Chapter 10
KORYN
We are almost there, I promised Isanara as we worked our way down the side of the palace.
The once colorful stones were coated in frost and ice, their vibrant shades dimmed to dull pastels.
I used the same technique that had helped me climb the cliff-face at the Mercy Gate, creating handholds of ice and freezing my palms and feet to them as I climbed down.
At least there was some benefit to the fact that I was still barefoot.
Balar Shan was built into the cliff itself.
Where I’d been kept, in the bathhouse, was on the other side of the palace where it met the plain.
But here, it dropped down several more levels until it met the frigid, dark blue-green waters of the Northern Fate.
Dark God help me, I hoped that we did not have to go below the level of the water.
My ice power was water-bound. But if I were surrounded by that swirling cold, I did not know if I would be powerful enough to save myself, let alone my familiar.
Garrick could fend for himself.
He’d probably shift into a raven before he hit the water and fly away.
Not that he’d get far, with the Lifebind still inked clearly on the inside of both of our wrists. The shortened sleeves of my shift made ignoring it impossible, and I’d caught a glimpse of his as he gave me his hand to lower me down.
Maybe the Dark God knew of a way to dissolve it.
I waited for him to invade my mind. But there was no shiver of cold or dark presence waiting in the wings of my consciousness.
But Isanara was there, her voice as bright as her viridian eyes in my memory.
You are close, she said, drawing out the last syllable as if savoring it.
I understood the sentiment. The closer I got to her, the more the anticipation built. Having the connection restored between our minds had dulled the ache inside of me, but I would not fully be able to breathe until I saw her with my own eyes.
I forced myself to focus on putting one foot after another, channeling my power into creating the next handhold, then a foothold, while avoiding looking down to the churning water as much as I could. Garrick outpaced me easily, and when his hand closed around my calf, relief came with it.
We met another wall of ice, but I melted it as easily as the first. I even let him put his arm around my waist and haul me the last few feet. There must have been some vestiges of trust left, because I knew he would not drop me.
The Lifebind. That’s all it was. If I died, he died. The calculation was painfully simple and torturously free of emotion.
Rough stone tore at the soles of my feet as I tried to find my footing.
This level was nothing like the colored stone and intricate beauty of the levels above.
The bathhouse had been an abandoned luxury, coopted into use as a prison cell for a witch.
The stone room where we stood was built for one thing only—torture and confinement.
Two things, then, inextricable though they were.
The stones were the deep brown color of dried blood.
Whether that color was natural or acquired, I was thankful that even my senses were not able to detect the source.
They formed a circular cell. A half-circle, really, bisected through the middle by the wall of ice I’d melted.
Except that on the other side, the floor dropped away entirely, down to the icy sea.
I flattened my back against the wall. Regardless of the origin of its color, it felt safer than lingering near the ledge. But as I worked my way around…
My head whipped to Garrick. “Where is the door?”
Garrick’s mouth flattened into a line. “There is no need for a door. Prisoners sentenced to these cells can choose to starve to death or drown themselves in the Northern Death.”
A violent shiver gripped my spine, shaking my entire body. What power would a witch who suffered such a death have upon her resurrection?
A wave crashed violently against the stone below us, sending a spray of cold water over the floor of the cell. Without thinking, I froze the droplets so that they were little pebbles by the time they made contact with the stone. Ice, I could handle. But that endless darkness of the sea…
“Can you tell which direction she is?”
It took me too long to realize that Garrick was speaking to me. There was no one else, but my mind was swimming in the sea, swirling downward.
My lips parted. I wasn’t sure, but I did not want to say so.
I knew I was closer to her than before, but not in a way that I could quantify or describe.
At first, the joy of having our mental connection restored had subsumed everything else.
And now… I tried to focus, but the crashing waves drove at my senses.
I flattened myself against the wall, but the tug of the rough stone on my skin pulled at the edges of my mind, refusing to let me form a clear thought.
A warm hand cupped my elbow.
“Close your eyes. You can do this,” Garrick said. “I’ve got you.”
He offered comfort and calm when he had been the one to steal it from me. He’d tricked me into loving him, made me dependent upon him, and still he touched me like he was entitled to it… as if his touch could calm me, the same way it had in the emotional tempest of the Sacrifice Gate.
My mind rebelled, lashing at the thought, careening toward chaos, even as my power started to relax.
A soft hum spread through my body, a vibration so subtle the word almost did not fit.
Damn it all, but it worked. The roar of the ocean faded away.
The scrape of the stone was eclipsed by the warmth of Garrick’s touch. My mind began to clear.
I could accept it—not forever, just for now, just long enough to let me center my mind and find Isanara. I would never forgive Garrick. But I could endure him, for my familiar.
I’d felt Isanara’s absence as an ache that began in my chest and then flooded the rest of my body.
But I always heard her voice in my head.
I tried to picture darkness, but that did not feel right.
Isanara was not darkness; she was light.
The image of the snowy forest where I’d first encountered her formed in my mind.
It had been deserted… then there was the flash of an iridescent tail, the graceful flair of a lavender wing.
Cold air assaulted my lungs as I gasped, my eyes flying open.
“She is there.” I swallowed, tipping my head back to indicate the wall I’d pressed myself against. “At the center of the spiral.”
Garrick kept his hand around my arm for another beat of his heart. I felt it between us. A part of me even wanted it. I was angry. So angry. But I was also alone, and I’d felt what it was to not be lonely anymore, and my soul wanted to remember.
Then he stepped away, close enough to the edge that my breath stuttered. The cold air rushed into the space between us. I told myself that the cold did not bother me.
I lifted a hand and pressed it against the stone, assessing. “There is no moisture in this. I cannot shatter it,” I said.
Garrick shook his head. A strand of silver hair had blown free of the knot he tied at the back of his head. It highlighted the movement as he worked his jaw.
“I could fly around the perimeter, but we will find the same thing,” he said.
He had to have a plan; he would not have led me this far without one.
Garrick the Red had not claimed a thousand dangerous bounties by making rash decisions.
But the delay told me that he did not like the plan he had in his mind, and he was searching for another. But found none.
He tugged the greatsword from his belt, nudged me to the side, and drove it into one of the mortared junctures of the stone wall with inhuman force.
The entire wall quaked, but it held. Garrick heaved back, pulling the sword from the stone, chose an adjacent juncture, and drove it in again.
Again and again and again. It was hard, physically punishing work.
Garrick did not pause to wipe his brow, where sweat rolled down from his temples despite the dropping temperature of the surrounding night.
This was taking too long.
Do your guards show any signs of agitation? As soon as they realized I’d escaped, my destination would be obvious. And whoever they sent would have a more direct route than Garrick and I did.
One of them is snoring, Isanara shot back.
Can you hear this unholy racket?
I am a dragon.
That is not an answer.
I know that you are coming. I will be ready.
Before I could ask her what that meant, Garrick sheathed his sword and heaved his shoulder against the wall.
The stones groaned, and for a moment I thought all his effort had been for nothing.
Then the wall gave, and the entire structure above and around us shook.
More stones fell down from overhead, knocked loose by Garrick’s assault.
Pebbles and gritty bits of mortar rained down from the floor above our heads.
My pulse stuttered. Garrick may have just destroyed the structural integrity of this entire section of the castle.
We had to get to Isanara now.
Garrick kicked a path through the felled stones. “There is no way that will go unnoticed.”
We were out of time.
I clambered through the opening he made, finding myself in another curved corridor, a mirror of the ones above, but constructed of the same dried-blood stone as the cell we’d just climbed out of.
“The fastest path to the center,” I demanded. Garrick did not argue. He took off at a run, and I pounded after him. I did not feel the pain of my feet as they took the impact of my weight against the rough stone floor. My mind could not process the agony of gasping for breath.
Isanara. Isanara. Isanara. Her name pounded through me. Maybe she heard it. I could not hear anything over the roar inside my own head.