Finally, Draven lifted the bottle in his hands. “She pulled this bottle off the shelf and held it out to me like it was some peace offering for sharing the truth.”
He imitated her voice: “‘Be a dear, won’t you?’”
Despite everything, warmth curled through my chest, and a small grin tempted the corner of my lips.
“She made me open it,” Draven said, lifting the bottle between us. “We shared it behind a tapestry. Talking about the war. What would happen to Winter if the Unseelie won. What might become of her if my father kept using her visions like this.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if he was sharing so much because I had accused him of never telling me anything at all. If it was his way of making strides in the only way he knew how, or if the memories would have unfolded this way no matter what.
Silence fell over us again like a blanket of snow on a mountain range. At first glance, it might appear peaceful or calm… But all it would take was one wrong move, one sound that rang out too loudly, for all of it to come crashing down.
And yet, I couldn’t allow the quiet to linger. I was transfixed. I needed to know more. To know him. To soothe the pain in his chest that was cleaving him in two.
“And what happened then?” I asked softly.
Draven stared at the bottle. He traced the embossed stars and the half-chipped paintings of constellations with something close to reverence.
“I told her that when I became king,” he said, voice low and steady, “I would find a way to free her.”
The ache in those words… it nearly split me open.
Through our bond, I watched as Nevara gave him a sad smile in return. She didn’t say anything, just popped the cork back into the bottle and told him that they would open it again when the war was over.
I swallowed. “But you didn’t.”
“No,” Draven said with a shake of his head. “We knew the war was really just beginning.”
Chapter 19
Everly
The palace wasn’t struggling to accommodate the villagers like we had been concerned about. Far fewer were making the trek than we had expected.
“That was all of them?” I asked Wynnie when she was describing it to me.
Had the rest of them been… eaten on the way here? Had they chosen to wait it out, or make a longer trip to one of the fortified estates rather than risk being in the vicinity of the Frostgrave King?
She pursed her lips, picking up a frosted berry. “All that were willing.”
I shook my head. “Are they so afraid of Draven that they prefer the idea of being monster snacks?”
“Because they are ancient and set in their ways,” she muttered around a mouth full of food. “They’re attached to their land, their shards-damned ancestral homes, and they don’t really believe the stories about the monsters until they see their hideous scaly forms for themselves. Even Yorrick’s own siblings pretend he died of natural causes.”
“So convincing them to come here didn’t go?—”
A knock sounded at my door, and Wynnie and I both froze. It was a heavy knock, measured, nothing at all like the perfunctory rap of my maid. A soldier’s knock.
Lumen leapt to his feet, pulled from the post-breakfast lull he had fallen into, and padded across the floor to accompany Wynnie to the doorway, assistance she tried to appear grateful for even as she tensed at his presence.
I stayed in my chair, out of sight, like the ailing queen I was still pretending to be.
“Lady Noerwyn, another group of villagers has arrived.” The frantic voice came as soon as she opened the door.
It wasn’t unusual that the soldiers and servants would come to Wynnie since she was helping manage where the villagers would stay since I was supposedly still too ill to leave my bed, but the concern in the soldier’s tone was… well,concerning. He sounded young, though, so maybe that was all it was.
“They say they were attacked by a frostbeast they’ve never seen or heard of,” he continued in a rambling tone that was edged with a trace of hysteria. Was this his first time seeing someone injured?
“They said it was taller than the blue pines, with horns, and steam coming out of its nostrils that burnt like acid on their skin. Master Amias is trying to treat the wounded, but he says most of them won’t survive. He’s asking for your salves.”
