The air felt suddenly too thin, and too sharp. A thousand threads pulled taut around me. An ache was beginning to form in my temples. I squeezed my eyes shut and massaged them while Batty let out a few supportive hisses.
Was it because she was thinking the same thing that I was? Even after all this time, even if I got my mana… I would still be powerless against my uncle.
Just like I always had been.
Chapter 38
Everly
When the Archmage left to check on Nevara, a stilted silence overtook the room. The air felt thin and brittle, like one wrong breath might shatter it.
So I went ahead and flung a boulder through it.
“I wasn’t going to let you get hurt,” I said plainly, bracing myself for the inevitable argument.
Sure enough, Draven shook his head, jaw tight.
“Better me hurt than you dead,” he replied, voice low and unyielding.
My stomach twisted sharply.
“And if you had died?” I demanded, heat flaring beneath my skin. The thought alone sent a spike of nausea through me, the bond flickering with the echo of fear.
“Then that still would have been preferable,” he said, far too calmly.
A furious breath punched out of me. My hands curled into fists. “To you, you selfish bastard.”
He shook his head again, slower this time, the muscle in his jaw feathering. “To Winter, actually, since your mana is still the only hope of restoring the balance,Morta Mea.”
Cold anger surged through me at the bond's edge, jagged enough that Batty shifted anxiously on my shoulder. I leaned closer to him.
“Hmm, what was it you said?” I asked, lifting a brow as the corner of my mouth tilted up in a humorless echo of a smile. “I don’t give a single forsaken damn about the risk to Winter. There is a risk to you.”
Draven looked thoroughly unamused by my imitation of his deep baritone. His lips pressed into a thin line, though the faint pulse of warmth through the bond betrayed him.
“Yes,” he acknowledged. “You over Winter, not that you bothered to heed those words when you went to the Dragon, but if it comes to me?—”
“Then how could you ask me to make another choice?” I snapped, my breath hitching.
Images flashed unbidden in my mind of Draven, blood pouring from an arrow wound, features twisted in pain. Then far too still.
The panic spiked again, the weight of an avalanche falling on my chest.
“Because I won’t survive if my Court falls anyway,” Draven said, the words heavy with a grim certainty. “I am the king of Winter, tied to the land itself.”
The conversation should have been theoretical, but it didn’t feel that way in the wake of everything that was coming for us. I cast about for an argument, anything at all that would find the lie in his words, but a knock on the door to my rooms sounded out before I could even try.
“We’re busy, Noerwyn,” Draven called, at the same time I told her to come in.
Whatever camaraderie they had shared the evening of my father’s death had not stopped their everyday annoyance withone another, even if I suspected they both exaggerated said aggravation.
Still, her presence was a welcome reprieve from… all of this.
At least, until she pushed open the door, wrestling her hair into a bun as soon as she rushed through the doorway, not even bothering to scowl in Draven’s direction. Dread settled further in my gut like a splinter lodged under my fingernail.
“What’s happened?” I demanded.
“Just another attack, of course. The soldiers took care of the monsters, but there are more wounded at the site.”
