Chapter 2
GARRICK
I’d promised myself I would never return to this place. Even when I accepted the terms that led me over the threshold of the temple and into the Seven Gates, it had not been here. That bargain had been struck in the stinking back room of a tavern, exactly where it belonged.
A frigid, punishing wind whipped across the top of the cliffs, brutally wiping away anything that attempted to lay down roots or carve out a bit of life.
The land around Balar Shan was barren, nothing but dead brown hills crusted with frost. The waters of the Northern Death stretched out in the other direction, promising an icy death to any who attempted them.
Some fae had fled across the water in the centuries after the curse. They were never heard from again.
But I did not care. The fae had brought this curse down on themselves and everyone else. They deserved to suffer.
Koryn did not.
Icicles longer than I was tall hung from the decorative spires of the palace. It only took one the length of my arm to fatally harm a human or witch. The fae occupants of the castle would recover, short of the frozen spear severing their head from their body.
She isn’t in danger from the fucking icicles.
They were the least of the horrors that waited in the Court of Lies.
In every nightmare, there was only one person who could have drawn me back to this place, the cradle for the curse that had murdered this continent. My mother.
Until Koryn.
Koryn had never been a conscious choice. She’d invaded my heart by tiny increments and then suddenly, all at once. I recognized the disparity of the description. But it still fit. By the time I’d realized I was in love with her, it was too late to force her out.
Koryn, I could accept. Woman, witch, all of her. But not him.
He appeared in a swirl of darkness over my shoulder that I felt, rather than saw, the same as he had in the narrow gorge after the Memory Gate.
The temperature dropped sharply, while instantaneously, darkness clawed at the edges of my consciousness.
I heard my mother’s scream and the crack in Koryn’s voice as she realized the depth of my betrayal.
Pain coursed through my veins, but I could not point to a single place that hurt. It was too general, too deep.
The Dark God cleared his throat, as if there was any way I could have ignored his arrival.
I forced myself to tear my eyes away from the palace—from where I imagined Koryn suffering within. I’d ignored his dark presence at the edge of my mind as my wingbeats carried me northward. But he would not be put off any longer.
His dark hair fell across the olive skin of his forehead, the silken strands lifting and parting with the cold breeze.
I was layered with furs. My half-fae lineage kept me warmer than the average man, but the Old Fae Kingdom was in the northernmost reaches of Velora and suffered the ravages of the curse most deeply.
He, however, looked supremely comfortable in nothing more than fitted black trousers, leather boots, and a tailored black jacket that hit him at mid-thigh. Even the buttons were onyx. He might have stepped out of a history textbook or a distant royal court or a woman’s secret fantasy. Or a man’s.
He did not give me the luxury of an opening parry.
“You will not save her loitering on a cliffside,” the Dark God drawled, looking past me. His blue-black eyes did not fixate on the frosted spires of the palace, but on the endless ocean beyond.
My hands tried to curl into fists. I did not let them. “She is not as helpless as you suppose.”
Koryn was fierce and clever. She was powerful, too, and if she ever mastered that power, she’d be unstoppable.
“I know exactly how capable she is. Unlike you, I have never underestimated her,” the Dark God quipped. The tone of it lifted the tiny hairs on the back of my neck.
I almost argued back—as if arguing with an immortal being was of any use. But the darkness in my mind that had appeared when he did took over, pushing out the impulse. I did not deserve to defend myself, not when it came to Koryn.
The Dark God stepped closer to the cliffside, scoffing as he passed me. “Yes, please wallow in self-pity a few minutes longer. Our bonded is luxuriating within the walls of the palace.”
He did not stop until his feet were right at the edge. But there was no danger in the thousand-foot drop. Not for him.
“You are a god,” I said to his back. His shoulders were wide, though not as bulky as my own. But there was no doubt of his strength or power. “You could spare us both and go liberate her.”
“Do you need another explanation of the limitations of my power?” Again, that tone. He spoke to me like an errant child.
Koryn had accused me of almost the exact same thing.
Condescension grated against the rawest parts of her, just as it did for me.
The parallels in our lives, in our traumas…
they’d become clearer with each day we spent in one another’s company.
How had I missed that? I’d built a reputation as a notoriously effective bounty hunter by being just that—effective.
I did not make rash decisions. I thought through consequences.
And yet, when the head witch came to me with her offer on behalf of my father, I’d accepted.
It was a mistake I would not make again.
“You haven’t given me an explanation. You are too busy talking in riddles,” I said.
The Dark God turned to face me, one thick dark brow lifting until it disappeared under the curtain of glossy black hair. “Do you doubt your reception, bastard prince?”
My jaw ticked. I could feel the pulse in my cheek. If I could feel it, then he could see it. But even if my irritation was visible, I kept my voice level as I spoke. “They expect me to come.”
“That is not an answer.”
I ground my teeth together. “It is all you are going to get.”
“Come now, you would have answered Koryn.” He laughed cruelly. “Or maybe not. If you had answered her questions truthfully, you would not be in this mess.”
The Dark God found the deepest wounds and prodded them.
He’d shown no magic or power other than his trick of appearing and disappearing.
I’d encountered enough of the gods in the Seven Gates to know that was not the limit of what he could do, or the damage he could inflict, even if he was unwilling to disclose those details to me.
But it was her name on his lips that hurt the worst. There was familiarity there, and it did not hurt so much as it made me yearn.
I wanted that connection to her. Because even though she might hate it—and I suspected she did, from how she’d hidden it from me—it was not broken.
The Lifebind was still intact, but the tentative trust Koryn and I had built? I had shattered it.
“Koryn and I, we are…” I began but could not finish. There were too many words and too much broken. Only one was still incontrovertibly true. “We are bonded.”
The Dark God raked his gaze over me, his expression vaguely amused. Did he find me lacking? Too bad.
He met my gaze for the first time. “You are not the only one bonded to the witch,” he said.
But that did not make us partners. “We are bonded to her. Not to each other.”
The Dark God’s blue-black eyes sparkled. The slash of a smile on his face turned vicious. “You flatter yourself, halfling.”
Something dark and fragmented thrashed inside me, in a part of my soul that I had kept even from Koryn. “Go to the—”
“The Dark God’s frozen hell?” He laughed again. “The darkness and I are already well acquainted.”
He turned his back fully on the palace and the icy sea.
“Call if you need me,” he said over his shoulder, even as his extremities began to disintegrate into wisps of black.
And what did calling the Dark God entail? But instead, I said, “And will you answer?”
He spun at the last second, meeting my eyes with brutal intensity.
“For Koryn?” The Dark God inclined his chin. “Always.”