His shoulders relaxed, something like relief entering into his gaze in the single, stilted heartbeat before I spoke again.
“Dragons do protect their own.”
I hurled my power forward, not as a weapon but as an extension of something ancient inside me. It didn’t attack, didn’t kill or maim. Itprotected, slicing through my uncle’s shadows with a graceful, ruthless precision, a clean severing that shattered his hold on the people I loved.
His lips parted in shock, his pupils contracting sharply. If he had known I possessed this mana at all, he certainly hadn’t expected it to be powerful enough to counteract his own.
The split second he froze was enough for my sister.
Wynnie moved with a speed I had never seen from her, a jerky, desperate lunge fueled by pure survival and a decade’s worth of buried anger. Her hand dove beneath her skirts, trembling with something closer to fury than fear.
She ripped the dagger free and drove it into my uncle’s neck.
The sound was wet, a sickening puncture followed by a rush of crimson that sprayed across her face and chest. Wynnie didn’t flinch. She twisted the blade deeper, her small frame shaking with the force of her ire.
“I am more her family than you will ever be, you miserable frost-forsaken shitface.” Her voice cracked on the last word, raw and feral.
My uncle staggered, knees buckling as his shadows sputtered uselessly around him. A mighty warrior taken down by a sister’s unholy rage.
For one suspended, breathless moment, the world held still.
Both armies watched in stunned silence, the weight of what had just happened rolling through the battlefield like a shockwave.
Then a final boom sounded in the distance, deep enough to shake the stone beneath my boots.
And a battle cry rent through the air.
Chapter 48
Everly
My sister was still too far from me.
A volley of arrows sailed through the air, each one heading directly for her. I scrambled for my mana again, but I didn’t even have time to raise my hands before an achingly familiar shape formed from mist and frost beside me.
Relief weakened my knees. Draven was free. And Draven washere.
His fingers trembled with rage, his features carved into Winter’s own wrath.
His midnight cloak clung to his broad shoulders, edges glinting with frost. An icy gale swept through the air, rustling the edges of his cloak and lifting the moonlit strands of his hair beneath the ruthless cut of his crown. Each tip gleamed like a blade, sharp enough to draw blood from anyone foolish enough to challenge him.
He looked less like a fae and more like the promise of retribution incarnate.
The arrows froze mid-air, shattering on the ground just as power slammed through the ground in a violent, rolling wavethat knocked the breath from my lungs and sent cracks racing through the snow like veins of lightning.
The battlefield was locked in place. Bodies froze mid-motion. Wings stalled. Shouts died on lips half-formed.
My mother stood with her arms outstretched as if she were physically holding the realm still through sheer will. Ancient mana coiled around her in heavy, suffocating layers, bright violet light sparking along her arm.
Her expression though, was carved tight with grief, the lines around her mouth deeper than I had ever seen. She didn’t look at the body crumpled in the snow behind Noerwyn. She didn’t look at the blood dripping from her old dagger in my sister’s hand. Her gaze fixed on me instead, unwavering.
“Go,” she hissed.
Wynnie didn’t hesitate. She sprinted toward me while my mana finally responded to my call, throwing a shield of sorts between my sister and the army at her back.
“You saved her,” I breathed to my mother.
“She’s your family.” Her words were quiet, even as they echoed across the battlefield.
