Chapter 19
Everly
The palace wasn’t struggling to accommodate the villagers like we had been concerned about. Far fewer were making the trek than we had expected.
“That was all of them?” I asked Wynnie when she was describing it to me.
Had the rest of them been… eaten on the way here? Had they chosen to wait it out, or make a longer trip to one of the fortified estates rather than risk being in the vicinity of the Frostgrave King?
She pursed her lips, picking up a frosted berry. “All that were willing.”
I shook my head. “Are they so afraid of Draven that they prefer the idea of being monster snacks?”
“Because they are ancient and set in their ways,” she muttered around a mouth full of food.
“They’re attached to their land, their shards-damned ancestral homes, and they don’t really believe the stories about the monsters until they see their hideous scaly forms for themselves.
Even Yorrick’s own siblings pretend he died of natural causes. ”
“So convincing them to come here didn’t go—”
A knock sounded at my door, and Wynnie and I both froze. It was a heavy knock, measured, nothing at all like the perfunctory rap of my maid. A soldier’s knock.
Lumen leapt to his feet, pulled from the post-breakfast lull he had fallen into, and padded across the floor to accompany Wynnie to the doorway, assistance she tried to appear grateful for even as she tensed at his presence.
I stayed in my chair, out of sight, like the ailing queen I was still pretending to be.
“Lady Noerwyn, another group of villagers has arrived.” The frantic voice came as soon as she opened the door.
It wasn’t unusual that the soldiers and servants would come to Wynnie since she was helping manage where the villagers would stay since I was supposedly still too ill to leave my bed, but the concern in the soldier’s tone was…
well, concerning. He sounded young, though, so maybe that was all it was.
“They say they were attacked by a frostbeast they’ve never seen or heard of,” he continued in a rambling tone that was edged with a trace of hysteria. Was this his first time seeing someone injured?
“They said it was taller than the blue pines, with horns, and steam coming out of its nostrils that burnt like acid on their skin. Master Amias is trying to treat the wounded, but he says most of them won’t survive. He’s asking for your salves.”
Distantly, I heard Wynnie responding to the soldier, trying to calm him down and assure him that she would come to help, but I was only half listening because the description had sparked something in my memory… something that sent my hairs standing on end.
Enormous. Horns. Steam that came from its nostrils.
I grabbed my compendium from where I had been studying it just this morning on the nightstand, flipping hurriedly through the pages.
It wouldn’t be among the common frostbeasts in the front. I knew that even as I passed crude sketches of Brakhounds and Ice-lurkers, their neat annotations suddenly obscene in their harmlessness. I slowed near the middle, heart pounding, searching for something larger.
The illustrations grew darker there. Less precise. Notes scrawled in the margins instead of neatly inked beneath the images. Aggression unknown. Behavior inconsistent. Engagement not advised.
I tuned out the soldier’s convoluted story, focusing on the hasty sketches I had copied from my father’s library in the long, isolated years at his estate.
One page, then another, but it wasn’t here. Of course it wasn’t. I already knew where it would be.
“All right… what did you say your name was?” Wynnie sounded overly patient, like she hoped the question would interrupt his frantic stream of words.
“Maelen, My Lady,” came the rushed reply.
There, on the second to last page. A massive frostbeast that resembled a bull, wavy stenciled steam rising from its nostrils. Gorenvyr.
I bit back a curse. It was on the page just past the Korythid… in the section for the Elderborne monsters.
Wynnie took a breath. “All right, well Maelen—”
“That’s not all, My Lady,” the soldier cut her off. “They said the only reason any of them survived is that they happened to be traveling with a former soldier.”
My breath stilled in my lungs, and this time, it had nothing to do with the ancient frostbeast with perilously few weaknesses.
Logically, I knew there was more than one former soldier in all of Winter, but retirement was rare. And there was something in the tone of the young soldier, some mix of hesitation and reverence. Somehow, I knew, before he even spoke, what he was going to say next.
“He says his name is Oryth Elarion.”
Draven came as soon as he heard my thoughts, ice-walking me directly into the small separated room that I had become far too familiar with in my relatively short time at the palace.
All because of the shards-blasted frostbeasts.
First, I had been here. Then Nevara. And now…
Amias stood between me and the male on the narrow cot, rocking back on his heels to acknowledge that we had arrived. His lips were pursed into a grave line.
“You may speak with him, but not for long. His injuries are… substantial.”
“How substantial?” I pushed, though I already felt the answer in my bones, could smell it in the blood and rot that clung to the air.
Amias met my eyes, taking a breath. “The head wound is the worst of it. I wouldn’t expect much clarity from him right now.”
So just like always then.
But I didn’t miss his non-answer.
I nodded mutely, pulling out of Draven’s hold and stepping around the healer to get my first glimpse of my father since the day I was chosen as the Frostgrave King’s bride, when I had urged Wynnie to take him home before Draven could find out what I was.
When he had left without putting up a single fight.
A stark white sheet hid the extent of his injuries, but there was still a frailty about him that hadn’t been present before. Though maybe that was just the blood crusted in his deep-blue wavy locks, or the bubbling skin along his neck that he scarcely seemed to notice.
His crystal-blue eyes were clear when they opened and landed on me, though his pupils were blown wide from his injuries.
Still, he was sober, which was even more perplexing than the fact that he was here.
“Everly,” he said softly. It was more exclamation than greeting, as if he had lost something precious and discovered it somewhere unexpected.
Which made no sense, because I had never been precious to him, and because he had every reason to expect me here, in the palace where I was the queen.
Still, the word stirred a memory, faint and buried, of the first time I met him. Hadn’t he said my name exactly that way?
Belatedly, I nodded, not sure what else to do or say.
Why hadn’t I waited for Wynnie to come with me? I could have timed my arrival better, given her time to break the ice. To do anything but stare at a male I scarcely knew in a silence filled with questions I could never bring myself to ask.
When was the last time I had been in the same room as my father without her as a buffer?
It had been Wynnie who told me of the king’s summons.
Who dragged me to the carriage on numb footsteps and whispered that everything would be all right.
Who snapped at my father to stay sober long enough to walk into the palace.
Who had been my family and my company and my solace when the male before me had rarely brought himself to so much as look at me.
Before I could find my voice, my father’s gaze slid to the spot just behind me, and he nodded his head.
“Your Majesty.”
I blinked, having all but forgotten Draven was here—a near impossible feat between his oppressive mana and the bond that kept me aware of his presence at all times.
Amias must have excused himself somewhere in the incredibly awkward silent stare-down because only the three of us remained in the room.
“Lord Elarion.” Draven’s tone was so neutral that I would never have known what he felt for my father, but even under the circumstances, an icy rage trickled steadily from his side of the bond.
I sent a question to him and he sent back a vision of an empty estate, a bedroom stuffed with mismatched furniture I had found in the old storage closets because I had known, intrinsically, that my father couldn’t stand being reminded of my presence.
But how did I explain to my husband the careful balance of my relationship with the father neither of us had been ready to acknowledge, the secrets we couldn’t tell, or the danger we kept buried?
I couldn’t entirely fault my father for running away rather than deal with any of those things, but neither could I defend him when he had two children at home raising themselves in his absence.
My pulse raced, my mana swelling like it was responding to the turmoil in my mind, to the two sides of me that could never seem to meet in the middle. Shadows met ice, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“You have mana.” It was a statement, not a question, one laced with what might have been concern if it hadn’t come from a male who had never shown a single emotion in the entire time I had known him.
My insides caught fire, burning from somewhere deeper than my bones. Draven reached for me while Batty squeaked in my ear, something that sounded vaguely insulting about my newly arrived patriarch.
All I could do was nod, since I couldn’t very well explain—wasn’t sure I even wanted to—when he had never shown me even close to that same courtesy.
I needed answers, and I had never even considered that my father might have them. Which felt ridiculous now, except that we had never had a single sober conversation after the first day I found him.
Maybe he was as trapped in memories as I was, because neither of us could seem to form the words to speak.
Fortunately, salvation came for us both in the form of the third highest-ranking lady in the palace, cursing like a soldier as she ripped open the partition that separated the relatively private space from the general infirmary.
“Where the hells have you been?” she demanded. “I wrote to you.”
She looked him up and down, scowling, though I saw the crease of worry at the corners of her eyes as she took in the blood spattered on his face and the telltale white sheet draped over his body.
A faint smirk lifted the corner of his lips, and Wynnie’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t remember if I had ever seen anything resembling a smile on his face.
“I had some things to take care of,” he said vaguely, eyes going faraway.
She scoffed. “Yeah, well, you had lots of things to take care of, and it sure as shards never motivated you before.”
Instead of taking offense, he only nodded, like that was what he expected her to say. Then he blinked, wincing as he turned his attention back to me.
Abruptly, his expression turned serious. “You need to leave. It isn’t safe here.”
My insides turned to ice. Draven stiffened at my back, alarm running through the bond, and Batty trilled nervously in my ear.
“Why?” My voice came out a whisper.
He blinked again, more rapidly this time. “Someone will find out. About the baby.”
Two sets of eyes snapped to mine as a beat of shock filtered through the bond, and I shook my head rapidly back and forth.
“I take the tonic,” I hissed. Not to mention I had just had my moontime, but I felt no need to add that when I already thoroughly wanted to die at the topic of conversation.
Draven and I had never outright discussed heirs, and I had no plan to until we were past this shards-damned war.
My father only looked more alarmed at my denial, his voice rising. “Mire, we’ve been over this. The child will have wings. You have to go, and I have to stay.”
The room seemed to tilt all at once.
Amias swept back into the room on my father’s last word, crossing to him in two short strides. He put his hands on my father’s head, the vine tattoos writhing around his fingers and up his arms as he probed for something we couldn’t see.
“His brain is hemorrhaging,” he said shortly without looking our way. “I’m sorry, Your Majesties, Lady Noerwyn, but you should leave before he becomes more agitated. I’ll send word.”
It was only when Wynnie tugged on my arm that I realized I still hadn’t moved. Slowly, I turned to follow her out the door, leaving my father without saying goodbye.
Just as he taught us to do.