“Traps?” Draven’s eyes snapped to mine, a cold flash of realization flaring behind them.
I nodded slowly, furrowing my brow at Draven’s intensity. “Yes.”
“Are they always webs?” he asked, voice taut.
“No,” I said, lifting a hand in emphasis. “Sometimes they’re?—”
“Pits?” Draven finished, shoulders going rigid.
I nodded again, a chill prickling along my spine. “Yes.”
“Do they typically travel long distances?” he pressed, shifting his stance as if preparing to move.
“Over time, maybe,” I said carefully, glancing between him and Soren. “But they tend to stay close to their nest. Or… at least they used to. But since they shouldn’t even exist anymore,and since the rest of the frostbeasts are behaving erratically…” I shrugged.
Amias leaned forward slightly, then sagged again, his head falling into one hand. He didn’t speak or interrupt, just listened, a silent, frayed thread in the tense circle we formed.
“Then that one wasn’t the only one.” Draven straightened sharply, turning toward Wynnie. “We saw something like that on the road.”
“At one of the many bloody cabins?” Wynnie asked dryly, raising a brow.
“Near Frostmere,” Draven said, his voice grim.
“That was weeks before this one attacked,” Wynnie murmured, her brows knitting as she exchanged a troubled look with Soren.
“But only a couple of days before I felt the first attack on the wards.” Draven looked at me, indecision warring on his features. He couldn’t leave me to go that far, but there wasn’t time to send anyone else.
“Let’s go find out,” I said, trying not to picture the horrifying monster that was responsible for this mess or the rare bit of panic I had felt emanating from my husband when he first caught sight of it.
“Like hells,” Wynnie said, directing her attention to Draven. “You just barely defeated the first one, and not without significant cost. Now you want to drag my sister out to die for a fool’s hope?”
Ice crackled up the walls, wind whipping through the room. “I would never let Everly get hurt.”
I held my hands out in a soothing gesture. “We know what we’re up against now and we won’t have to worry about keeping it from the palace walls.”
Wynnie shook her head.
“He still can’t defeat it alone, and you…” she trailed off before outright saying I couldn’t use my mana.
“Then we can call for the soldiers stationed there when we find out if it’s even around, but we can’t just sit here and do nothing and wait for Nevara to die.”
Wynnie’s features softened, but the fear in her eyes didn’t waver. “I don’t want her to die, either, but you have to see how impossible this is.”
I wanted to comfort her, when I knew exactly how she felt, how I had felt the day I heard that monsters had invaded her estate. I recalled too well the mind numbing panic and grief that threatened to suffocate me the moment I realized my sister was in danger.
And I remembered the overwhelming relief I felt when Draven agreed to save her.
Now it was my turn. This was his sister. And I would not stay safe behind these walls while there was something I could do to help, even if that was just lending him my presence.
All the while, I kept silent about the other fact I had picked up while studying the Korythid these past several days… the one I still hoped the scholars were wrong about.
A fully grown Korythid had a crown of frost-sheathed sensory spines along its head. They were thin, trembling filaments that could detect movement through ice from terrifying distances.
But the one I saw in Draven’s mind had none at all. Its carapace was smooth where those spines should have been. So it was entirely possible the creature he fought wasn’t yet grown.
And that we were going hunting for its mother.
Chapter 32
