Chapter 1
Everly
There was no air.
No sound. Or light. Or time.
There was only heat, searing against my skin. The pain of too much warmth against flesh that had been cold for far too long.
My ring was no longer freezing, which was less comforting than it should have been. Because from the moment I had arrived in the cave, whatever bond tethered my mind and soul and very being to Draven had been muffled into nothingness.
Even my heartbeats felt far away in the endless space between the demand I made and the Dragon’s… response? Or lack of one?
An eternity passed while I stood in a cave that seemed to exist completely outside of time, my mind fuzzy and far away.
Why did you come here?
Was I asking that question?
No, not me. It had come from outside, from a deep voice that rumbled through my soul itself.
There were no answers, though.
There was only the dark, heated hush of the cave where my ancestor held the decision of whether I lived or died. Whether Isaved my family and my people or became the straw that broke them.
Right. The people who needed me. My sister and my unlikely friends. The warring kingdoms that weren’t quite mine and the king who inexorably was.
Draven.
“I’m here... because I need my mana.” My voice was low and raspy, but it echoed through the silence nonetheless.
Hadn’t I said that before? How many times had I answered that question?
I gritted my teeth and continued in a stronger voice. “I’m here to reclaim what is rightfully mine.”
A rumble sounded through the dark, damp space, low and powerful enough to rattle the marrow of my bones and the fragile membranes of the wings that had emerged somewhere in my struggle. The cadence was familiar, though wholly unexpected.
Was the Dragon… laughing? At me?
If he was, there was no joy in the sound, though it wasn’t precisely malice, either—only something that felt older than both.
Then the flames began.
Chapter 2
Draven
Carnage had sunken its claws into my reign at the Frostgrave Battle, and it hadn’t let go since. It clung to the air in my lungs and to the crimson-stained snow, where yet another of my soldiers fell to her death.
Althoughfellwas too placid a word for the way the monster hurled her body vindictively behind itself, blocking even the barest hope of aid from reaching her.
The creature was learning. Adapting to the way Noerwyn had pulled several half-dead soldiers from the fray, doing everything in its power to ensure she couldn’t save the rest.
And unlike other frostbeasts I had battled, the ones that were consumed by the need to devour and hunt, this one was distinctly malicious.
Like it was toying with us. It didn’t want to eat. It wanted to destroy.
For hours, it had tested our strength, ever since it sliced into palace wards that no fae or monster had broken through in a millennium. We were keeping it at bay, just barely, and only because Everly had shown me the creature’s weaknesses.
