Chapter 10 #3
Garrick’s shoulders relaxed the tiniest bit, relief hiding behind his mask. He might show his emotions to me, but the Dark God did not get that vulnerability. I wondered if his mind was safe, or if all of us were subject to having our thoughts rifled through like a sheaf of paper.
“Just you get that privilege,” the Dark God crooned.
Garrick’s shoulders tensed again, his gaze jerking from me to the Dark God and back again. I was not going to be here long enough to bother explaining the nature of our connection. I tugged on Isanara’s spike.
“Let’s go,” I said aloud, so no one would have any confusion.
I did not know the Dark God—who or even what he truly was.
A god, yes, but how did his power work? Or would he classify it as magic?
Power was bestowed; magic was born. The gods were the source of both.
They were the ones who’d cursed Velora for the fae’s greedy use of magic, and, as a consequence, life drained from the land and the witch’s power with it.
Magic and power both, distinct but intertwined, and both dying.
The Dark God had ripped me away to his dark realm, spoken into my mind, hidden in shadow, and appeared in physical form. It was unlike any power or magic that I knew how to characterize.
That was a problem for my afterlife, I reminded myself. I did not need to know him. And the way he pursed his lips—the slight moue that might suggest amusement or annoyance or something else—I did not care about that, either.
I tunneled into my power, calling it to the surface, ready to form a staircase or even a slippery ramp as long as it would get me out of Balar Shan. Isanara flexed her wings at my side, readying to take flight.
The Dark God did not release me so easily. He stepped closer, past Garrick, who gripped his sword ever tighter, until he was with us, the three of us forming a strange semi-circle.
But he spoke to me. “There is a talisman here, hidden in the palace. It will change the balance of power in Velora forever.”
Damn him. Damn him straight back to his freezing, eternal hell.
He had been in my mind, and he knew exactly where to apply pressure in order to make me pause.
A talisman—was that what Alize had been alluding to when she questioned Maura’s motivations for capturing me?
Maura was more than capable of creating a talisman on her own.
She did not need the fae king. But a talisman could upset the balance of power between the witches and the fae, if it were powerful enough.
What would such a thing take… and how could Maura hope to get away with it right under the fae king’s nose?
“He is manipulating you,” Garrick said, disrupting the maelstrom of thoughts racing through my mind.
How dare he. “And you have been so fucking honest?”
The Dark God chuckled. Fuck me. I was surrounded by arrogant, self-serving males.
I rounded on the godlier of the two. “Why? Why would Maura create a talisman?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Garrick warned, distinctly not looking at me as he said it.
“You must be the one to answer that question,” the Dark God said, ignoring Garrick’s entreaty. “Stay, Koryn. You have thought about it, I know. You are more torn than you let on.”
Garrick still did not look at me, his gaze fixed on the other end of the dungeon corridor. But that did not stop him from arguing back. “These cryptic answers are tricks.”
If I had any faith left in the gods, I’d have appealed to one of them to save me from these infuriating men. Except that both of them made valid points, and neither of them could be trusted.
The Dark God must have heard my thoughts. He stepped closer, putting himself between me and the exit. Isanara snarled at my side, but he was undeterred.
“Push past the fear. Do not run.” The Dark God slid his fingertips along my shoulder, lifting the tangled curtain of my hair away from my neck.
He’d done this before, pressed a kiss there.
My hands curled into fists, anticipating the touch, wanting to jerk away but somehow unable to…
but it did not come. Just the brush of his words, his warm breath against my chilled skin.
“Do not be afraid to become the witch I know you can be.”
A shiver snaked down my spine. I pressed my eyes closed.
“Will she hurt people?” I asked.
“You already know the answer to that.”
I did.
Garrick’s sigh filled the space. “Please, Koryn. Go. If not for your own sake, then for hers.” I opened my eyes in time to see him lift his sword to indicate my familiar.
Isanara flared her wings wide, blocking out the opening and the night sky entirely. She swiveled her head from side to side, spikes rising on her back as she leaned in a foot from his face and hissed.
My thoughts, precisely, I agreed.
I like him less now than I did before, Isanara huffed.
I hate him, I sympathized.
No, you do not.
I ignored that statement.
What would you have me do? More than anyone, more than my Lifebind or my bargained, mind-speaking god, Isanara knew my soul.
I chose you for your heart, she said in that too-mature voice that reminded me that, despite her age, she was the last dragon in Velora, and an orphan, like myself.
My heart is dead, I reminded her.
She rolled her citrine eyes, something a dragon should not have been capable of. And I thought adolescents were the ones who lived with fantasies in their heads.
You think I should stay.
She tilted her head, her lavender scales shifting to emerald in the moonlight. I have every confidence you will make the right decision.
I rolled my shoulders, shaking off the Dark God and stepping closer to my dragon.
“I won’t do this for nothing,” I said.
A strangled sound tore from Garrick’s throat.
“Another bargain?” The Dark God smiled.
Garrick lowered his sword, the coming threat forgotten, his eyes so intense I had to look away. “Koryn—”
“Not a bargain. A promise,” I corrected the Dark God. “You burdened me with this power. You will teach me how to control it. You will stay, here in Balar Shan, and help me.”
I felt a keening in my soul that I was not sure belonged to me. I refused to look at Garrick.
“A promise, then,” the Dark God agreed. He did not argue. That should have warned me off—I was doing what he wanted, too easily. But I did not have time to debate any longer. I did not need my sharpened witch senses to know that we had mere seconds before the fae guards were upon us.
“They are coming. This is your last chance.” Please.
The word was there in the clover green and cerulean blue of his eyes, glowing together to a bright turquoise.
It was in the tick in his jaw, the tension that lined every muscle as he begged me with his eyes while steeling his body for battle.
His pain was fierce. But it was not enough to make me forget my own, or his part in it.
I pushed past the agony in his eyes. Fear had centered my entire existence for four hundred years. Fear that my family did not love me. Fear that I was less than my sister witches. I was still afraid. But I could make a decision in spite of that fear.
The Dark God’s blue-black eyes sparkled. He’d taken physical form, but he was still in my mind. He knew my decision before I said it.
“Let them come.”