Chapter 7
KORYN
You will be powerful enough to do anything.
What was that supposed to mean? How could my power grow when it was meant to ebb away to nothing?
Maura had either lied to me about what would happen, or she did not know.
Was I an aberration, even amongst my own kind?
I’d never been able to control my power with the same ease as my sister witches.
But I was also the only one among us to ever be chosen by a familiar. And by the Dark God himself.
I banished the thought as if it might summon him. As if he could not invade my mind any time he wanted. At least with Garrick, I knew—
What did I know, really?
The man I’d almost given my heart to had betrayed it. The one to whom I’d promised my afterlife taunted me to the edges of my sanity. Fuck all men—fae, god, and otherwise. I would be the plaything of no man.
Nor witch.
What did Maura want?
Power. The answer was simple because it was true, even if Alize dismissed it.
But power took many shapes. As head witch, Maura commanded not just her own fire power and bind, but the binds of the others within the coven.
Aurienna was a green witch—earth-bound. Elodie of the many faces—earth-bound.
My frost was water-bound. McKean was dead, her foresight and air bind with it.
Maura had used Elodie or Aurienna’s blood and bind to modify the power of the salt that created my cell.
Realization crystallized in my veins. I knew how to break the spell.
Patience had never been a virtue used to describe me, even before my resurrection. But I forced myself to wait. A nondescript servant delivered my evening meal. I pretended to be asleep. No doubt even the servants reported on my movements. If it was truly a servant at all.
I was not familiar with fae customs, but I knew the way of the witches.
My coven slept during the day. They would expect me to try to escape then, when they were most vulnerable.
I waited for nightfall instead. If my power could be boosted even a fractional amount by the cold night, I’d take that advantage.
Getting free was only the first step. Then I had to find Isanara.
When the moon appeared through the fractured windowpanes, I made my first move.
I dumped the tea leaves and smashed the porcelain dish that held them on the ground.
It shattered into a dozen pieces, cracking the tile beneath it as well.
A sliver of satisfaction curled my lips.
But I did not have time to savor it. Breaking the dish was a necessary risk.
If there were guards posted outside the bathhouse, they would have surely heard it.
Fae senses were even sharper than those of witches.
I brushed through the shards, finding the largest and sharpest, a curved slice of porcelain that resembled a crescent moon. Without hesitation, I drove it into the pale, vulnerable flesh on the inside of my forearm.
Blood welled up instantly, bright and thick. I half expected it to be frozen. But it trickled down the side of my arm, then flowed as I dug the shard of porcelain deeper. I did not have time to waste on a clean cut. I was too focused to feel the pain, anyway.
I stepped to the edge of my cell, dropped the makeshift knife, and cupped my hand beneath the wound. I collected my own blood until it filled my palm. I could not step over the line, I needed enough…
The scent filled my nostrils, drawing me right back to the blood fountain in the temple.
The Seven Gates—specifically, the Mercy Gate, the first. Where it had all begun.
Janessa’s bloody death with the fae-made diadem.
The same one I’d seen on the fae woman’s head in the gorge after the Memory Gate.
I flung my hand out. My blood splattered the floor, creating a line of crimson across the tiles, across the line of tinted salt, and over it.
My body tried to pause, warning me to be wary.
But now was not the time for caution. I reached out and toed my foot right up to the line of salt, through the blood, waiting for the invisible force of Maura’s spell to push me back.
My toe touched the first granule of salt, then I pushed through where my blood had stained the already pink granules even darker, my chest seizing, bracing for the impact of pain.
And then my foot was outside the cell.
My sister witch’s blood had been used to create the spell that modified the salt’s power, allowing me to move within the cell. Her blood had also been used in my resurrection. We were bound by covenants of blood. Which meant my blood was enough to alter the power of the spell—and provide a way out.
I expected the flood of power. I sucked in a breath as I kicked aside the salt to make a wider path and stepped free of the cell.
Frost flooded every sense, cold and frigid, and oh so welcome.
I’d spent so much time hating my power and the lack of control I had over it.
But its absence had ached. I knew that if I looked down, I’d see whorls of frost dancing over the acres of pale skin left bare by my meager shift.
But I did not look down. All of my attention shifted inward, to where a sensation of light and warmth bloomed inside my chest. It should have been at odds with the frost spreading through my body, but it sang with harmony and rightness, filling the hollow ache.
It felt… familiar.
I took my first truly deep breath since waking.
Isanara.