Chapter 18
KORYN
I’d let that woman die.
Garrick could have saved her. He’d offered to do it—to bring down the wrath of the fae court.
Surely whatever Maura was up to, it was with the king’s approval.
But… maybe not. Garrick had not felt the pull of power.
Power called to power. Magic to magic. But they were separate, and it was just possible that Maura had conducted that execution right under the fae king’s nose, without his knowledge.
To murder a fae subject right at the center of fae magic, weak though it might be, seemed bold even for Maura.
I let her die.
Maura, Elodie, and Auri were all party to it. I was just as responsible as if I’d stood on my place at one of the points on that pentagram. Just like I was responsible for the one that was always unoccupied, the fifth point, the one where McKean had once stood—before I killed her to save Kyrelle.
Five completed a coven. We were as broken as the humans, and it was because of me.
Garrick had stood at my side and done what I wanted. He would have stopped it. He let it happen. But he was not complicit, not like I was. His only crime at that moment was trusting in me to make the right decision.
I did not deserve that kind of trust.
I stumbled back to Garrick’s room. Everyone once in a while, his hand landed on my shoulder to steer me one way or the other. I’d been too incoherent to mark the way myself. Dark God spare me, I was as useless as a child.
Damn it all.
I couldn’t even break the habit of calling on the man—the god—who was my tormentor, for help.
Garrick followed me through the door. I walked to the foot of the bed, then to the fireplace, then back again.
I’d told Garrick the truth. Even after everything that had passed between us, his betrayal, I could not bring myself to lie to him.
The Dark God had not told me anything. He’d insisted I unleash my power without restraint.
As if restraining it was something I could even do competently.
With Tomin’s help and a singular focus, I could sometimes push back the tide of frost and ice when it started to overwhelm me.
And then the Dark God asked me to give up that fragile control—to him? Not likely.
That was all Garrick had missed before walking in.
A whole lot of nothing.
How was I supposed to defeat Maura when I couldn’t even control my own power?
Maura had tortured that poor fae woman, and I’d done what? Watched? Listened? Cried? All for some greater good that I was incapable of actually conceiving?
I reached the window, threw it open. The white sky was empty. No Isanara. I turned and paced to the other side of the room. I stumbled on the hearthrug. Cursed under my breath.
Witches created talismans. We inscribed them, consecrated them, and then finally charged them with power.
What they did from there—protect, hide, weaken—depending on the runes and spells used.
Without any one of the steps, they were just useless objects.
But that fae woman wasn’t a witch. None of that torture had anything to do with a talisman.
So what was Maura doing? Had the Dark God lied to me about the talisman to keep me in Balar Shan?
Why?
The word echoed around in my head. I was at the window again. Turn. Pace. There was the fireplace. Already? Damn, this room was too fucking small.
I was vaguely aware of Garrick, standing just inside the closed door of the bedroom, watching me silently.
Garrick, who’d nursed me back to health after the Devotion Gate.
Garrick, who’d betrayed me. He’d reminded me why I could never trust again.
The ice block in my chest that I’d built to protect myself was spreading throughout my body, threatening my ability to function.
If I couldn’t feel anything, then it was easier to accept what I’d just done.
I was not good, despite all of my resistance to witch ways.
A good person would not have let that woman die.
I just wanted to escape, even if only for a moment.
The thought wasn’t even formed enough to second-guess. All I had left were instincts, and those drove me straight into his arms.
Garrick caught me against him, absorbing the force of my body colliding with his easily. He was so wide, so strong, and so thick that even I was able to lose myself in him. It was one of a million things that made him disastrously perfect.
His mouth found mine, or I found his… I did not need to know. With his tongue curling around mine, his spicy taste flooding my senses, I could just exist. My mind was blissfully filled with sensation instead of thought.
I wore none of the thick layers that usually guarded me from Velora.
No leather or wool. Only the thin linen shift and the crushed velvet gown, and the friction of them against my skin was so sweet.
My nipples hardened as the buttons of Garrick’s surcoat brushed against them through the thin fabric.
Garrick responded to my moan, dragging his tongue from the corner of my mouth down over my throat, his hands on my breasts making no secret of his destination.
It couldn’t be comfortable, bending like that to reach my breasts, the height discrepancy between us so vast. But his sound of appreciation vibrated against my tender skin, sending tremor after tremor straight between my legs.
His tongue drew circles on my skin just above the neckline of the gown.
I arched, desperate for the flimsy fabric to be gone.
I was so transfixed that I did not even notice the hand he’d slid between my legs until he cupped me through my gown.
I could suddenly feel every fold in the soft fabric of my shift, and every place where his fingertips teased my entrance through the barriers of fabric.
I tugged on his shoulder. The bed was only a few steps behind us.
I knew the dimensions by heart thanks to my pacing.
I wanted more than Garrick’s fingers. I needed his cock buried inside me.
I needed the fabric gone. Only my cunt clutching around him and the heat of his breath on my shoulder as he buried his face in my neck would be enough.
Already the heat was building between us. It wasn’t enough to melt the block of ice in my chest. This was physical heat. Sweat drenched us both, making our exposed skin slick and salty. Even the thin layers I wore were nearly unbearable. I had to get out of my clothes, or I was going to burn alive.
Garrick used his teeth to tug down the neckline of my gown, his insistent mouth seeking my breast. I arched again to give him access. He nudged my breast from my gown, closed his lips around my nipple, and the world shifted into brilliant golds and oranges, warm and luxurious as flame.
An actual flame.
I wasn’t fantasizing about being consumed by the flames of desire. The room was on fire. We were going to burn alive for real.
“What—Koryn, stop!” Garrick grabbed for my arm, realizing the danger less than a second after his mouth left my body.
But there was no need. My power answered my call without hesitation, the ice in my veins melting to form water that flowed from my fingers, over the burning hearthrug, extinguishing the wingback chair nearest the fireplace that had caught flame.
I was tired, mentally and physically exhausted from the torture I’d witnessed.
My power was tied to my coven; it should have been affected by that extreme expenditure in the bowels of the castle.
But the frost and ice inside of me seemed to take on a life of its own, to almost scoff.
I had not survived so much to be felled by an errant spark from an improperly tended hearth.
The flames hissed out, leaving behind clouds of smoke and steam. Garrick opened the window. My skin pebbled in response to the rush of cold air. My left breast was still exposed.
As the air around us cleared, the extent of the damage became visible. The hearthrug was mostly ash. So much for Garrick’s bed. The chair that might have been his second choice wasn’t much better.
Third choice, my mind amended. If he could choose, Garrick would be in the bed with me. Maybe that was where he belonged.
Trying to keep space between us was a mistake. My body craved his, and fighting against that pull was a waste of energy. I could sate this physical need without giving in to the emotional torrent. I would use it to stave off that emotional torrent.
Garrick crouched beside the hearth, using one of the fire irons to poke around in the heap of wet logs and at the throat of the chimney itself.
“The chimney needs to be swept. The buildup must have ignited and caused the sparks that caught on the rug,” he said.
He laid the poker neatly against the brick edge of the fireplace as he stood.
“This room has been unoccupied for almost twenty years. We will probably find that the chimney is not the only thing in disrepair.”
The immediate danger had passed, then. No more than a stupid accident and a distraction. Another distraction, my mind amended.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, the posts rising up on either side of me. “Come here.”
Garrick’s jaw ticked. For a moment, his expression was unreadable.
That mask he wore for everyone else was so familiar that taking it off was a choice, not the default.
As he watched, I slid my hand down to cup my breast. Putting out the fire had not extinguished the need within me.
My body still ached for release and the oblivion it would bring.
Indecision played across his face. He wanted to talk, to build upon the dangerous closeness of those moments where he’d held my hand and shared his strength and calm. But that was not what I wanted. I wanted to forget.
As I rolled my nipple between my fingertips, I spread my legs. Garrick was powerless against the invitation.
“Koryn,” he exhaled as he sank to his knees before me. His hands bracketed my hips, holding me in place as he buried his mouth between my breasts and breathed me in.
I rocked against him, desperate for the release that was already so close.
The heat of the fire was gone, leaving only our bodies against the cold air from the open window.
My fingers went to work on the buttons of his surcoat.
They shook, but I managed, and then my hands were surging beneath the fabric, seeking out the warmth of his skin underneath.
I dragged my fingers along the ridges of his muscles, savoring his strength. He could take me, carry me, consume me.
“Witch,” he groaned.
I stiffened. Damn it all, I could not help it. That word had been hurled at me hundreds of times in hate, but from Garrick’s lips it was too intimate.
Garrick noticed. He was too attuned to my body—the exact reason I’d sought refuge in his arms. He rocked back, resting his weight on his heels. “What is it?”
My mouth opened to lie to him, but no words came out.
Damn my conscience and this insistent part of me that refused to die.
I was a witch. The words should have come easily.
I should have been able to take what I wanted from him and be done with it.
But I could not hurt him the way he’d hurt me.
He’d deceived me to save his mother. I was doing this to save myself.
I searched for the words and came up with only the crudest version of the truth. “I want you in this bed with me.”
Garrick did not hide the hurt on his face. He’d promised me honesty, and it was there in the lines around his mouth and the way his silvery brows contracted together. His pain should not hurt me. It could not hurt me.
Ice. I was frost and ice. I was impenetrable.
But the block I’d built in my chest to protect myself felt more fragile than ever.
Guilt dug its claws into the ice, fracturing it.
Fracturing me. Garrick had hurt me, and now I was determined to hurt him back.
I let Maura murder that woman. I deserved to hurt.
Garrick’s eyes still glowed, a ring of bright turquoise encircling the pupils. But he spread his palms across the tops of his thighs and dug his fingernails into the leather to keep from reaching for me.
His throat worked around the words, but he held my gaze prisoner as he spoke. “You will give me your body but not your heart.”
“I do not have a heart,” I said. It took all of my effort to keep my voice even when all I wanted to do was yell and drag his body against mine.
Garrick sighed. “I am tired of hearing that particular lie.”
“Do not speak to me of lies,” I retorted. The words were flat, but they still revealed too much, and Garrick read them for what they were.
He lifted his chin so that our faces were even. Me sitting on the edge of the bed, him on his knees. “If your heart was so dead and gone, this would not hurt so much.”
The ice in my chest no longer had smooth edges.
It was made up of a thousand jagged points, and they each seemed to pierce into a different tender place.
I pressed my lips together, refusing to give even a single shaking word.
I would not let him see those parts of me, the vulnerable and dark corners of my soul. Not again.
He leaned forward so that our faces were only an inch apart.
His lips were so close to mine, I swore he was going to kiss me again.
“Be angry at me, witch. Scream, rage, attack. Do whatever you need to do. I can take it. I will still be here,” Garrick promised, his breath caressing my mouth.
But he did not kiss me. He rocked back on his heels and waited.
The seconds stretched into minutes, the only sounds our breathing and the occasional hiss of the wet wood in the hearth as it crumbled and shifted. I thought I heard the flap of wings in the distance, but Isanara did not speak into my mind, so it must have been my imagination.
I was not sure how much time had passed. My stomach rumbled rudely. At least it temporarily drowned out the sound of my own blood thumping angrily through my veins. But Garrick marked the sound, too. The man’s obsession with feeding me was going to get the better of him and break our stalemate.
But when he spoke, it was not about the mundanity of food.
He stared directly into my eyes and did not flinch.
“I will not accept empty touches, not when I know what it feels like to truly have you. When you are ready, I will be here. I will always be here,” Garrick vowed.
He looked over his shoulder at the bleak tableau of the soot-covered hearth and burned-up chair.
“Even if I have to sleep among the rubble.”