Chapter 21 #2
“She tricked me into entering the Seven Gates. She bargained with the fae king, the mortal enemy of the witches, to bind me against my will to a fae prince and increase my chances of breaking Velora’s curse.
But before I could complete them, she separated me from my familiar and brought me here.
She broke the covenants. There must be a reason. ”
There was no such thing as a good witch.
I had to accept that. But Maura was evil.
There was a difference between the two of us.
I had to believe it, or I would not have the strength to keep going.
I had to keep going. For Isanara and Kyrelle.
For Garrick, whom I did not want to die despite my inability to trust him. Maybe even a little bit for myself.
Auri was silent for a long time.
My eyes dropped to the tulip on the table between us. I counted the petals again. Six, just as perfect as they were a minute ago.
“A witch at your mercy must answer three questions,” my sister witch finally said.
Hope burst to life in my chest. “You are brilliant, Auri.”
I would have to choose my words as carefully as Auri had in the throne room.
She would still be bound by the covenants.
Allegiance to coven would be the relevant one here.
But she would also be compelled by the ancient power that Maura had revealed to the fae king.
I’d been shocked by her betrayal at the time; now I was thankful for it.
My power hummed beneath my skin, eager even after the extreme expenditure only a few hours before. But I had to keep it carefully controlled, or I’d kill every living thing in this room. It would be a poor way to repay Auri’s loyalty.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Six petals on that precious, beautiful tulip. I inhaled, exhaled, and formed a dagger of ice in my palm. Crystals of ice rushed through my veins. One dagger wasn’t enough. Why not a sword? Or a storm of stalagmites to impale anyone who got in the way.
The Dark God was not even here, but it felt like his dark influence lingered.
But his was the ability to see and amplify, not to create. This came from me.
A fresh layer of frost coated the ice dagger in my hand.
“Koryn?” Auri said softly.
Inhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Exhale.
“Give me your hand,” I instructed, holding out my own free one.
Auri placed her palm face up in mine. I ignored the eerie parallel. Closing a thumb around her wrist, I angled it carefully so I could see the artery that, if severed, would make her bleed out in minutes. I pressed the tip of my ice dagger against her pale, freckled skin.
She did not flinch. I did not deserve her trust, but I would not squander it, either.
“Where is the talisman?” I asked.
I watched carefully for any sign of struggle. Auri was fighting a three-way internal battle—witch covenants, my question, and her own will. But she would have to answer my question truthfully. It fell to me to make sense of that truth.
Her throat slid, but she was able to get the words out without too much trouble. “Hidden in the castle,” she said.
That was a wide net to cast. The talisman could be anywhere in the vast palace.
But I had to believe that if the warring powers tearing at Auri allowed her to be any more specific, she would have been.
At least she had not said Velora. I was already trapped here for the foreseeable future. Which brought me to my next question.
“Why did Maura bring me to Balar Shan?”
Auri opened her mouth, then closed it. She tried again. Her lower lip wobbled. She knew the reason, but she struggled to find the words to tell me.
When she finally got the words out, they were pained. “Because of your familiar.”
A chill of rage snaked up my spine. Maura wanted Isanara.
No, that was not what Auri had said. I had to take her words exactly as she'd said them. Isanara was the reason that Maura had pulled me from the Seven Gates. She’d risked my death—the gods would hold me to the vow I’d made in the first temple. And the reason was my familiar.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Across from me, Auri shivered. The temperature in the room had dropped. So much for having control over my power. Auri’s greenery was still alive, but a sheen of frost coated the outermost edges of her little oasis.
I had to finish this and get out of here before I lost control fully.
My last question may have been a waste. But I could not sit in this room, mere feet from the pentagram, and not ask it.
“Why did Maura kill that fae woman?”
Auri’s bright green eyes widened. She had not known that I’d seen her with my other sister witches.
Then her eyes filled with tears. A surge of protectiveness blasted through me.
I shoved that down with my power. No one had ever benefited from my protection.
It always ended badly. Kyna and Kyrelle’s familiar faces tried to invade my mind.
I pushed those down, too. Emotion would only make this worse. I was solid. Strong. Ice.
Across from me, Auri shifted in her vine-covered chair. My ice dagger pressed into her skin without me moving it. Another fraction of an inch, and it would pierce her skin. Was she trying to remind herself—her body—that she had to answer?
“Power and protection,” she rasped, the words scraping out of her throat. The most dangerous—and the vaguest.
I pulled back my dagger.
But Auri didn’t let me go. She grabbed my hand, gripping it hard. Pain pulled at the corners of her mouth and dug ditches around her eyes.
“Auri,” I began. But she shook her head violently.
The agony in her eyes broke something inside of me. There was more she wanted to say but could not within the parameters of my question and the covenants by which she was bound. She was fighting as hard as she could. She understood Maura’s evil, wanted to rebel against it, but she could not.
Casting me out from the coven had saved me, I realized.
I did not want to go back.
I released her hand. She let me go. If I’d been standing, my knees would surely have given out.
I did not want to go back to my coven.
I had never let myself form those words, even in thought. They pressed into me, a new weight in my chest, so heavy they cracked the wall of ice I’d built around my most tender parts. I struggled for each breath. There was nothing that counting flower petals could do for me now.
But I was not the only one laboring through each breath.
Auri clutched the edge of the table, the woven fronds she’d worked at weaving together crushed beneath her hand. She was shaking, or I was. Maybe the distinction did not matter.
“You are not the only one who has struggled under her tutelage,” she said quietly.
I pressed my eyes shut. “I see that now.” Ironic, since my eyes were closed.
But the sound of her gasping breaths, the sight of her shaking, were too overwhelming.
I had to cut off at least one of my senses.
With my eyes closed, I was able to speak.
“I am sorry I was not the sister you needed. I have… I have always been a disappointment to my sisters.”
Auri exhaled. I kept my eyes closed.
“Maura did this to us,” she said. “She is at fault. Not you and not me.”
She made it sound simple. I wished that it actually was. “What about Elodie?”
Another exhale, this time a sigh. “She will have to make her choice when the time comes.”
I did not have the energy to try to analyze that cryptic response. If Auri could have given me a clearer one, she would have.
I cracked my eyes open, looking not at my sister witch but at the tulip still on the table. Still perfect. I had managed to keep it alive through the ordeal. That must count for something, must be a marker of some amount of progress, however small.
Another three breaths, I decided, and then I would stand. I would walk out of these rooms and plan my next step—hunting the talisman. Garrick knew this place the best. He was my Lifebind. He’d pledged his allegiance. Now was his chance to demonstrate it.
One more breath.
But I did not even get to draw it.
A single word burst into my consciousness. A single syllable that shoved every other thought and priority out of my head.
Help.
I ran from the room, the lovely pink bloom forgotten. It was beautiful and important. But so was my familiar.