Chapter 13 #2
“I do not think all of these guards are necessary. Koryn has been sufficiently reminded of her place.” And who she answers to, Maura’s eyes finished. “Allegiance to coven. It is one of our sacred covenants.”
There were three, and they were meant to be disclosed to no one.
Hadn’t Maura told me so herself? The depth of her betrayal made my fingertips tingle.
Yet Aurienna and Elodie stood there behind her at the foot of the dais, stone-faced.
I doubted that Elodie had any emotions of her own.
She’d shifted her face so many times, I’d always suspected that she’d lost pieces of herself along the way.
But Aurienna had warned me in the forest…
The fae king made a noise low in his throat. “You expect me to let a rogue witch and her dragon roam Balar Shan at their leisure?”
That was what Maura wanted?
It made absolutely no sense. Why capture me? Why send me through the gates at all? Did Maura think I was so scared and subservient that I would accept her dictates without a single question?
Worse… had I been?
“The dragon is an unforeseen complication,” Maura allowed.
I will complicate—
Keep your fangs where they are, I cut off Isanara.
They’d planned on Garrick becoming my Lifebind, but they hadn’t known about Isanara. Maybe that was why they’d fetched me from the gates early. No familiar had ever chosen a witch in the Midnight Coven. Did her presence give Maura some sort of leverage in her negotiations with the king?
I am not an object to be leveraged, Isanara hissed.
If anyone tries to touch you, eat them.
She snapped her jaws in Maura’s direction. I will learn to like the taste of humans.
Maura was not human. It was hard to believe she ever had been.
Though as she dipped her head to the fae king for the second time in as many minutes, it was hard to believe her a head witch, either. “A witch at your mercy must answer three questions,” she said. “It is a little-known truth. I will use it to prove her allegiance.”
If she asked about the Dark God, I was dead. If she asked about my reasons for staying in Balar Shan. If—
Garrick’s thumb skated over the back of my arm. My power fucking sang in response. I had not even noticed the whorls of ice that appeared faintly on my skin.
“Aurienna.” Maura motioned my sister witch forward.
Surrounded as I was, there was no question that I was at their mercy. But in this choice, Maura had unknowingly given me a possibility.
Aurienna moved to stand before me, keeping her head lowered as she did. She did not need sight. Like every witch, her other senses served her in abundance. I inhaled as quietly as I could, trying not to draw attention to myself even as every single eye in the crowded throne room turned to me.
“Koryn,” Aurienna said. She lifted one hand and tucked back an unruly strand of red hair behind her shoulder. She still did not look me in the eye, not with Maura and the entire fae court looking on. But I took the chance.
“Auri,” I said, uttering the name she’d told me she preferred.
She gave no sign of recognition. But I did not expect her to. Aurienna cleared her throat and then spoke, her voice loud and musical and clear.
“Will you attempt to leave Balar Shan without your head witch?”
She could have said without your head witch’s consent. She could have added in the fae king. But she phrased it so carefully that I could honestly answer—
“No.”
Auri was still my friend. My sister, she’d proclaimed that night in the forest before the Memory Gate. I could not bring myself to give her that title, not when it had only brought death and doom on those who’d previously held it.
“Do you intend to abide by the witch covenants while you are here in Balar Shan?”
Intend. That word changed everything. Discovering what Maura was up to was not the same as intending to break my allegiance to the coven, nor the other two covenants.
“I do,” I answered honestly again.
On the dais, someone scoffed. A woman. But I kept my attention firmly on Auri.
“Will you harm anyone at Balar Shan?”
She’d saved this question for last, so that there could be no follow-ups.
There was no way I would leave this palace without harming someone.
Not when my power swam in icy rivers through my veins, eager to make the fae pay for what they had done.
But it was the last question, and I thought I could answer it.
“I will harm anyone who attempts to separate me from my familiar.”
It was a clever dodge. But if what I’d heard about the Court of Lies was true, this place may thrive on words and deception, but they were no strangers to violence.
Auri did not linger. She retreated immediately to Maura’s side, giving every pretense of a subservient coven witch. The corners of Maura’s lips lifted into a triumphant smile as she turned to face the king.
But before he could speak, the auburn-haired fae woman surged forward, brushing past Alize and coming to stand at the king’s side.
“You cannot be satisfied with that, Father,” she demanded, gesticulating with her hand in a motion of disbelief. There was no doubt in my mind where the scoff had come from.
The king caught her wrist and twisted it sharply.
“Hold your tongue, Margeaux,” the King said. He did not release her as he addressed Maura. “The matter is settled. She is paroled into the Duke of Sein Talam’s custody.”
The other woman recoiled when the king released her, catching herself before she stumbled back. Alize made no attempt to steady or catch her sister. Another sister—a bastard like Garrick? But she stood on the dais, while Garrick was with me at the bottom of it.
It was not his presence that gave me the temerity to ask. It was Isanara, curling around my legs once again. It was the absurdity of the entire situation—me in nothing more than a tattered shift, dirty and barefoot, with the opulent fae court arrayed around me.
Or maybe it was the darkness that lingered at the edge of my mind, igniting my darker, more dangerous desires.
“Do I get to ask questions?” I asked.
The room around me stilled. The king opened his mouth, temper flaring in his too-familiar cerulean and clover green eyes, but my own were fixed on Maura. He made a sound low in his throat, a gruff expression of interest.
“Your success in the Gates has made you bold.” The gold in Maura’s black eyes glinted with disapproval. “Maybe you will finally be something other than a disappointment.”
I could pretend to be wounded by her words. Fuck—I hated it, but I was wounded. Even after everything she’d done to me, there was still a part of me that craved Maura’s approval. I wanted to freeze that part until it was dead. But I needed it now.
My hands started to shake. I let them.
I let that old weakness and vulnerability that had plagued me for so long—that had marked me as less in her eyes—show through. If I could not overcome it, then at least I could use it.
She would not answer me honestly—whether we were alone or in a throne room full of dubious fae allies. But I wanted to hear what she’d say, because as much as I hated it, I could not ignore the voices in the back of my head. Alize. The Dark God. Maybe even my own.
Maura was playing at honesty. She pretended to be open with the fae king, to let him in on the secrets of our kind.
He couldn’t be stupid enough to fall for it, and neither was I.
But her answer was another piece in the delicate balance that I would have to strike if I were to survive Balar Shan and stop Maura.
Stop her from doing… what?
Fuck me. I did not even know. Creating a talisman? I did not know to what end she acted. Power was the only thing that made sense. But I’d learned many harsh lessons in my brief human life, and one of them was that power was never enough. Once you had a taste, you always wanted more.
Maura had been the last head witch on a dying continent. If she’d allied herself with the fae king, the bitterest enemy of the witches, then she had a purpose… and she was too cunning to let any one person see the whole of it.
I pushed on. “I did as you asked. I passed through the first five of the Seven Gates. Why have you taken me from them when I am so close to completing my quest, freeing Velora, and regaining my place of sacred sisterhood?”
“You are so eager to face your death in the Seven Gates?” Maura tipped her head to the side as she asked.
I was not eager at all. The Dark God awaited me after the second death. Garrick was here. There was no escape in either reality.
But Maura was not waiting for an answer, just like she was not going to truly give one to me.
“You will get your chance to prove your worth, Koryn,” she said. It was a promise—and the only explanation I would get.
Maura turned her back on me, on the rest of the court, and bowed her head to the fae king again.
The third time since I’d entered the throne room.
I’d marked every instance. They left together, the courtiers opening a path to a door that had been obscured by the crowd.
The rest of the royal family—Alize, Edmund, the other sister, and the queen—remained on the dais.
A large, warm, too familiar hand closed around my upper arm.
“We must go now, Koryn,” Garrick whispered into my ear.
My brain’s instinct was to jerk away. My body’s instinct was to lean into him.
But my familiar turned immediately to go with him, and that was what ultimately guided my feet.
The king had granted me a limited freedom within Balar Shan, but under the supervision of the Duke of Sein Talam.
From the urgent press of Garrick’s hand, still on my arm, that could not be a good thing.
Whatever game Maura was playing, it was dangerous. Not just to me, but to Isanara as well. Maura had not said it, but if she’d gone to the trouble of separating us, that told me she was not sure of the amount of power Isanara might give me.
Garrick guided me out of the throne room as the path created by the courtiers began to close.
The Dark God had manipulated me; Garrick was correct about that.
But I’d allowed it because I could see the truth of what he said, and what Alize had pointed out.
Power was too easy an excuse. It would take significant expenditures of power to create the talisman the Dark God had suggested.
If Maura was truly making one, there was a reason beyond Velora and lifting the curse.
Down the spiral, once, twice.
And I had a whole new group of supplicants to contend with. The fae royal family and my own coven were now players in this dangerous game in which my allies were also enemies, and I did not know the rules.
The icy block in my chest thickened as the frost flooded my veins. I had to keep control of myself. There was no going back now. I had to keep a hold on my emotions, frozen in my chest. Dead, just like my heart.
We’d just started the third descent when Garrick pulled me into one of the radiating, linear corridors. There were doors on either side and intricate tile and brick murals on the walls.
“Where are we? Is this my new cell? Where you surrender me to the Duke of Sein Talam?” Whoever the fuck that was.
Garrick released my arm. The look of loss on his face as he did angered me. He was not allowed to feel broken or bereft. He was the one who’d hurt me.
“I am the Duke of Sein Talam,” Garrick said. “And this,” he leaned past me to open the door, “is my bedroom.”