Chapter 22
GARRICK
“The fae do not know the meaning of the word family,” I said as Alize moved around the small, windowless room, lighting candles.
Edmund reclined in a high-backed wooden chair in the corner, looking every bit the fae king’s son despite their lack of physical resemblance.
He should have been able to light every candle in the room with another dramatic snap of his fingers, but he didn’t.
Either impertinence, or to go give Alize something to do. She’d always had too much energy.
“You are fae,” my sister said, completing her circuit. She scowled at the last candle, then put her hands on her hips before turning that scowl on me. “Half-blood or not. You are as much fae as human.”
“And you have no problem using your fae magic,” Edmund interjected. There was an edge to his jocular tone that I had not sensed before.
This was the Court of Lies. Every emotion, hidden or demonstrated, was suspect. “You two have plenty of magic of your own. You could kill me, dump my body, and claim innocence. You were ready to leave me to die in that crevasse at the Mercy Gate,” I reminded Alize.
“Not everyone is out to get you, Garrick.” She rolled her eyes, the bright gold enhanced by the warm light in the closed room. “The Seven Gates are my birthright. I am the second-born child of the House of Penruddock. It is the duty of every second-born child of the fae to attempt the Seven Gates.”
My father had made that decree centuries ago. It had long fallen out of favor by the time I reached Velora.
Edmund laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. “That’s mean.”
Alize cast him a look so long-suffering it could only belong to an elder sibling.
Edmund clucked his tongue and shook his head, his long black hair gliding over his shoulders. “You cannot tell him we are a family one minute and then imply he is illegitimate the next.”
Alize sent a blast of wind that splayed Edmund’s perfect hair right across his perfect face. “He is illegitimate,” she said.
Edmund blew the strands out of his eyes.
“So were you for a while,” he said, his grin wolfish.
The interplay between them was interesting.
Like Margeaux before her, Alize had been stripped of her title of princess when her mother, Queen Anais, could not produce a male heir in a timely manner.
Margeaux’s mother, the daughter of another powerful fae family, had at least been granted an annulment and a natural death.
Queen Anais was beheaded for her failures.
Edmund’s mother succeeded where the first two queens had not.
She delivered the Crown Prince of Balar Shan.
A year later, she died in childbed trying to bring forth another.
Once, the fae would have had enough magic to save her.
But the curse had wrought its damage everywhere.
Velora was dying and determined to take every living thing with it.
The royal siblings had every reason to hate each other. But beneath the jibing, I sensed an undercurrent of affection.
More had changed in the long years of my absence than I’d realized.
Alize rolled her eyes again and moved her arms from her hips to cross over her chest.
“Her Royal Majesty, the most magnanimous Queen Parry, convinced the king to reinstate me and Margeaux’s titles a few years ago,” she explained. “It nearly cost the Queen her head.”
I did not know Parry well. My father had married her in the months before my departure from Balar Shan.
After Margeaux’s mother, she was the longest reigning queen of the fae, having survived for more than twenty years.
It should have been a blink in time for the fae; but in this king’s court, it was a testament to her intelligence and political skill.
Or maybe just the fact that the king finally had his legitimate son.
But I doubted that had made him any more magnanimous.
“I do not take offense to the facts of my birth,” I said.
It was the complete, unvarnished truth. I was damned thankful that I had always been excluded from the succession.
A year ago, I would have said I wished I’d never found out the truth of my parentage.
But that was before I met Koryn. Still, “I don’t want to be any more his son. I want to be less.”
Alize snorted. Edmund actually chuckled.
“Don’t we all,” the former said under her breath.
As fascinating as this whole exchange was, it did not solve my most immediate problem. The scarlet letter of the king’s summons still burned in my pocket. I could not see outside to judge the time, but I knew I did not have much of it left.
“What do you want from me?”
Edmund slid his too-confident gaze to our sister. Alize was the ringleader, then.
Alize uncrossed her arms. “Our father has made common cause with the witch,” she said. Maura, not Koryn.
My jaw ticked. I let the obvious sign of annoyance show. “He wants to break the curse, and he thinks this is the best way to do it.”
“Yes,” Alize allowed. “But if that was the totality of his scheming, he would not spend hours every day behind closed doors with the woman.”
That was the first new bit of information my siblings had shared.
I chose my words carefully. “You think there is more to their bargain.”
Did Alize and Edmund know about the talisman? I would not be the one to tell them. They might trust me enough to share their worries, but that trust was not returned. Not yet. But what they did know could be useful to Koryn’s quest. “Do you know what else?”
“We have ideas,” Alize admitted. Which meant they knew nothing.
This was a waste of time.
I turned for the door.
“Magic is fading rapidly. Faster than ever before,” Alize said quickly. She kicked Edmund.
“The shifters seem to have more magic left than most,” he said on command. “But those that transform into larger animals are having a harder time. Most of my guards cannot muster more than a burst of magic before they are depleted.”
The room was small, and it only took a few steps for Alize to angle herself between me and the singular exit.
“You are the only shifter born to the royal line in hundreds of years,” she said, lifting her chin meaningfully. She was tall, even for a fae, but she still had to look up at me.
“Lucky me,” I growled.
“Can you still shift?” She seemed to be done parsing words.
“Yes,” I said. “Are you going to ask for a demonstration?”
“And your mind gift is still strong,” Edmund kicked his feet out and stood. “Thanks so much for that, brother. I had nearly forgotten what it felt like to have someone knocking around in my head.”
“If you are waiting for an apology, then be glad you’re an immortal.” I would never apologize for protecting Koryn.
Alize rolled her eyes but held her ground between me and the door. “I thought the age gap would spare me having to separate my imbecile brothers.”
In terms of fae chronology, where siblings could be separated by centuries, the three of us were very close in age. Margeaux was the outlier.
Which led to the natural question, “Does our elder sister not count as family?” She was nowhere to be seen at this family get-together.
Alize and Edmund exchanged a look. There was an understanding between them. They’d grown up together, their births only a few years away. I’d been young when they were born, but not a child. They were truly family. I felt a pang of jealousy.
“You know what Margeaux is,” Alize said.
Bitter. Volatile. Powerful.
“I thought I knew you two. I can be wrong.”
Alize’s eyes gleamed. “A man who can admit he is wrong. No wonder the witch fell for you.”
Edmund crossed the room in two easy steps, inserting himself into the conversation irrevocably. Despite his easy smile, the baby brother was done watching from the fringes.
“Margeaux wants to be queen,” he said. “That is her one and only goal. Father restored her title, but not her place in the succession. Her dearest wish would be that you and I both die young.”
Alize was the one who’d tried to smother Edmund in the cradle. But apparently that had been forgiven. Or at least, strategically forgotten.
“We think father has done something to protect our magic. Maybe at the expense of everyone else,” Alize said.
“His obsession with magic at the expense of everyone else is why Velora is cursed to begin with,” I pointed out, though it should have been obvious. Velora’s curse was only three hundred and seventy-seven years old. But my father had been alive longer than that.
“He did not act alone,” Alize countered.
She was correct, technically. At the time of the curse, there had not been a single fae king or queen.
The Old Fae Kingdom had been a series of fiefdoms. The fae subjugated the humans, using them for labor to strip crops and ores from the lands, while they killed one another for magic in Balar Shan.
They reached too high, and the gods punished all of Velora for their treachery.
When magic began to fade, and all of the fae retreated to Balar Shan, our father had risen to the top.
He’d used the intervening centuries to consolidate his power.
“Are you excusing him?” I ground out.
“I am stating facts, because facts are what will get us out of this,” Alize said.
“There is no getting out of this.” I took a step toward the door. Alize did not move.
I did not want to do it. But my sister needed to understand. Slipping into her mind and placing the command was easy. It always had come too naturally. To her, it felt like her own thought. She must let me pass, or risk alienating me.
She stepped to the side.
“We may share blood, but I cannot engage in whatever treason you two are interested in. I have one priority,” I said.
“The witch.” Alize’s amber eyes glinted. She knew what I’d done.
“Yes.”
Alize’s eyes flicked to my wrist, where the edges of the Lifebind were just visible beneath the sleeve of my surcoat.
A part of me understood my sister and brother.
If this were real, if they were truly earnest, then Alize and Edmund represented the best hope for true reform that Balar Shan had ever seen.
But I did not care about reforming the fae court.
I wanted to burn it to the ground. Or, with Koryn’s help, freeze it to a singular piece of ice that would shatter and leave nothing behind but the cold burn of frost on the wind.
But none of it mattered without her.
I’d lost someone I loved before, and it had nearly broken me. There was no question in my mind. Without Koryn, there was nothing.
My heart flung itself against the confines of my chest. An eerie unease stole over my senses. My eyes darted around the room, instinctively searching for threats. But the danger was not here.
The Lifebind burned a singular, dire warning on my wrist.
Koryn was in danger.