Chapter 23
KORYN
The bitch stabbed me.
She melted the metal clasp that held my stupid velvet gown closed in the front and stabbed it into the tender skin just beneath and between my breasts. It hurt, but I’d survive. She’d only punctured an inch or so.
Icicles dripped from my fingertips like talons, ready to be thrown like daggers, five all at once from each hand. Mine would go a lot deeper than a fucking inch.
But she had Isanara.
Why did you wait so long to call for me?
Power crystallized within me as I took in the scene. The auburn-haired fae woman from the throne room, the same one who’d stood over me with such disgust in the bathhouse, had my familiar trapped in the corner where one of the straight spoke hallways dead-ended into a curve.
Isanara lifted her head up, but she couldn’t reach far. She could roar. The bricks in the surrounding walls shook. I had it handled.
There is a spike in your wing. Two, actually. Both lodged between adjacent membranes on her right wing.
They were the only thing keeping me from completely losing control. If the fae bitch could so easily turn a small pendant into a weapon, then the spikes lodged in Isanara’s wings could do even more damage.
A small price to pay, Isanara said, still all sass. But I could hear the strain in her voice. Her bravado would run out eventually. In the end, a legendary creature or powerful familiar, she was still a child.
And I had not been here to protect her.
What could be worth this?
Isanara snapped her head to the side, jaws out, and I saw it.
It had lived in my nightmares for hundreds of years.
Every time I smelled blood, it brought me back to Janessa, dying in my arms, her blood coating my hands.
Every scream I’d heard, thousands of them, brought me right back to hers as she died in the temple on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life.
The intricate blue-stoned, fae-made diadem that had killed my sister lay on the red brick-paved floor between my familiar’s front legs.
Do you know what that is? Even in my head, my voice shook.
Isanara was too busy snapping her jaws at her attacker to notice. It looked tasty.
“Take another step, and I will freeze the blood in your veins where you stand,” I said. I stood framed in the curved corridor, my adversary in the adjacent straight spoke. Between us, backed up against the wall, was Isanara. Her attacker had dared a step closer, and that could not fucking happen.
She had perfectly molded, deep red lips that contrasted with her pale skin. By any standard, human, witch, or fae, she was stunningly beautiful. But that did not make her sneer any less nasty.
“I am not afraid of your kind,” she spat.
I threw out my right hand, sending the sharp icicles from my fingertips flying across the space between her and Isanara. The woman lurched backward, but not in time to avoid one of the blades of ice cutting through the hem of her gown.
“I do not care what you think about witches,” I snarled in time with my dragon’s own warning growl. “You should be afraid of me.”
“My bastard brother’s lover and her pet? Utterly terrifying.” But she didn’t take another step.
I had to get the spikes out of Isanara’s wings.
Once she was free, she could take care of herself.
Though the woman must be damn fast with her magic if she’d managed to impale her in the first place.
Whoever she was, she was powerful despite the curse.
The rumors said that was why the fae had retreated to Balar Shan, to conserve and concentrate what magic remained to them.
She looked over her shoulder. A second later, I heard what she had. Footsteps sounded somewhere behind her. We would have visitors soon.
I could kill her with or without an audience.
Maybe I had become more bloodthirsty. Maybe this darkness had been inside of me all along.
I did not have time to be afraid of my dark impulses now.
My power was already rushing through me.
I knew if I glanced down, I would see the whorls of frost coating my skin.
Around us, the temperature of the corridor dropped.
Another warning sign. The woman suppressed a shiver but did not move an inch.
She had no idea what was about to happen.
I was going to lose control.
Then we all might die.
I had to concentrate. I knew the true breadth of my power thanks to the Dark God, and while the intensity grew with each second that passed and Isanara still had fucking spikes in her wing, my power was nowhere near its limit.
Yet.
I concentrated, cataloging all the ways I could disable her. Frost crept from my feet across the red bricks, turning them a muted orange. It thickened to ice beneath her feet and mine.
She glanced down, testing the toe of her shoe against the suddenly slick floor. Her chuckle was dismissive. “It will take a lot more than that to kill me.”
In that moment, it was easy to reconcile the darkness within myself with the light. Margeaux threatened my familiar, and so she had to be punished. I had no interest in being good if it meant Isanara was in danger.
I wondered if the Dark God was nearby, whipping up the frenzy within me. Or just enjoying the show. “Let’s see.”
But the footsteps closed in, and a faint burn in my chest told me who I’d see a second before he appeared.
Garrick took half a breath to assess the scene. His penetrating blue-green eyes went to me first, then Isanara, and then the fae bitch. I was not sure if I was comforted or annoyed that was where they lingered.
“Margeaux, step away from the dragon,” he said. His voice was even. A command without giving one. But it didn’t matter. The woman’s reaction was visceral.
Disgust twisted her elegant features. “Princesses do not take orders from bastard dukes.”
My mind quickly slid the pieces together. Princess Margeaux. Which would make her Garrick’s half-sister. Elder, by the looks of it. How many more siblings did he have hiding in Balar Shan to torment me?
Garrick edged carefully around Margeaux, not giving her even an inch of his back as he tried to position himself between us. I countered by moving closer to Isanara. I did not need Garrick’s protection.
Because I was behind him, I could see the slight shift in his shoulders as he realized what I was doing.
But to Margeaux, I was sure he appeared as calm and unbothered as ever.
I was getting tired of hiding my emotions.
If I could not help feeling them, I could at least harness them along with my power.
“We are not children anymore. You are meddling with something you do not understand,” Garrick said.
He was right about that. A fae could not begin to conceptualize the connection I felt to my familiar. If she had, she would not have been stupid enough to harm her.
Margeaux made a sound of utter disgust in the back of her throat.
Perfect.
I reached Isanara in four steps. Each one had a purpose. I threw the icicle daggers that still clung to my other hand. Margeaux dodged them, but she slipped on the ice I’d formed beneath our feet.
I made it another step before she retaliated.
She ripped the metal sconce from the wall in a show of preternatural force.
Even as it broke free of the brick and mortar, Margeaux twisted the shape to form it into a deadly three-pointed weapon.
Isanara roared. I turned just in time to avoid it spearing through me.
But I was not quite quick enough. Pain seared through my upper arm.
One more step and I was in front of Isanara. I threw out my uninjured hand, encasing the twisted heap of metal in ice and fusing it to the floor. She could probably get it out, but not quick enough to prevent me from retaliating.
My eyes flew around the darkened corridor, searching for other sources of metal she could turn against me or my familiar.
Margeaux screamed in frustration and lunged toward me. I threw out a brace of frost to push her back---
Only for it to land squarely between Garrick’s shoulder blades.
He’d moved, too, planting himself between the two of us. I’d hesitate to kill him—a truth I hated but could in that moment of freakish clarity at least admit to myself. I was not so sure about his sister.
“Get out of my way,” I seethed.
Isanara made a sound of agreement behind me. But it was less virulent than usual. The pain of the spikes was getting to her.
Garrick rolled his shoulders, working out the pain from my blast of frost. He’d taken it directly. It probably would have killed a human. Regret punched up from my gut into my chest. Stop, I commanded it. Garrick is not human. Garrick is fine.
“She is more powerful than you realize,” he warned in a low voice.
The regret died. I should have hit him with something harder. One of my ice daggers.
I was capable of handling a single fae monster. I had survived five of the Seven Gates… with Garrick at my side. I’d questioned what that meant for myself and my capabilities. But I had not realized he had, too. He thought I was just as incapable as everyone else.
Was the Dark God the only one who had any sort of faith in me? And if that was true… maybe I was more like the witches than I’d ever believed. Maybe I had been lying to myself all along. I was good at it, after all.
Minutes before, I’d been so certain that my path lay away from my coven. But now…
I had no idea. Who I was, what I wanted, or where I belonged. Four hundred years, and I was no closer to figuring it out. It hurt almost as much as the spikes in my familiar’s wings. I was done with this. Done with them.
“You are meddling with something you do not understand,” I said, parroting the thin excuse he’d used with the woman. His sister.
I turned around to face Isanara. Let Margeaux try something and let Garrick decide what to do about it. If I died, he died. The Lifebind ensured that no matter what his true allegiance was. He’d preserve his own life.
Hold still, I ordered my familiar.