“Why?”
Draven didn’t answer right away.
“She sealed it,” he said at last. “No one can enter without her.”
That gave me pause. “Why would she do that?”
He let out a long sigh, and for a moment the room fell silent. He stared up at the ceiling, his eyes unfocused, as if weighing how much truth to give. Then he scrubbed a hand over his face.
“The Heartstone isn’t just ceremonial,” he said. “It’s anchored directly into the ley lines beneath the palace, to the mana that sustains all of Winter.”
My brow furrowed, and I ran a finger along Batty’s still-trembling form to comfort her.
“There are other locations within the Court that are more closely connected to the ley lines. Like Veilreach Sanctum,” he said, his gaze flicking to mine. “And the Frost Grave Pass.”
He shook his head as if to rid his thoughts of that place and the memories that haunted him from that day before continuing.
“But the Heartstone isn’tjustconnected to the ley lines,” he added. “It truly is the heart of Winter. Every current of mana that moves through this Court flows through it. Stable or unstable. Contained or feral. All of it.”
A chill slid down my spine.
“If the Heartstone were destroyed,” he continued quietly, “it wouldn’t just cripple the Court. It would unmake it. The land. The wards. The monsters… The people… Winter itself.”
The weight of that settled heavily between us. Every unspoken word he hid between the lines, the things he wasn’t quite confessing that cracked something deep inside of me.
If there were no other options besides a slow, gruesome death at the hands of the monsters or unmaking the entire kingdom, what would he consider?
Silence swallowed the room and the breath in my lungs. My eyes burned.
“That’s why she keeps it sealed,” I said carefully.
To protect the Heartstone. To protect Winter.
And to protect Draven.
Reluctant confirmation trickled through the bond, followed by a fresh wave of bitterness.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask him anything else, not when we were both still fighting back tremors from the onslaught of mana that had robbed us of our precious sleep.
It didn’t matter anyway. What mattered was that the small shred of hope I had conjured had been dashed just as quickly. We needed Nevara.
So, I focused on Batty’s warmth against my skin, on Draven’s hand around my wrist. On anything at all besides the several inches of space between us that felt like too much and not enough.
Let alone the crushing feeling that nothing we did would matter if I couldn’t survive until Nevara woke up.
Or worse, if Nevara never woke up at all.
Chapter 13
Everly
The next time we woke, it was to an entirely different sort of chaos.
Draven barely had time to contain the force of his mana, or his frustration, as my sister burst through the adjoining door between our rooms.
“Generally, the purpose of a door is that you knock on it before entering,” Draven bit out before I could even fully open my eyes.
Two of the wolves let out low whines of agreement while Batty hissed and burrowed deeper between my neck and my pillow.
