Chapter 33
GARRICK
It took everything I had not to tug her into my arms and cover her mouth with mine.
She’d offered her body, not her heart. I’d refused to accept one without the other. A decision I’d been cursing myself for ever since I made it. But the way she’d responded to my demand—one I had not even intended to make—gave me hope. The most dangerous emotion of all.
Koryn dragged in one breath, then another, her breasts heaving beneath the low cut of her blue-green gown. The primal, possessive part of me recognized that the shade was nearly the same as my eyes. Had she chosen it because of me, on some subliminal level?
There was that hope, again. Taunting. An hour ago, I’d have called it futile. But then she’d repeated back those words to me, and I knew she meant them. Unlike me, Koryn did not lie. At least, not consciously. Whatever lies she told herself, to protect herself… I exhaled, feeling my nostrils flare.
She’d closed her eyes again. We were in danger of losing the precious intimacy we’d gained in the last few minutes. I wanted to grab onto it, onto her, and hold it close.
If I could not be physically close to her, I could offer her my heart. I would offer it again and again, even if she never decided that it was worth keeping.
“I was ejected from the Memory Gate after reliving my own worst memory, just as Alize was,” I said. “If I appeared after that, it was some work of Zeph.” The God of Memory.
I paused as recognition passed over her face, though she kept her eyes closed.
It was one of her strategies for fending off the overload of sensory input.
I could not imagine what it must have been like to live a lifetime of human senses, only to be resurrected with those of a witch.
Had no one helped her adjust? Taken the time to care that she struggled?
I knew the answer to those questions. The head witch had seen her struggles as weakness.
There was not a single part of Koryn that was weak.
I did not need to know what had happened to her in the Memory Gate to know that.
“Believe me when I tell you that I have many memories that ought to compete for the worst in my life,” I said, using the fact that her eyes were closed to devour every detail of her face.
She always wore her emotions freely, but like this, she was totally unguarded, and I could savor her without making her uncomfortable. I could also watch her reactions.
“But I knew what I would see when we faced the Memory Gate. I knew it would be the moment that I saw you for the first time. Before that, you were hypothetical. I understood you only in the context of what it would take to save my mother. But when I saw you fight those two men in the street, when you spared their lives… I knew that I had made a mistake.” My throat threatened to close over those last words, but I forced them out because Koryn deserved to hear them, even if it hurt to admit.
Her pale throat slid. She scrunched her eyes together.
Fighting back tears. A wave of emotion. She lowered her chin, so slowly at first that I thought I might be imagining it.
But the soft flesh beneath her chin trembled.
She was fighting for control, again. If I reached for her, would she accept my offer of comfort?
She uncrossed her arms, spreading her palms across her bent thighs.
“I believe you,” she said softly.
It was not forgiveness. I did not deserve or need forgiveness. If she understood my devotion to her, if she believed my words… those were nearly as good. Maybe, just maybe, it was enough to move forward.
Her chin still trembled. Then, as I watched, she clenched her jaw. Her fingers dug into the crushed velvet of her gown, her fingernails carving out half-moons in the luxurious fabric. But her eyes were smoothed, no longer fanned by worry lines. She’d reached some sort of decision.
Cold tingled in my fingertips. The temperature of the room dropped in a way that made no sense for how small the space was and how close together Koryn and I sat.
Power.
As I watched, whorls of sparkling ice formed on the backs of Koryn’s hands. The long sleeves of her gown covered her arms, but a moment later they appeared along the exposed tops of her breasts, swirling upward along her graceful neck.
I yearned to reach for her. But the Lifebind on the inside of my wrist seemed to tingle, too. It told me that if I touched Koryn now, she might shatter. No matter how much I yearned, I would never put my wants above her needs.
I clenched my fists into balls against my own thighs, trying to summon the control that had served me so well for the past twenty years, but always seemed to elude me around my Lifebind.
Across from me, Koryn’s mouth opened, her breath forming a puff of cold air as the confession fell from her lips.
“I killed my sister witch.”
I held my breath. Commanded every muscle to be still. For months, we’d given each other mere slivers of ourselves. But now, Koryn was carving open her own chest.
“It is the reason I was cast out from my coven. I broke one of the sacred covenants. There are only three. And I broke one,” her voice cracked. “I killed McKean to save Kyrelle.”
I recognized neither of those names, but that was not important.
Koryn’s eyes were still closed. Even the hardest words were easier to say in darkness.
The tremble in her chin spread to her chest. This person, Kyrelle, was important to her.
Further proof of the heart whose existence Koryn loved to deny.
“The young woman who attempted to enter the temple in Canmar, before the Mercy Gate,” I finally said, when Koryn did not speak again.
She’d told me of her briefly, in the moments before the Sacrifice Gate as we watched the others meet their fates, though she had not given her name or explained their connection.
Koryn nodded. “She is my elder sister’s last living descendant in Velora.”
She was also the reason that Koryn had entered the temple. At least, in part. Her head witch had already made her offer by then, but would Koryn have accepted it? Yes, my aching heart told me. Her longing for acceptance was so great that she would have entered the Seven Gates eventually.
“You saved her,” I said. Both at the Mercy Gate, and before when she’d been cast out from her coven. But I did not make the distinction. If Kyrelle was the last member of Koryn’s family in Velora, it meant she’d been taking care of others for a long time. Centuries.
And she still questioned her own goodness.
“She came to the coven lands looking for me, desperate for another spell. She was captured, of course. Intruders always are. And then,” Koryn’s voice broke off. She opened her eyes as a tear escaped from the corner. My fingers ached for her.
“You did what you had to do to protect her.” I believed that, fiercely.
No matter what the covenants of her kind demanded, there was right and wrong, and three hundred years of death and evil had not managed to erase that distinction for Koryn.
Pride surged in my chest. It was a privilege to love this woman.
It would be my life’s goal, however long it was, to make her realize that.
Koryn dragged in a ragged breath. “My allegiance is supposed to be to my coven.”
“Because they have been so loyal to you?” I countered.
“The covenants demand it!” Her voice rose as the temperature dropped.
We could see every exhale. Koryn dropped her legs, straightening them out, taking more space.
“I killed McKean to save Kyrelle, and then I made a bargain with the Dark God to spirit her away before Maura could punish her for my actions.”
She stared directly at me, as if daring me to challenge her decisions, when all I could do was admire them.
“And in return, he demanded your afterlife,” I said in acknowledgement.
Koryn had given up everything for those she cared about. She’d given up eternity to save a mortal. The witches did not deserve her. I definitely didn’t.
“After the second death,” she said. “He can do nothing to hasten its coming. That was part of our bargain.”
But he’d shown that he was willing to interfere before then. A blast of heat spread down my back, despite the cold Koryn had created around us.
I’d meant what I said before. I would not try to separate Koryn from her bonded ones.
There was a Lifebind on my own damn skin.
I understood what it meant, the depth of it.
I could not sooner ask her to banish the Dark God than demand she cut out a piece of her soul.
He was a part of her, now. I wanted all the parts; whatever that looked like or meant.
The Dark God had given me his name. Syleris. Now I could not think of him as anyone else. He’d pulled me a little deeper into the tangled web, but my love for Koryn already had me ensnared.
If Koryn wanted to spend every night of her immortal life with Syleris on one side and me on the other, I would be more than satisfied.
The image pulled the heat from my spine lower, into the parts of my body where need lived, unattended.
My cock hardened. I shifted my legs. In this small space, hiding was difficult.
I could not hide from her, I decided. Not if I expected her to trust me.
I lowered my legs alongside hers. Koryn’s eyes flicked downward, instantly finding my arousal. Her pupils widened, her mouth softening a few degrees. She found Syleris and what he might mean to us as heady as I did.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said.
She nodded.
We stayed quiet for several minutes, the scrape of words over our vulnerabilities too tender to bear.
The cold ebbed as Koryn’s emotions softened and her power retreated.
I rolled my shoulders. The quiver of arrows strapped across my back created a strange angle as I leaned against the wall.
I leaned forward enough to ease the strap over my head and settle the quiver in my lap. I left the bow in place, as always.
Koryn’s eyes tracked every movement. My cock was still at attention. Her mouth twitched as I covered it with the rounded quiver, thick with arrows.
I watched the debate in her dark eyes.
“Tell me about the bow,” she finally said.
Another piece of myself. I tried very, very hard not to think about Alair.
His death was only one of a thousand reasons I had to hate my father.
It was also the one easiest to tuck away.
My mother’s plight was visceral and real, ongoing.
Alair was already dead. Nothing I did would change that.
I would have my vengeance. I’d promised myself that when I left Balar Shan.
But letting myself feel the weight of the bow and arrows was as close as I ever came to allowing myself to remember or grieve.
But Koryn asked. I’d promised her honestly.
If she wanted this part of me, I could give it to her.
I’d promised to love all of her parts; she had not given me the same.
But she needed something different from me.
She’d loved me before, I felt certain. To love me again, she needed to see the pieces that I’d hidden away.
I sucked in a breath. I could do this, even if it hurt. For Koryn.
“It belonged to my lover.” I held her gaze as I spoke. “His name was Alair.”
It had been almost two decades since I said his name aloud.
Koryn’s brows lifted, her lips puckering together.
She’d mentioned encounters with females in the past; I had not been so forthcoming with my own preferences.
But as I spoke, her eyes softened. Her tongue caressed her lower lip.
I could see her fitting this new piece of me around those she already knew.
Her leg moved; just a tiny bit. We still were not touching.
But just enough to let me know she was there with me. That she saw me.
“He was a human-fae bastard, like me, and the son of a minor lord. He was taken into service in Balar Shan when his mother died. I met him when I first came to Velora.”
I waited for the lightning bolt of pain to sear through me. I’d avoided thinking about him for so long. But Koryn had asked. And if we were showing one another our wounds, this one was mine.
Koryn moved carefully. Anything else in this close space and we would be crashing into one another.
Each motion felt like it lasted a thousand years.
A fae lifetime. She drew her knees back up.
Braced her palm against the wall behind her.
Levered herself forward on her knees and crawled across the floor of the small space until she rested on her knees beside me.
“Was,” she said softly.
She skated the back of her hand along the curve of my jaw, slow and gentle. Tender. The moment was so fucking tender my heart threatened to implode in my chest.
I did not deserve this, or her. But I’d take it and never let go. Never again.
Her hand reached my chin. She hesitated, as if unsure what to do with her hand next. I’d said I would let her set the pace, but I could not resist. I reached up and curled my fingers around hers.
Koryn’s eyes tracked the motion, but she did not protest or pull away. “What happened to him?”
My jaw worked beneath our joined hands.
“The king executed him,” I said.
Koryn’s eyes flared as her fingers tightened around my jaw.
“We will kill him together,” she said. I felt it for the vow that it was, as real as the Lifebind inked on our wrists.
Together. That’s what this moment was. Trapped in Balar Shan, at the Court of Lies, and in this caved-in room. But we were trapped together.
I wanted desperately to touch her. Her lips were right there, her body close enough that I could feel each breath. But this understanding between us was new, and fragile, and too precious for me to risk with impulsivity.
That did not mean I was going to let go of the hand she’d given me.
With my other, I reached over my shoulder and eased the bow from its sling.
The string caught in my hair as I pulled it over my head, but I kept tugging until it was free, settling the bow in my lap atop the cylindrical quiver.
Koryn’s eyes were on mine, though, as if she could not quite convince herself to look away.
Gods, if she kissed me now, I’d stay in this collapsed cell forever.
A tingle of cold pricked the back of my neck. I ignored it.
The intensity between us built until Koryn finally tore her eyes away. She dropped her gaze to the bow in my lap. I was not disappointed. How could I be, after all that she had given me today?
“The bow was his,” I said as she stared down at it. She reached out a hand, but stopped short, curling her fingers suddenly. “An inheritance from his human mother. It is fae-made. Enchanted. It always finds its mark.”
Koryn’s head snapped up, her gaze finding mine. Her eyes were no longer soft. They were wide, disbelieving, almost panicked.
Her voice shook as she spoke. “Not fae-made. Witch-made.”