unmake it. The land. The wards. The monsters… The people… Winter itself.”
The weight of that settled heavily between us. Every unspoken word he hid between the lines, the things he wasn’t quite confessing that cracked something deep inside of me.
If there were no other options besides a slow, gruesome death at the hands of the monsters or unmaking the entire kingdom, what would he consider?
Silence swallowed the room and the breath in my lungs. My eyes burned.
“That’s why she keeps it sealed,” I said carefully.
To protect the Heartstone. To protect Winter.
And to protect Draven.
Reluctant confirmation trickled through the bond, followed by a fresh wave of bitterness.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask him anything else, not when we were both still fighting back tremors from the onslaught of mana that had robbed us of our precious sleep.
It didn’t matter anyway. What mattered was that the small shred of hope I had conjured had been dashed just as quickly. We needed Nevara.
So, I focused on Batty’s warmth against my skin, on Draven’s hand around my wrist. On anything at all besides the several inches of space between us that felt like too much and not enough.
Let alone the crushing feeling that nothing we did would matter if I couldn’t survive until Nevara woke up.
Or worse, if Nevara never woke up at all.