Chapter 13
KORYN
“Good luck,” Garrick’s brother said over his shoulder as he strode past me. The malice shone through despite his grin.
So it began.
There was no temple, but this was a trial nonetheless. The Court of Lies could kill me just as easily as one of the Seven Gates.
Without the curse, I might have grown up to be a courtier. Now I was a witch, and I’d have to learn anyway. What pride my father would have felt. My stomach tried to heave.
Isanara stayed by my side, Garrick just behind my right shoulder. I hated that the comfort they gave me was nearly equal. Garrick’s presence should make me feel ill. But my body had decided to ignore that reality.
The upward spiral floor leveled out. Edmund braced his palms on a set of ornate filigree doors and shoved them open. My mouth fell open.
My father had dubbed one of the rooms in our house as his presence chamber.
There he received politicians, traders, and social callers.
Every person who came through that room was there for a purpose—to raise my father’s social standing, or their own.
But this was not even comparable to my father’s richly appointed room of dark velvet and tapestries woven with golden thread.
The red brick floors gleamed despite the hundreds of feet that must traverse them every day. There were at least that many people crowded around the dais. Tall, angular windows alternating with painted spiral columns supported the domed roofing that soared overhead.
I’d seen drawings of the exterior of Balar Shan, etched in books in my father’s library when I was young. Before. But I’d been unconscious when they brought me here.
I reached for Isanara.
It is beautiful, I admitted where only she could hear me.
It is a facade, she countered. Her head whipped from side to side, taking in the crowd of fae courtiers. We were surrounded on all sides by opulently dressed fae nobles. So much velvet. I’d imagined more silk. My ice dagger would cut through either.
I’d built a block of ice in my chest to protect myself from feeling. But the hatred I felt for these people threatened to crack it. They were warm, well-dressed, and safe. While the rest of the continent—my family, my Kyna and Kyrelle—suffered for their hubris.
There, at the center of the glorious domed presence chamber, was the man who oversaw it all. The fae king.
Garrick’s father.
I would not allow sympathy any space in my mind or body.
Isanara wove between my legs as we closed the distance between threshold and throne, drawn by a nearly magnetic force.
It was so strong, I found myself checking my own body.
Was the king compelling me, as he’d done outside of the Memory Gate?
But the determined footsteps were my own. I’d chosen to stay.
And though he was intimidating, staring us down from the gilt throne on its elevated dais at the center of the ornate room, I was not afraid of him.
The worst things had already happened to me. My family was dead. So was I. My trust betrayed by the man I’d been foolish enough to care for. I had Isanara at my side, and Kyrelle was far from the Seven Gates and Balar Shan, an inconsequential human.
What else could Maura and the king do to me?
The head witch of the Midnight Coven stood on the second step of the dais, one below what must be the royal family, but above the heads of the sea of fae courtiers.
The power in my veins protested at the implication.
A witch was below no one; she answered to none but her coven and the Dark God himself.
Who, consequently—conveniently—had made himself scarce.
Good. I needed fewer voices in my head, not more.
Edmund stopped at the edge of the dais, sweeping an elegant bow to his father and the woman seated at his side. There were too many familiar faces here for my comfort. I could not trust a single one of them.
There was the woman whom Garrick had sent away and called ‘Your Majesty,’ the fae queen.
She bore no resemblance to either Alize, seated beside her father, with her golden features, nor Edmund, with his darker ones.
The hauntingly beautiful fae woman with auburn hair who’d stood over me in the baths was there on the dais as well, her features tight and unmistakably angry.
She was either like me and struggled to dissemble—or she did not care that her rage was there for everyone to see. But who was she?
Below Maura were Elodie and Aurienna, all that remained of our fractured coven. A coven was most powerful at its full five. Now they were down to three, and still they’d managed to capture me and my familiar.
Maybe this was a mistake. I was not powerful enough.
The skin at the nape of my neck tingled. I stilled the impulse to roll my shoulders. I’d always struggled to control and contain my emotions. But I would not give these monsters any more pieces of me than was absolutely necessary.
The guards who’d escorted us filed in, surrounding the throne in a loose circle as we reached the edge of the dais.
A small, dark-haired woman sat on the lowest step, her legs folded neatly beneath her and her eyes averted.
A distant relation, maybe, and not my concern.
Not with the amount of power and magic centered around that dais.
Isanara’s tail curled around my bare calf. Which one put you in that dungeon?
I was not conscious, she admitted. Her words simmered between us. Fresh rage hardened the block of icy determination in my chest.
“Your prisoners, Majesty,” Edmund said as he straightened.
I knew that every eye was on me and my familiar. I was not so special, I reminded myself. But with Isanara at my side… she was the last dragon in all of Velora, and she’d chosen me.
And I chose well, she smarted in my mind.
Dark God, help me.
One of her spikes dragged across my calf. At an angle, so it did not cut. But an effective reminder of her power, nonetheless. I’ve had enough of him for today.
I bit back a laugh—absurd, given my—our—current situation.
The fae king pushed to his feet. “You bow before royalty, witch.”
Power flooded my veins, just as it had done when Edmund used the word. It shouldn’t bother me so much. Garrick was nothing to me now, and I certainly did not want to hear my name from the cursed king’s lips.
“Witches bow before no one,” I said, lifting my chin.
Garrick exhaled behind me. He was close enough that I felt the air move, sensed the stiffness of his bow. Maybe that was the Lifebind. The fucking Lifebind that still tethered me to him against my will, even more so than when it first appeared after the Mercy Gate.
I waited for the king to retaliate. But his mouth curved instead, halfway between the smirk I’d adored on Garrick’s face and the rueful grin that was resident on Edmund’s. He threw his attention to Maura.
“She is not as compliant as you described,” he said. He stepped to the edge of the dais but did not descend.
Of the royal children, Alize and Edmund, Garrick resembled the king the most. They had the same pale, silvery hair and bright blue-green eyes.
The king wore a thick beard, while Garrick’s face always carried a light scruff.
The height, the impossible breadth of their shoulders…
how had I ever mistaken Garrick for human?
The clearest physical difference was the shape of their ears.
The fae king wore no crown. The lack of it emphasized the pointed tips of his ears where they stood out from his close-cropped hair.
I did not need to look behind me to remember the smooth curve of Garrick’s. I’d licked them more than once.
“I do not take well to being imprisoned in an abandoned bathhouse,” I said back.
An abandoned bathhouse? They did not even do you the honor of a proper dungeon? Isanara said with adolescent outrage.
I mentally rolled my eyes. Salt did the job just fine.
Until I’d outsmarted the clever spell.
Only to find Edmund—and then this tableau—waiting. Which meant Maura had known I would find my way out. Or that Garrick would come for me.
As if summoned by the thought, Garrick stepped closer to my side. My damned, stupid, dead heart strained against the block of ice I’d built around it.
Maura lifted her head, dark curls skimming her chin as she fixed her gaze upon me. There was the familiar reprove. My stomach lurched. Ice, I reminded myself. Cold. Frost.
“I told you that she is resourceful, despite her occasional intransigence,” Maura said, shrugging her shoulders. Dismissive. Performative.
The king’s half-smile flattened. “She cut a hole in my castle.” And I’d happily let Garrick drive his sword into this monstrosity again and again until the fae capital came crumbling down. If it took down Maura and the king with it, all the better.
If only they were that easy to kill.
But now was the time for words, not actions.
“I was not trying to escape,” I said.
A dark chuckle filled my consciousness, rife with triumph. I pushed on.
“I sought my familiar.” I reached for Isanara, wrapping my hand around the base of one of her dangerously sharp spikes once more.
I’d stewed for days in that salt cell, and a part of me had known that it would come to this, even as the other part had dreamed of freedom.
I knew what to say next. “No one can fault me for that. Not even the Dark God himself.”
A spark danced between Maura’s fingertips. She had absolute control of her power. This was a threat. “You do not have to invoke the Covenants to me, Koryn. I was the one who taught them to you.”
She waited, her deep black eyes sparkling with gold and challenge, waiting for me to lose control like I had hundreds of times before. A flick of my hand, a thought, and my frost would answer. I curled my hands into fists.
Maura dismissed me from her gaze as easily as she’d held it, bowing her head to the king.