And he had come prepared. Not just for battle, but for time. His forces were dressed for Winter storms, shoulders draped in thick furs, tunics and boots lined against the cold, bracers guarding their forearms. Along the bones and tendons of their wings, the familiar sheen of warming salves caught the light.
Beyond them, supply wagons waited in patient rows.
Between the clothing, the provisions, and the quiet confidence in his stance, it was clear he had come prepared for a siege, if that’s what it came to, and that he had every intention of outlasting it.
My mother fought against his hold, sending wave after wave of mana against her shadow bonds, but they dissipated as quickly as they came. Wynnie, too, struggled against the shadows, and the tightening grip of my uncle’s fist in her hair.
Muffled sounds came from behind the makeshift shadow gag. I could practically hear her cursing me for coming out here when she would have happily died to keep me safe.
But surely she knew that I felt the same.
“I’m here. Now let them go,” I said with all the calm I didn’t feel.
Vaerin narrowed his gaze, his massive obsidian wings flaring ever so slightly in response. He looked down at my sister, his fist clenching around her curls so hard a tear slipped from her lashes.
Batty hissed at him from my shoulder as my anger flared.
“Would you claim this Seelie filth over your true family?” he asked, glancing at my mother next.
His tone was deceptively gentle, as if it were the most reasonable question in the world.
“I asked you to stand with us, Niece, not against us.” He wrapped his shadows tighter around my sister until they sliced into her skin.
Wynnie’s fists were clenched in her gown, her eyes burning with unrelenting rage as shallow rivulets of blood spread in lines across her arms, her neck, her cheeks.
Tears stabbed at the backs of my eyes.
He was never going to let her go. He might free my mother… But he wasn’t going to free Wynnie. If that hadn’t been clear before, it sure as shards was now.
Vaerin had only ever wanted me to come here so he could use my sister as an example, show the Unseelie that his niece was loyal. To use me as a symbol and shield me from their wrath in his own twisted, insane way of keeping me safe.
Still, I couldn’t regret coming, couldn’t regret doing anything I could to save them. All I could do now was stall for time.
“What exactly is it that you want from me?” I asked, though I had already discerned the answer.
“I only want you to remember who you are, so you don’t have to die withthem.” Somewhere past his threat was the slightest hint of a warning. “The wards are going to fail, Everly. And then the Heartstone.”
“No, there’s still—” I began, but he cut me off.
“We will do what we must to protect the other kingdoms,” he said, his words hanging in the air between us. “The frostbeasts have been summoned from every corner of this Court, called back from the borders we are trying to protect.”
I let out a scoff that sounded more like a crazed laugh.
Protect?There was no part of him that wanted to protect anyone but himself, to protect anything but his own power.
“Winter has already lost,” he continued, holding a hand out toward me. “But you don't have to fall with it.”
In spite of myself, resignation shot straight through to my bones. If he had called the monsters… Draven was powerful, insanely so, but even he couldn’t fight a war on every single front.
He couldn’t fight the frostbeasts and the Unseelie and have any hope of shielding the Heartstone. Even if I could wrest her from my uncle’s grasp… was there any saving my sister? Let alone Winter?
“This is madness,” I whispered. “Would you really slaughter a kingdom’s worth of innocent people?”
“I would do anything to stop the slaughter of our own innocents,” he said sharply enough that I might have believed it if I didn’t know damned good and well that this had never been about the value of a life for him.
It had always been about power, then and now. And if he cared so shards-blasted much about keeping me safe, he wouldn’t have launched a war at my doorstep.
But at least when I had him talking, he was distracted from my sister. She was still trapped in the grasp of his shadows, but he was no longer slicing them into her skin. I just needed to keep stalling until… until Draven or my mother could break free, or until the people around us could see that there was no frostforsaken reason for a war on this scale.
