Chapter 1
KORYN
“Wake up, sweetling.”
As if it were that simple. My eyes were frozen shut, the tears I’d refused to let fall creating a film of ice that fused my eyelids in place.
I did not want to wake. Not when waking meant facing my reality.
A dark presence curled around the thought. The hairs at the nape of my neck lifted on an unnatural breeze. I was alone. They’d ripped away everyone and everything I’d come to care about.
But that dark presence lingered.
Sight would banish it. I tried—but my eyes were truly frozen shut. I dragged a hand from where it was pinned beneath my stomach, ignoring the tingling as blood began to flow to the limb again.
It hurt, the tiny shards of frozen ice refusing to melt, digging into the sensitive skin around my eyes instead.
I kept rubbing. Pain and I were longtime companions.
I welcomed the pain. It was the most minute in a thousand degrees of punishment that I deserved.
I’d been so foolishly na?ve. Four hundred years should have been enough to teach me the true nature of the world.
But I’d let myself trust Garrick. I had believed Maura’s offer.
I allowed myself to think that I could escape the bargain I’d made to save Kyrelle’s life.
I wanted to find my place so desperately that I’d made mistake after mistake.
Now I was a captive. Worse, so was Isanara. I did not care what happened to Garrick.
I forced my eyelids apart before my heart could protest the veracity of that thought.
But even with my eyes open, blinking the world around me into focus, he lingered.
I wanted to be alone. Alone was safer. For me and everyone else.
Even if he were a god.
I blinked again. Broken tile walls. A damp floor. Diluted light that filtered in from a series of small windows just below the ceiling of the…. bathhouse?
Carved rectangular pools dropped away into chasms of darkness on either side of me. I lay in the middle of them, wet tile beneath my face. The gray light from the windows reflected off the puddles. It could not be water, though, not when that perfectly straight line sparkled like—
Salt.
But I could move. What trickery was that? It should have held me frozen in place, my power trapped within me. None of it made sense. Where was I? Where were Garrick and Isanara? No, I would not think of my Lifebind, the man who’d betrayed me.
Why was he lingering?
The grains had a strange pinkish tint…
My eyes fluttered closed again, the urge to fall back asleep almost pulling me under.
The world had shifted so that I preferred the nightmares to my reality.
Closing my eyes sharpened all of my other senses.
Every place where my body touched the tile floor ached, but that was nothing compared to the ache inside of me, the carved-out part where Isanara should be.
A slow, steady drip echoed through the cell. It came from somewhere behind me. Drip. Drip. Drip. Each droplet louder than the last. Intruding on my mind. Forcing the swirling thoughts to collide with each other.
I threw my hand out behind me, rolling from my front to my back in a painful, jolting motion. My shoulder blades scraped against the ground. My leather vest was gone. So was my wool dress. They’d stripped me down to nothing but a shift. My feet were bare.
Drip.
“Aghhh!” My abdominals screamed as the sound ripped from my throat, as I pushed myself up to sit, throwing my hand out toward that infernal sound again.
But nothing happened.
No ice flowed from my fingers, no frost condensed in whorls across my skin.
The salt. The drip.
Dark God below, was the salt muddling my mind? It was meant to contain, but if Maura had worked some other strange—
Blood.
The granules of salt were stained pink. The smell assaulted my senses, cutting through the fog created by the incessant dripping and the pain. The coppery tang told me everything.
Maura had mixed blood with the salt. She’d modified its power using a spell—using blood magic.
Such a spell was outside of her bind. She needed an earth-bound witch to manipulate that sort of power. Which meant that Elodie and Aurienna were nearby, as well.
My mind struggled to fit everything into place. I remembered the Memory Gate and Garrick’s betrayal. I ached with Isanara’s absence. Maura and the fae king had imprisoned me. But where?
Yawning exhaustion clawed at the edges of my consciousness.
“Stay awake, sweetling.”
I knew that voice. But I could not quite find the energy to tell him I hated nicknames before I fell back asleep.