Chapter 24
GARRICK
My heart was still lodged in my throat as I followed Koryn through the pattern of spokes and curves that made up the central tower of Balar Shan. She stopped suddenly, and I finally managed a breath. She was going to talk to me.
“Which way?”
Wrong.
I stepped ahead of her and started to lead the way back to our bedroom. We were three turns away before she spoke again.
“How did you know?”
I kept walking, not looking at her. If I were too direct, she would fold back in on herself.
“The Lifebind burned,” I said.
Koryn’s step stuttered. Isanara was there, pressing into her hip to steady her. “It has never done that before.”
No, it hadn’t. But every pounding step between the courtyard and the corridor where Margeaux had cornered Isanara and Koryn had urged me faster.
The god-made connection between us had merged somehow with my own consciousness.
It knew Koryn was in danger, and because it was Margeaux, it knew just how much.
“It sensed you were in mortal danger.”
She scoffed. “I’ve been in mortal danger plenty of times since this stupid thing appeared. We were in the Seven fucking Gates.”
“I don’t know, Koryn. I knew you needed me, so I came.”
We reached the familiar door. Koryn flew through it, Isanara at her heels, spinning on me the instant she did. The echo of our first night in Balar Shan was impossible to miss.
“I did not need to be rescued,” Koryn snarled.
My control snapped. I thought I’d been a master of my own emotions, of my body. But it turned out I was wrong. All it took was Koryn, falling in love with her, to break the binds that had once felt so secure.
“Balar Shan will eat you alive. Are you really in such a hurry to join your Dark God?”
“He is not mine! I am not his, or yours. I am my own damn person, and I can defend my own familiar.”
I flexed my fingers at my side to keep from grabbing the post at the head of the bed and snapping it in half.
“Being at your side to support you is not the same as rescuing you. I grew up in this cursed place. At least let me use what I know of it to help you.” Let me show you that it was all a mistake.
“Why?” she demanded.
“Because I love you, Koryn.” I yelled it, and I did not care if all of Balar Shan heard.
Koryn’s face paled. “You do not love me. You do not even know me.”
I knew that something had changed for her in the hours since we parted this morning, and it was more than the altercation with Margeaux.
There was a wildness in her eyes that had not been there before.
She was scared, her hand reaching for Isanara to reassure herself, even though the dragon had not been more than a few inches from her.
The pointed fingernails of her other hand dug into the velvet of her sleeve.
“What are you not telling me?”
She did not answer.
“Did he do something?”
Koryn avoided my eyes. “This is not about him.”
“Then tell me what it is,” I said gently. “I am here, Koryn. For anything you have to say.” Even if it is that you love him. That you never want me to touch you again.
Where had that thought come from?
Koryn scraped her nails over the raised velvet fibers, the sound so soft and yet so telling against the silence.
She lifted her hand from Isanara’s head, gently nudging her.
The dragon padded over to the hearth, nestling herself halfway underneath the new wingback chair I’d brought in to replace the one we’d burned to ashes.
Koryn turned back to fully face me. Her hands fell to her sides, palms open.
“Touch me, Garrick. Take me,” she whispered. “The bed is right here.”
She was shaking. Her dark, fathomless eyes were luminous. With tears. She was unmoored. She would seek me for comfort but not tell me why.
I could not take her like this. It would staunch the bleeding on her internal wound, but then it would fester. It would hurt even more in the aftermath, and she would blame me. I would blame myself.
“Please,” Koryn said.
I couldn’t let her beg. It would break both of us. “Witch—”
I did not even get the rejection all the way out.
She reached past me and threw open the door. “Get out.”
I wanted to take it back. All of it. The bargain, the betrayal, my declaration that I would not touch her until she was ready to give in to her feelings for me, as well. But it was Koryn’s regrets driving this moment, not mine.
I did as she asked. I left.
The door slammed behind me, but I could not bring myself to leave her. I melted back against it. But he allowed me no respite.
He stood directly across the narrow corridor, bare arms crossed over his body. He wore only the thick black brocade vest, though this time it was unbuttoned to show the column of his throat. His long, sinew-covered arms showed every muscle. Lean but powerful. And the bane of my existence.
“Do you purposefully select the most horrendous moments to show up?”
He shrugged his shoulders, the movement of his silken black hair emphasizing the graceful movement. “Immortality is boring. I take my pleasure where I can.”
I leaned my head back against the door. Quietly. She’d told me to go. But she had not been specific about how far. “Of course you get pleasure out of causing strife between us.”
“You two are more than capable of causing all your own problems,” the Dark God said. “And resolving them, too.”
I’d had enough of this. If he was the reason she was so unmoored, I’d kill him. God or not. “Then why are you here?”
He, of course, ignored my question. “You have to help her.”
“What do you think I am doing?” I growled.
“Do it better.”
“Fuck you.”
“Has our bonded’s wicked mouth worn off on you?” He licked his lower lip. “Or is that an offer?”
“Touch me, and I will sever your cock from your body. Can gods regrow their limbs?”
“If the fae can, I can,” he sighed heavily, as if explaining things to mortals was the bane of his very existence. “She is questioning everything. The Seven Gates gave her purpose. Then you and your bargain took away her accomplishment. She does not know where that leaves her.”
“With me.” Even as I said it, I knew. So did he. Damn him.
The Dark God pushed off from the wall and took a step closer. The narrow corridor felt even smaller. “As enviable a position as that is, it is not enough, and we both know it. Koryn is more than that. It is why we both want her.”
He was close enough to touch. Or strangle. “You have not been honest with either of us about what you truly want.”
His blue-black eyes slid up my body, pausing too long at my waist, then at the throat of my surcoat, where the top button was loose, before he finally met my gaze. “I want her to be ready for what is coming.”
He’d said something like that before. I’d assumed he meant the gates, but… “What exactly is coming?”
“Find the talisman and get back to the gates. You are running out of time.” His gaze locked with mine.
I’d been told my entire life that my eyes were remarkable. By my mother, who cooed about them when I was a baby. Then by men and women alike who wanted to find their way into my bed. In Balar Shan, they were noted for their resemblance to the king.
But the Dark God’s were stranger still. At first glance, there was no distinction between the pupil and the iris.
It was all darkness, befitting his title.
But the longer he held me captive, the more I saw the details.
The tiny, crooked lines of blue that striated the black.
They seemed to pulse in time with my own heartbeat. The effect was otherworldly.
I was used to being the other, the supernatural. But with him, I was the unremarkable one. I could breathe.
He did not even have a name.
I was so transfixed by his eyes that I did not notice his hand until it pressed against my hip.
Two long, strong fingers pressed into the bone.
That one touch was enough. The muscles in my stomach tightened.
But he did not stop there. He slid his fingers up, over the crest of my hipbone, past my tight abdominals, over my nipple standing at attention beneath the layers of fabric.
This could not happen. I could not let myself feel this. Koryn was only a door away. This was the need for her, not for him. There was no emotion the Dark God would not weaponize.
I curled my hand around the pommel of my sword. But by the time I drew it, he was gone. All I was left with was heat low in my belly, and a yearning for things that I could not, should not, and would not ever have.