“Honesty always,” I reminded her.
Wynnie set down her cup, taking a fortifying breath.
“But I think that sometimes your experiences with violence color your tolerance for a certain amount of… necessary savagery.” She shook her head, remorse flooding her crystal-blue gaze. “I know your life was lonely, shut up in your rooms and forced to hide, but you were also… shielded from some things.”
This was why she hadn’t wanted to respond, because she hadn’t wanted to imply that there were benefits to being forced to hide, though Draven may as well have said the same thing.
Batty nestled against me, offering me a small spot of warmth while I sorted through the rest of my sister’s words.
We never brought up the way I arrived at my father’s estate just over a decade ago, nor the way I returned to the palace mere months ago.
She never asked questions I couldn’t bring myself to answer, let alone acknowledged that she knew I had been tortured morethan once. And now, she thought I was too influenced by my trauma to look at this situation reasonably.
Worse yet, I wondered if she was right. Hadn’t I felt every ounce of Alaric’s torture echoing across my skin when I saw him suffer through Draven’s eyes, the kind of soul-deep pain I understood on a level I wished I didn’t?
“Maybe,” I allowed, my voice barely loud enough to carry. “But sometimes I think the only difference in necessary and unnecessary violence is whether it’s happening to someone you love or on their behalf.”
“You’re not wrong,” she said softly. “This is a war, and you’re a queen now. Sometimes all we can do is protect our own, Little Sister. I’m not sorry for that.”
I sank back into the velvet chair, staring out at the endless hues of teal and emerald and purple, trying to pinpoint the flaw in her reasoning. She was right, and she was wrong.
If all we ever worried about was protecting our own, wasn’t that how the violent cycle fed itself?
But if that was the only way to keep the people I loved safe, wouldn’t I choose it every time? Hadn’t I already?
Is that really the only way?
Or is that just something we tell ourselves so we don’t drown in the guilt of all thecollateral damagethat piles up at our feet?
Chapter 24
Everly
It was freezing, the kind of cold that even dragon fire couldn’t touch.
Snow stretched endlessly in every direction, wind whipping through the vast, empty space.
“Mana always demands a sacrifice.”
Nevara’s voice cut into the silence, crueler than I knew her to be.
The scene shifted, and suddenly she was there, pale braids streaked with obsidian, her starlit eyes open, staring at nothing.
Blood flowed from the tear in her abdomen and spread across the snow in a slow spiral until it twisted into the shape of a single rose, forged from scarlet ice.
The wordsacrificeechoed again, louder this time, as dark silhouettes circled the edges of the field. Their limbs moved too quickly, bent at unnatural angles, closing the distance with horrifying ease until all I knew was darkness… darkness, and the bitter resignation that soaked into the very marrow of my bones, the soul-deep certainty that I had failed.
And everyone I loved would pay the price.
I woke with a sharp shiver, but the world hadn’t changed when I opened my eyes. I was still shrouded in darkness, still paralyzed with cold. Shadows writhed around the room, moving in frantic arcs that I couldn’t control. It took me too many shaky breaths to understand what should have been obvious.
The nightmare was not mine.
Draven lay beside me in his massive bed, his body locked in place as if carved from winterstone. The sheets beneath him glittered faintly with frost, spider-webbing all the way to my body. Wind whipped wildly through the room, jagged shards of sleet melding with my shadows in a frigid maelstrom that sliced through the thin shift I wore.
Whisper-thin spires exploded from my body, and I shot across the bed just in time to avoid them piercing into my husband’s side.
Shards blasted forsaken every damned thing.
