Chapter 34
KORYN
“I thought I knew every ancestor.” The words came out garbled, but it was the best I could do. My chin trembled; my arms shook. The only steady part of my entire body was my hand, where Garrick’s warm palm covered mine.
It could not be true. It was absolutely impossible.
And yet, the truth was right there before me, in Garrick’s lap.
How had I never noticed it was the same bow?
Because I had not seen it in more than three hundred years, my mind reasoned.
Garrick never took it off, except to sleep, and when he did, I was always more occupied by my baser needs.
Garrick’s hand tightened over mine. He pulled it down from his face and into the warmth of his lap. I was vaguely aware of the chill in my fingertips.
“Koryn, what are you saying?” Garrick said. His breath was warm, a caress against my cheek and throat, a sharp contrast with the cold in my skin and my soul. I shivered instantly.
I focused my attention on our joined hands and the warmth radiating there. My power was rising, but not as fast as before, not with Garrick holding me. I’d missed the connection between us.
The Dark God stirred up my power, stoked it, and taught me to wield it. Garrick gave me calm. His soul sang to mine. Together, they spoke to both sides of my soul. And in that moment, Garrick was exactly what I needed.
I was so tired of resisting.
It was his hand around mine that gave me the strength. I still trembled, but the words came out steadier than before:
“Three hundred years ago, I met my elder sister’s granddaughter at the edge of the Coven Lands.
By the covenants, I should have killed her.
Instead, I spared her life and enchanted her bow.
For the last three hundred centuries, I have watched over her lineage as they left Velora one by one.
I snuck away from my coven and cast spells to preserve them.
I did everything in my power… including killing my sister witch. ”
The ring of glowing turquoise light around Garrick’s pupils rippled as his eyes widened.
He must have a thousand questions, but he asked none of them.
He squeezed my hand tighter, held it against his chest. The rapid thump of his heartbeat against our joined hands seemed to echo until it filled the air around us.
My voice broke. “How?”
Garrick sighed, his whole chest moving. He carefully lowered our hands, not letting go. But with his other… he curled his fingers around the supple wooden lower limb and held the bow out to me.
It nearly broke me to reach for it. The graceful curves held too much meaning for both of us.
The bow was the symbol of the first time I’d broken the covenants, of my defiance, and of my shame.
My attempts—and failures—to redeem myself for what I’d done to my sister.
For Garrick… he had loved the man who owned this bow.
Loved him so much that he’d carried it for decades.
It was a blink in my immortal life, but in his human one, it was unfailing devotion. And he offered it up to me.
I slid my hand around the bow, cupping the grip with my palm and rubbing the pads of my fingertips reverently over the woodgrain. I could feel the power vested in it. My power. Even now, it whispered to me.
“His mother died in childbirth, and he was given to the fae,” Garrick said. His voice was quiet, private, as if even in this tiny, enclosed space, what he spoke of was special. It belonged to him. Alair belonged to him. And now he was sharing him with me.
Clearing my brain enough to think was difficult.
The block of ice that I’d formed in my chest to protect me from my own feelings was melting, peeling off in little curls of sparkling steam that fogged my mind.
But Garrick was in his thirties. If he’d known this Alair and had been of an age to fall in love with him, that narrowed the scope of my memories.
A woman formed in my mind. She was a distant relation of Kyna, Kyrelle’s mother, separated by many branches of the family tree. Her elder sister had married well and taken a ship across the sea. But the younger sister had remained behind, waiting for her own happily ever after. Until…
“They told me the child died, as well,” I said, my throat tight at the memory.
With her death, only Kyna had remained. Except that was a lie.
They had lied to me. Some fae monster had not only sired a child upon my sister’s line, but he’d stolen her child.
And then the fae king had murdered him. I had failed.
The warmth from Garrick’s hand was not enough.
My entire body threatened to turn into solid ice.
Every part of me hurt. “I should have protected him.”
“I should have protected him,” Garrick said. I recognized the pain in his voice. It was as deep as my own.
His fingers flexed around mine. Still, through this entire conversation, it was the only place we touched.
I knelt at his side, balanced on my knees with my bottom resting on my heels, gripping the bow between us.
Garrick’s back was pressed against the tumbleddown wall, one leg extended, the other bent at the knee.
He’d been so careful not to touch me, but I could not hold back anymore. I needed Garrick’s arms around me. I needed his hard, warm body to provide a shelter for my cold, soft one.
“Can I hold you?” Garrick asked softly.
He knew me as well as I knew myself. Better, maybe. It scared me. But it was also such a relief. He knew me, and he was still here, fighting for a place at my side. I no longer had the will to deny him.
“Yes.” I barely got the word out around the sob in my chest.
The space between us disappeared in an instant.
Garrick hooked his free arm beneath my knees, pulling me into his lap.
I maneuvered the bow alongside us, although I was not ready to let it go.
It was the last piece I had of him, Alair.
The only piece I would ever have, because I had failed him.
I’d vowed to protect my sister’s line, and I had failed.
I’d failed, and I hurt Garrick in the process.
I was the one responsible for his pain, for this loss.
If I’d protected Alair, Garrick would not have to hurt like this.
“No,” Garrick murmured against my throat. “No, no, no, no, no. You are not to blame.”
I did not realize I’d spoken aloud.
Garrick pressed his lips to my neck, then inhaled deeply where my hair met the back of my neck.
I could not handle the unspeakable tenderness.
Another sob broke free, and then another, followed by tears.
So many tears. I did not have the control to freeze them to prevent them from falling.
There was no need. Garrick was there, kissing them away, covering my cheeks with his mouth, murmuring words I could not even make out but that reached deep into my soul, nonetheless.
One hand still clutched the bow. But I freed my other because I needed to touch him, desperately.
Garrick did not resist me; he busied the newly unoccupied hand with gripping my thigh, massaging it through the thick fabric of my velvet gown.
I slid my hand up his chest, over his shoulder, down his bicep.
They were not light, skittering touches.
I needed to feel him, strong and true, beneath my hands.
Even as I did, as I fed on his strength, I felt the shake of his shoulders.
His face was still buried in my hair, but I did not need to see it to know that tears slid down his cheeks that matched my own.
I doubted that anyone had ever seen Garrick the Red cry. The intimacy and honor of it made my chest heave with pain once more.
This was grief.
Together, we grieved for Alair, the man we’d both lost. We cried for our failures, for the separation between us. For each other. It was a grief so primal it needed no words. One that had lived inside of me, untouched and unhonored, for hundreds of years.
I’d never had anyone to share it with.
Neither of us tried to quiet the other. We sank into it, letting the waves of emotion take us far out into the sea. As long as we were together, we could not drown.
Garrick kissed my face and my neck, small touches that left a trail of warmth where before there was only ice. I just kept touching him, letting myself feel the planes of his body that I’d only imagined.
I could not stay away from him, any more than I could the Dark God.
Garrick was a part of me, too, and it went much deeper than the Lifebind.
I loved Garrick the Red. I would love him for this life and the one to follow.
The Dark God would have to accept that in the same way that Garrick had accepted him.
There was no pinpointing the moment that it changed.
One moment, the kisses that Garrick pressed to my cheeks and neck were gentle.
But then one of them lingered, his tongue swiping over my skin.
I shifted against him, heat spiraling low in my belly and reaching down towards my core.
He lifted his hips in answer, his cock hardening beneath me.
My touches on his shoulders tightened more, my fingernails dragging against the embroidered quilting of his dark gray surcoat.
He slid his tongue along the column of my throat, and I hissed between my teeth. I answered by sucking his earlobe into my mouth and nipping at the soft flesh. Garrick croaked low in his throat, his entire body jerking.
“Witch,” he groaned in warning.
Whatever he was trying to warn me about, I did not want to hear it.
I slid my fingers up to cup his face so that he could not turn away from me as I feasted on his mouth. Wine and cinnamon met me, heady and rich. He tasted like coming home. Dark God spare me, I had missed him.