She didn’t say the rest—that Vaerin had been hers. Her family. Her twin. She just took a breath, turning her attention to the clan that was still stunned into silence.
My heart lurched, disbelief tangling with relief and a thousand other emotions inside me.
I didn’t have time to sort through any of them before Wynnie collided with me, her body crashing into mine hard enough to knock the air from my lungs as she shoved me past the wardlines.
Lumen followed, his hackles still raised as he prowled around us in protective circles.
Wynnie’s legs gave out instantly, pain and shock finally overwhelming whatever fierce resolve had carried her this far.I wrapped my arms around her without thinking, wings folding tight around us both as if I could shield her from everything at once.
For one impossible moment, the world narrowed to just that.
Then my sister looked up, her gaze settling somewhere behind me. Her eyes widened in the fear she hadn’t shown even trapped in my uncle’s hold.
“Everly…”
That’s when I felt it. Draven’s rage, endless and potent.
“No one touches my wife,” he growled.
My husband stepped around me to place himself directly between me and the Winter court, a thick layer of frost coating his clenched fists. In my hurry to face the threat beyond the wards, I had forgotten about the Winter soldiers… and the fact that they had seen my wings.
They wore expressions that ranged from shock to scorn to blatant disgust, their eyes tracking me like I was something feral and contagious. Eryx stood with his hand—and his mana—outstretched, and I wondered how long the Lord General had been keeping them at bay while I was distracted with my uncle.
“She’s an abomination,” spat a broad-shouldered soldier near the front, his lip curling as though even the air around me offended him.
Batty hissed, and Lumen stepped beside me, teeth bared, but the soldiers were too furious to care.
“A traitor,” snarled another guard.
This one was younger, trembling with adrenaline, knuckles white around the hilt of his sword. His pupils were blown wide with fear masquerading as righteousness.
Eryx moved to stand beside Draven, jaw flexing as he assessed the crowd. Soren was nowhere to be seen.
“She is your queen, and you will treat her as such,” Draven commanded, frost thickening in the air around him.
One by one, he was joined by all four of his wolves, each radiating pure menace.
The line of soldiers stepped back, but they weren’t close to finished.
“You want us to die for the sake ofthatmonster?” barked a stocky male with a jagged scar down his cheek, shuffling back as he side-eyed the furious wolves. “No wonder Winter is cursed.”
Draven encased him in frost up to the chest, but for once, the other soldiers didn’t fall in line. A ripple of unease pulsed through me. This wasn’t just fear. It was mutiny.
“That’s why she couldn’t do the Heartstone Ceremony,” muttered an archer near the barracks wall, his voice tight with bitter certainty. “The land has rejected her.”
“The monsters have been worse since she took the throne,” added another, a tall male with ice-burn scars around his wrists, his tone bordering on hysteria.
“You know perfectly well the monsters have ravaged our kingdom for far longer than she has been here,” Draven bit out, but their hostility only grew thicker.
Morta Mea, get somewhere safe this time.
Draven’s voice was vibrating with fury inside my mind, the faintest hint of fear threading beneath it.
And leave you to face this alone? Like hells,I shot back, fingers cold despite the heat of adrenaline. Besides, there was nowhere safe for me. Hadn’t that always been the problem?
“But the Shard Mother has turned against us now,” another soldier shouted, a gaunt male whose armor hung too loose on his frame, eyes wild with desperation. “She’s taken our Visionary.”
“Or theskaldwinghas been poisoning her and blaming the monsters,” said a male with midnight hair and a face full of battle scars, his glare fixed directly on me.
