Chapter 19
KORYN
“I told you before,” the Dark God said, the slightest annoyance audible beneath the customary smoothness of his words. “That will not be necessary.”
“It will be if I decide to stab you with it,” I scowled, clutching my ice dagger tighter. I was getting better at reading him. Or maybe just better at annoying him. But if I had to spend the entirety of my afterlife driving him to distraction, then so be it. It was the least he deserved.
He’d created me, he’d chosen me, he’d offered me the bargain. I’d promised to be his wife. I had not promised to be a dutiful one.
Maybe this was who I was meant to be. For so long I’d struggled against my power and the evil that Maura demanded of me. How easy it would be to just give in to it, finally. Maybe then the pain and guilt would go away. Would the fae woman’s face stop haunting my dreams?
We sat on the bed again. Isanara was out foraging again.
Unlike last time, the Dark God had appeared while Garrick and I were dressing, determinedly facing opposite directions and avoiding each other.
The Dark God had stood in the middle of the room and offered commentary on both of our bodies.
It did not matter that every word out of his mouth had been complimentary.
It had been fucking humiliating, and if I got to annoy him in return? It was the least I wanted to do to him.
He held out his hands, exactly as before. I kept mine in my lap, ice dagger at the ready. His nostrils flared so slightly that I might have missed it, if not for the tiny shadow the movement created on his olive skin.
“What do you think happens if you stab a god?”
I lifted my dagger and made a show of examining it. “Let’s find out.”
His tongue darted out over his lower lip. I was getting better at this by the minute.
“I’ve never seen you this bloodthirsty. You’ve always clung so hard to your humanity and your self-sacrificing obsession with mercy.”
My stomach dropped. I was lying to myself. I would never win a game of manipulation against the Dark God. Not even Maura had his talent for pressing directly on a wound.
“I have mercy for those who deserve it,” I said.
The words were feeble even to my own ears, because they were not true. The men in the street in Canmar who’d attacked me had both deserved to die, but I’d hated myself for the one I’d killed when I lost control, and I’d let the other go willingly.
I’d let Maura kill that fae woman. To my knowledge, she’d done nothing to earn Maura’s torture. I was a mess of contradictions that not even I could justify and understand.
“Then let’s not waste our time trying. Give me your hands.”
I would never—ever—get used to that. “Get out of my head!”
“Very good, sweetling.”
It took my beleaguered mind a few seconds to sort out what had happened.
I’d answered him without speaking. Not in the way it usually happened, where he spoke before I could form a thought into words.
I directed them right at him. It felt different than the connection I shared with Isanara.
A pathway existed between me and my familiar, created by the unique bond she’d forged when she chose me as her witch.
We could only see what the other wished to share.
The Dark God saw everything and seemed to process my thoughts as quickly as I did. Until now. I’d gotten a word in before he could. And he’d called me sweetling.
“I hate nicknames,” I said aloud, enunciating every word. Just because I could speak to him in my mind did not mean I wanted to. My mind was a muddled enough place without any extra voices crowding into it. Especially him. “And I am not your anything.”
The Dark God slanted a look at me, a lock of silken black hair skimming across his brow. “You will be my wife.”
“In a thousand years.”
“Speaking aloud does not change anything between us,” he said, and then to illustrate his point— “You cannot block me out.”
“You may be able to see into my mind, but you cannot control it,” I said, my hands still stubbornly in my lap. I sounded petulant and childish. I did not care.
He swiped his tongue over his lower lip again. Maybe it was not a show of annoyance. “You are correct. Your choices have always been your own.”
Fuck. You.
I did not care if he heard it in my mind, aloud, or saw it burning in my eyes. So long as he knew how much I hated him.
“Give me your hands,” he ordered, holding out his own palms. I’d avoided looking at him the last time we’d done this. But I forced myself to take in the details now. It was not me and Garrick against the Dark God. It was me against the whole entire world. Me and Isanara.
Care to join us?
Busy, she said. It sounded like her mouth was full. But her response was immediate, so she must not have had to go far in pursuit of food. She was eating more and more. If she were anything like a human adolescent, I could expect a surge in her growth any day now.
The man sitting across from me might be a god, but the sound of annoyance in his throat transcended power or immortality. It was all male impertinence. “Do exactly as I asked before. Unleash your power. Let it be free entirely. You cannot hurt me.”
I snorted. That was not the problem, now or then.
“I know you are capable of focusing. You managed it with the acolyte.”
Was there anything he did not know about me?
“No.”
Then why was I even doing this exercise? If he knew how my mind worked, then he knew that the thing I wanted more than anything in the world was to—
“I know what you want. And if it were in my power to give it to you, I would.”
How was I supposed to respond to that? He said it more like a threat than an offer.
“Give… me… your… hands.”
I wanted to disobey out of spite. But as much as I distrusted him, if there was anyone who could teach me to control my power, it was the one who had originated it.
If I had any chance at besting Maura—finding out what she was up to and breaking her unholy alliance with the fae king, then I needed to find the one thing that had always eluded me. Control.
The ice dagger disappeared, drawn back inside of me with the same power that had created it from nothing but my own will. I opened my hands and set my palms on his.
His hands were larger than mine, of course.
But where Garrick’s hands were thick and powerful, the Dark God’s were elegant, each finger just a fraction longer than it should have been.
Not quite enough to look out of proportion, but impossible to ignore.
He was not human or fae. He was something else. Other. More.
He slid his palms up the back of my hands, past my wrists and my Lifebind, until his forearms cradled mine. Those long, confident fingers pressed lightly into my skin, a silent reminder to follow his command.
I was the one to lick my lips this time. They’d gone suddenly and inexplicably dry.
He squeezed my hands again, slightly harder.
I closed my eyes, just as Tomin had taught me.
This was control, too, I told myself. Summoning the full torrent of my power was not so different from suppressing it.
Except I’d been trying to do the latter for three hundred and seventy-seven years.
Never once had I attempted to reach all the way to the bottom of those frosty depths.
Tomin had taught me to breathe. I tried to find something to anchor myself to in this physical space. The bed beneath my crossed legs was too soft. That left one option, unsavory as it was. I counted the places where the Dark God’s fingers pressed into the bare skin of my forearms.
Inhale. Block out the sound of the fire crackling in the hearth and the slight rattle of the window where Isanara had knocked the pane off-kilter with her impatient head-butting. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Exhale. Let go of the lingering scent of ash in the air and the feeling of rejection and longing it summoned. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Focus on the power.
I visualized the ice within my chest. If I plunged that ice dagger between my breasts, there might truly be one in place of my heart.
It no longer beat. Was the organ still there, dead and atrophied?
Or had it frozen and then shattered, becoming one of the tiny shards that I wielded against the world?
“Your heart is immaterial to this exercise.”
So helpful.
“Your power does not take a physical form within you. You have blood and working organs just like a living being.”
Except that it was the power that kept the blood flowing and those organs working.
And my power had always felt physical. Real.
I swore at times I could feel the shards of ice moving through my bloodstream.
I certainly felt the heaviness in my chest where I’d tried to encase any part of myself capable of feeling in ice.
“You are inseparable from your power.”
More cryptic and unhelpful answers.
“Do something worthy of commentary, and I will provide it.”
Cold slid down my spine. It spread through my body and climbed my cheeks the way that heat might in a normal person. A human. Someone living. It did not matter if the tiny crystals were only in my mind. I felt them.
“Anger has always been a reliable trigger for you.”
I hated that he said it with such authority. Before Balar Shan, I’d seen him exactly twice in four centuries of existence. But I’d felt him and invoked him more times than I could count. Had every instance been an invitation into my consciousness?