Chapter 32
KORYN
“You cannot run away from me now.”
I ground my teeth together with such force I expected them to break.
“How long before someone digs us out?” I demanded, planting a hand on each hip and forcing out a long breath.
Garrick gave the wall of debris an experimental push. “Once they realize we are missing? An hour, if they don’t use magic.”
Which they would not, my mind filled in. In the weeks I’d been trapped in the Court of Lies, I’d learned that the fae used their remaining magic sparingly, as if afraid it might run out at any moment. If only they’d been as circumspect before cursing the entire continent with death.
Garrick pushed away from the wall. It did not budge.
I had a hard time believing that was possible.
This was the man who had cleaved apart the wall of a dungeon death-cell when it suited him.
He did not want us to get out. He wanted us trapped here together.
More deception. More lies. He was everything I expected him to be, his fae lineage a dark plague on the human blood in his veins.
“Call for him.”
I sank my teeth into my tongue to keep in the yelp of surprise. We never used his name, both of us afraid to summon him.
You do not know Garrick’s heart, my stubborn mind reminded me. Except another part of me insisted that I did.
If Garrick truly wished to manipulate me, he would not suggest I call for the Dark God.
I tucked my hands into my arms as I wrapped them around myself. “It does not work that way,” I said, staring at the ground instead of at my Lifebind.
I heard Garrick swallow. “What do you mean?”
His voice was resigned, even as he asked the question. He did not expect me to answer. And why should I? In the gates, we’d only given small, careful pieces of ourselves. We’d never offered true windows into our pasts; only tiny portholes. And now…
I could call for Isanara, I realized. Of course, I could.
But she could not communicate where we were to anyone else, and she did not have hands to dig us out.
Wicked claws, yes. It was unfair to underestimate her.
I could lie to myself further, rationalize that I did not want to interrupt her hunt for food. But the truth was—
Nope. I was not ready to acknowledge the truth. Looking inward hurt too damn much.
Garrick sighed. He used his foot to scrape away debris, then lowered himself to sit. He leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes. Settling in. Giving up on an answer. Giving up on me.
My fickle, supposedly dead heart rebelled at the possibility.
“He is always with me,” I said, pushing out my chin and glaring directly at Garrick.
“He lingers at the edges of my mind, ready to insert himself on a whim.” I shifted my gaze downward, as if I could see directly into the Dark God’s frozen hell.
“Which means he knows about our predicament and has decided to ignore us!” I half-shouted.
Futile, I knew. Notions of heaven and hell above and below were primitive human attempts to rationalize the unknowable. But it did make me feel a bit better.
As did the look of quiet terror on Garrick’s face. Enjoying another’s torment had always been the province of my sister witches, not me. But I was hurt, and I wanted to lash out.
“You can speak to him mind to mind, like Isanara,” Garrick said, his voice thick. Was that jealousy?
A dark, self-satisfied chuckle echoed through my mind.
Fuck. You. I growled internally, even though the Dark God could hear my thoughts without me needing to form them.
“Not like Isanara,” I ground out, annoyed even though I was the one who had started this conversation. “With her, it is a conversation. With him, it is an invasion.”
Garrick’s eyes were not closed anymore. His jaw worked around his next thought. “Why did you bind yourself to him?”
I felt my brows shoot up, but this time I did not still the revelatory reaction. “You saw. At the Memory Gate.”
He’d been there—he and Kyrelle, and then just him. He’d seen me kill McKean.
Garrick shook his head, a silvery strand of hair catching on the stubble that lined his chin.
Even in the comfort of the court, he could not be bothered to waste time shaving each day.
Not when there were more important matters to attend to.
Not me. But despite my internal protest, a small shard of ice sheared off the block in my chest.
“I saw the tattoo on your inner thigh.”
The one I’d tried so hard to hide from him, but he’d seen and pretended no to.
Another lie. But Garrick was not solely culpable for this one.
I’d lied to myself. He’d attended to my every need in the week after the Devotion Gate.
Of course he’d seen the mark, the two unfinished triangles nestled within one another, inked on the inside of my thigh, halfway between my knee and the apex where my legs joined my body.
The mark could not be anything but intimate, placed as it was.
But Garrick had not asked me about it, and I had allowed myself to believe that he had not seen it.
“But how did you know what it meant?” I found myself hungry for the answer.
I’d been trying for so long not to let him have this part of me, not to want anything from him.
But I needed to know—was this another thing that had been stolen from me?
Did Maura somehow know of my bargain with the Dark God?
Was even this, the darkest part of me, not my own?
Garrick’s gaze dropped to my legs. Standing, the mark was just about at his eye level. Not that he could see it through the thick drape of my skirt.
“It is the same symbol, repeated twice,” he said, his wrist twitching. “I knew it meant you were bound to another. I guessed, from the way you invoked his name… but I did not truly know until he appeared to me after the Memory Gate.”
I searched those words for the lie. There had to be one. But if there was, I could not find it.
I was no longer fully supporting my own weight.
At some point, I’d leaned against the wall behind me.
I slid down it, my arms still wrapped across my breasts, until I was seated across from Garrick.
The space was so small, our legs nearly touched, even with our feet planted and knees raised.
But I did not let myself touch him. He’d told me no. I had to respect that.
I dropped my head back against the wall, letting my eyes fall closed.
I did not need to anchor myself here. Even my hyper-aware senses were deprived by our current predicament.
The lack of light. The closeness of the space.
We were cut off from the chatter of the court above us. It was just Garrick and me.
I could hear the beat of his heart. Smell the wine and cinnamon scent that clung to him even now that we were no longer traveling. At night, I could bury my face in the perfumed sheets and ignore it. Not ignore it. Survive it. But here, now, with him so close… my breath shuddered out of me.
“I do not begrudge you your bonds, Koryn,” Garrick said softly. A suspect heat pricked at the back of my eyes. I kept them tightly closed. “Not to Isanara, nor to the Dark God. None of it changes how I feel about you.”
And how is that? my soul cried out. “You would give me up so easily?” Fuck, I hated the hurt in my voice. The vulnerability. More burning. Eyes. Closed.
The air around us changed, suddenly charged.
I tried to keep my eyes closed against it, but the primal need for survival forced them open.
Everything looked the same—a dark, enclosed room, a tumbledown of mortar and stones blocking our way, Garrick sitting across from me, our legs wedged oh-so-carefully so that we did not touch.
Except that Garrick’s expression was different. Fierce and intense.
“Never,” he growled, that ring of brilliant turquoise light flaring around his pupils.
“If I could compel you to believe it, Koryn, I would not hesitate. I will never abandon you. I betrayed your trust once, before I knew what we would be to one another, in order to save my mother. Even so, even with everything that was at stake, it was a mistake. I regret it. But I will never regret you. Your bonds are part of who you are, and I love every part of you. I would never ask you to forsake a piece of your soul.”
The charge in the air was Garrick’s magic. He had the power to compel minds, yet he could not compel mine. If he could, maybe all of this would be easier. Would I be happier if he could just force me to believe him?
But happiness was not my goal. Happiness was not reserved for people like me, and certainly not for witches. Nor deserved. Both of my lives had proved that to me.
“Do you understand me, witch?”
I swallowed, the motion of my jaw sending a shiver through my shoulders.
My jaw was trembling. That did not stop Garrick.
He leaned forward, as close as he could get to me with our tangle of legs, still refusing to touch me.
But the demand in his eyes was clear, his jaw locked into place, no smirk in sight.
“Garrick,” I breathed, half-whimpered. The intensity of it filled me up, flooded over me, but I did not want to anchor myself to escape it.
“Tell me that you understand that I will never leave you and that I accept every part of you. I claim every part of you.”
He could claim me, but that did not mean I claimed him back, a rebellious part of myself insisted.
And yet… he saw me. He knew the Midnight Coven.
He’d cared for Isanara. He had watched me interact with the Dark God, and I’d told him about the depth of that connection.
Instead of responding with jealousy, Garrick had staked his claim to all of me.
Isanara. The Dark God. He wanted it all.
And I did not have it in me to fight him.
“I understand,” I breathed.
For a heartbeat—his, not mine—I thought that our stalemate would shatter. That Garrick would pin his body over mine and finally give in to the touches that we both yearned for. I’d been with the Dark God, but Garrick… I did not feel complete without him. My body wanted them both.
But Garrick did not touch me. He rocked back to where he’d sat before, his body hitting the wall and causing our entire little chamber to shake. I dug my fingernails into my arms, waiting for the wall of debris to crumple. But it held, and we were still trapped.