Page 90 of Throne of Ice and Blood
My heart patters against my ribs as I straighten on the floor. Draven is standing on the other side of the bed, watching me with such a raw expression on his handsome face that I feel like someone is strangling my heart again.
How much of those emotions in his eyes are his actual feelings and how much is just an involuntary instinct caused by the mate bond?
Every day, I find out something that shatters my worldview over and over again. Is anything even real?
Draven opens his mouth to say something, but I can’t bear to hear what it is. So before he can get a single word out, I blurt out a question that I know will just make everything worse. But I ask it anyway.
“Are you sterilizing us?”
Draven flinches as if I had slapped him. Pain flickers in his eyes for a second, but when he replies, there is steel in his voice.“Iam not sterilizing anyone.” His tone softens. “But yes, they have created a selective breeding system to produce stronger magical bloodlines.”
After what Lavendera told me down in the kennels, I already knew that it was true. That the shifters are sterilizing us after we have given birth to one child both to keep our population from outgrowing the city and also to create stronger magic users for them to drain. But hearing Draven confirm it like that is like a blow to the chest.
Staggering back a step, I have to brace myself on the nightstand as I draw in an unsteady breath and echo, “A selective breeding system.”
Draven winces. “That’s not what I meant.”
“That’s exactly what you meant,” I accuse, anger rising inside me to cover the pain. I pull it eagerly around me like a shield to stop my heart from breaking completely. “You’re breeding us. Like cattle!”
“Iam not doing any of that,” Draven replies, the steel returning to his voice as he holds my gaze with serious eyes. “And I don’t approve of it either.”
“But you’re helping them! You’re keeping them in power. You’re serving them, for Mabona’s sake. Like an eager little lapdog.”
Draven forces out a frustrated breath and stalks around the bed, closing the distance between us. “I have already told you. I don’t have a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice!” I snap as he comes to a halt in front of me. Raising a hand, I stab an accusatory finger against his firm chest. “And whether you want to admit it or not, you arechoosingto serve them. The consequences if you don’t do as they say might be awful, which is why you feel like you don’t have a choice, but you do have a choice.”
Anger flashes in his eyes like lightning. Opening his mouth, he gets ready to retort. But he must see the truth in my words, because in the end, he just closes his mouth again and flexes his hand in annoyance while forcing out another frustrated breath.
Raking his fingers through his hair, he shakes his head and instead changes the subject. “What about your own blind trust?”
I stare back at him. “Myblind trust?”
“Yes! I know that you’re smart, which is why I can’t for the life of me figure out why you didn’t use that brilliant mind of yoursbeforeyou entered the Atonement Trials.”
“We wereallfooled by the Atonement Trials,” I snap back.
“That’s because you never question anything!” Desperation now drowns out the anger as he shakes his head in disbelief. “Like why did no one ever come back to visit after they won the tournament? Or send a letter or something? If people have been winning the Atonement Trials for centuries, how come not one single person ever contacted the loved ones they left behind?”
His words are a knife straight to the gut. Because he’s right. I had never even thought about that. Let alone questioned it.
That desperation pulses in his eyes as he holds my gaze. “If you had just questioned things before it was too late, none of this would have happened. So I need you to start using that head of yours. I need you to start questioning things that don’t make sense. Please.”
My head is pounding. It feels as if giant metal bells are clanging somewhere in there inside my skull. It’s so loud that I can barely hear anything.
Because Draven is right. Goddess damn it, as much as I hate to admit it, Draven is right.
There are so many things that I never questioned. So many things that I just accepted as fact. Simply because someone told me that it was true.
But now that I look back on it from the outside, I realize that everything I know, everything that all fae know in the Seelie Court, has been taught to us by dragon shifters. There were no fae teachers at school. Only dragon shifters. They taught us everything we know. Everything we know about our own history, our culture, and our biology. Everything.
Panic crawls up my throat.
I suck in a breath. But no air makes it into my lungs. I drag in another panicked breath, but just like the last one, it never makes it past my throat. Another wave of panic slams into me, and I desperately try to force air into my lungs. But it feels as if an iron fist is gripping my windpipe, strangling me.
Stumbling backwards, I crash back first into the pale ice wall behind me. No matter how fast I breathe, nothing makes it down into my lungs. I throw my hands out and brace myself against the cool wall behind me while I desperately try to breathe through the panic.
Draven’s hand appears underneath my chin, raising my head. Worry swirls in his eyes when I meet his gaze.
