Chapter 26
KORYN
“Again.”
That imperious voice was slowly, methodically, terminally drilling a hole into my head. But when I reached my hand back to check, my skull was still intact. Fuck. Death would have been better.
I dropped my hands into my lap. “I’m done.”
“Not yet.”
I’d already learned there was no point arguing with him.
I slid off the bed, rubbing my hands up and down my arms as I got my feet under me.
Cold leached from my skin even through the thick velvet.
Not unusual. But not comfortable, either.
I poked the fire with an iron and added another log from the rack.
Night had long since fallen outside the window. Soon, it would be too cold to be anywhere but beneath the coverlet, even with the fire going. Velora was getting colder by the day.
“You cannot give up so easily,” the Dark God said. I expected annoyance. But his voice was oddly… flat? Quiet. It was always smooth, but this was almost… not gentle. The Dark God was not capable of it. But there was a different tenor to his voice, and it should have unnerved me.
I was just so damn tired.
His movements were near silent, so annoyingly perfect and graceful. But he was no longer sitting cross-legged on the bed.
I wasn’t giving up. But I was running out of energy to fight. Isanara was safe. Kyrelle was doomed no matter what I did. The gods would punish me soon for my absence from the gates. Maybe it would be better just to let them.
“You are lying to me.”
I’d thought I was too exhausted to be irritated, but I was wrong. He knew that even if I said I wasn’t giving up, I was contemplating lying down on the floor and closing my eyes and not opening them again.
“But you won’t.”
In some ways, it was easier. I did not have to find the right words to explain myself. He could see the mess inside of me and figure it out for himself. Maybe he would see what it was that made me so deeply unworthy of every place I tried to fit in.
“Do not insult me. I would not choose someone unworthy as my companion for eternity.”
Of course not. Why would he be concerned about my state of mind for my own sake? But when it was an affront to him, it was problematic.
“I am not called the Dark God without reason.”
He seemed determined to earn his name. But it wasn’t a name, really. It was a title. A description. None of the other gods were known solely by the gate over which they presided. His gate was only The Unknown. Surely he must have a name.
Only silence echoed in my head. Of course.
I’d been adrift since the altercation with Princess Margeaux. I should have felt triumphant. My power had answered my commands. I’d bested her, if only temporarily. And I’d navigated the entire situation without incurring the fae king’s wrath.
But the information that Auri had given me, coupled with the intensity of the debacle in the corridor, had left me twisted up in myself.
For centuries, Maura had encouraged the darkness within me and demeaned every instinct.
I’d done terrible things to fit her demands.
I’d killed for her. Maimed. Ruined my sister Rylynn’s life.
Only to face a new reality. Maybe that darkness had not come from Maura and the Dark God after all. Maybe it had been inside me all along. And even worse… maybe I had always known.
Swirls of white danced outside the window. I did not even recall how I’d gotten there from the hearth. I was pacing again.
It was beginning to snow.
I reached out for Isanara. She always left when the Dark God appeared. You need to get inside.
The cold does not bother me, Isanara said. Her voice was clear. She was nearby.
You have an hour, and then I’m locking the window. It was an empty threat. We both knew it. But even if I lay down in the bed, I would not truly sleep until she was back.
Quiet, purposeful footsteps sounded behind me. The Dark God could move in silence if he wished. He was giving me a warning. I stared out at the swirling eddies of winter. He was right behind me. Close enough to touch, but not. Lingering just beyond where I could reach, like always.
“I wanted to kill her,” I whispered.
I’d felt the urge to kill before. But I’d never wanted it in my soul.
I’d lost control before, but it had always felt terrible.
But when I saw what Margeaux had done to my familiar, there was no hesitation.
My power wanted to eviscerate her, and I wanted to let it.
The feeling that I could was as heady as any alcohol or sexual peak.
“You are a witch,” the Dark God said. I felt his breath against my shoulder, where the neckline of my gown ended. It was warm.
“Maybe that is not the insult you think it is.” Because if I truly was evil… if I deserved all the things that had happened to me… then I deserved to be a witch—and his bride.
“It was not meant as an insult at all,” he said. The air shifted behind us. Had he lifted his hand? Was he caressing my arm, or was that my imagination? “Do not forget whose power flows in your veins.”
I shivered hard. “I never asked to be resurrected.”
The hair on my shoulder shifted, revealing more of my neck. But I still did not quite feel his touch. “You have chosen who to be every day of your life. Before and after your resurrection.” He leaned his head in to where my neck was exposed and inhaled. “You can continue to do so.”
I was so exposed, but still he had not touched me.
“I can’t keep failing at this,” I whispered.
The not-quite-touch at my neck withdrew. The Dark God hummed low in his throat. “You have more control than a week ago.”
Maybe. “I am still no match for Maura.”
The hum shifted. Deeper, it seemed to almost come from his chest. “She is a thousand years old. Your power will not be enough to defeat her.”
I had to reach out for the windowsill to keep myself from lunging forward. Or back into him. I turned to face him, hands braced behind me. He wasn’t as close as I’d thought.
“Then what are we doing here?” I cried, actual tears threatening to fall. “I should be hunting for the talisman.” Not that I had any idea where to start looking. Maura could have hidden it anywhere.
The Dark God was, as usual, unmoved by my show of emotion. “Understanding and controlling your power will aid you in your search. Especially if you insist on keeping the halfling at a distance.”
“Do not speak of Garrick.” It felt like a betrayal, which was absurd. Garrick was the one who’d betrayed me. He’d tricked me into falling in love with him. But to speak of it with the Dark God…
“I do not need to speak of him. He is here, in your mind. And elsewhere.”
Not in my heart. My heart is dead. Dead, like me.
But still my body cried out for him. I rolled over in my bed—his bed—and reached for him. I woke in the morning, and my eyes sought him out before I could tell them not to. I could not control my desires any more than I could my power.
I’d thought the Dark God being in my mind made it easier? I wanted him out. I did not want him to see the raw, broken parts of myself.
“I know. Get out of your head,” he said aloud.
I huffed a mirthless laugh to keep myself from crying.
I stared at the ground between us. The patterned red brick was covered with a thick carpet, familiar paths worn away long before I’d started to pace this room.
Garrick’s paths. A record of the person he’d been in this room.
Staring at them, I realized they were the same paths that I’d taken myself.
The ice in my chest cracked. The ache I’d been trying to ignore grew.
“You felt the draw of power before.”
I blinked. First, in confusion, then to push back the tears that lingered. It took me a minute to reorient myself and understand what he meant. The talisman. Its power.
I forced myself to look up from the floor, to refocus on the moment and the dark presence in front of me. He had one hand tucked into the pocket of his vest, the other casually stroked over his lower lip.
“Yes,” I said slowly. “Will it feel like that?”
He fucking shrugged. There was no shirt beneath his vest tonight. The Dark God would be impervious to the cold. They probably all were. They couldn’t be felled by the very curse they’d brought down.
If he did not know, what chance did I have?
“You are a god,” I said, incredulous. “Don’t you know everything?”
Another infernal shrug. At least he was no longer touching his mouth. “I am the Dark God. Not the God of Mercy or Sacrifice or Devotion.”
“Even you have limits.”
He lifted a thick brow. That was as much acknowledgment as I was going to get.
It seemed absurd. He could show up whenever and wherever he wanted. He’d made the fucking witches. He could see and amplify anyone’s darkest desire.
But maybe not anyone.
Oh, gods. Gods. Was he not the most powerful of them all? Was that not what Maura had drilled into me as proof of the witches’ superiority to all other beings?
But Maura had been wrong before.
The Dark God stepped into my space. There was no questioning it now.
He was there, an inch away from me. A breath.
That was all that separated us now. My mind spun and sputtered, distracted by the flush of warmth that climbed over my skin.
When we’d touched before, he’d always been cold.
Like me. But something seemed different, changed between us, and I wanted…
What do you want, Koryn?
He lifted his hand and, using a singular finger, lifted the dark hair on my shoulder away so that my skin was fully exposed by the scoop of the dark gray velvet dress I wore.
“You know what power feels like. You have felt it coursing beneath your skin,” he said. “Waking parts of you that you did not realize were there.”
I struggled to get in a breath. “What are you doing?”
“Power is intoxicating. It overwhelms all of your senses. Those of us who feel deeply feel its pressure the most,”
Us.
Desire bloomed in my stomach. No, it had been there for a while. Since we’d sat on the bed the first time and he’d taken my hands. Maybe before. But it spun upward, assaulting my senses, and downward, so intense I pressed my thighs together.
“You are using your power on me,” I managed, the words thick.
“Maybe,” he admitted. He still did not touch me.
His hands moved up and down my arms, but they hovered.
So close that a single deep breath from either of us and we’d be touching.
It whipped the desire up even higher. My skin burned beneath the gown.
I did not feel helpless or lost anymore.
Need was quickly consuming everything. “But this was inside of you all along, sweetling. I am merely helping you understand it.”
My power, my desire, or myself?
“All it takes is a word,” he said, his hands caressing the air around my shoulders. “And I will stop.”
I knew he was offering the escape that Garrick would not give me. Garrick was noble, caring, and, despite his betrayal, honorable. Garrick wouldn’t take my body without also having my heart. But I wasn’t sure my heart was worth giving.
Giving any more of myself to the Dark God was reckless. But I could not help myself.
I wanted it.
I wanted him.