Chapter 35
KORYN
I thought I’d feel some relief returning to the Seven Gates.
They were my purpose. Lifting Velora’s curse meant regaining my place in my coven and saving my family.
Except I no longer wanted to return to my coven, and I was increasingly convinced that the curse being lifted would not save Velora. Not the humans, at least.
If I lifted the curse, plants would grow again.
The birth rate would recover. Kyrelle and her father would fish the sea and find their nets full for the first time in more than three centuries.
But the fae would regain their magic, and the witches their full power.
Covens would return, and Maura would reign as not just the head witch of the Midnight Coven, but the head witch of all covens in Velora.
At least Maura and the fae king could not enter the temple.
The only ones allowed in were supplicants who had passed through the previous five gates.
Alize, Garrick, and I. Isanara stayed by my side.
Even Varian, the priestess who had let me be kidnapped after the Memory Gate, did not dare to try to separate me from my familiar.
She answered to the gods, and the Dark God was among that pantheon. Finally, he was of some use to me.
“I shall remember that the next time you beg for release.”
I ignored that comment, and the shiver that it sent through my stomach and then lower. The Dark God had not appeared to me physically since our last encounter. This was the first time he’d mentioned that what had passed between us might not be an isolated incident.
A dark chuckle caressed my mind. “You will be my wife.”
“Arranged marriages do not require consummation,” I shot back. It was rare that I got a thought together and aimed it back at him before he could simply read my mind. But I did not get even a second to revel in my accomplishment before—
“Ours does.”
If the conversation was meant to distract me from the gate lingering ahead, it failed in the next moment.
The Peace Gate looked anything but peaceful.
We’d left the temple in a single file line, just like every gate before.
Varian in the lead, then Alize, me, Garrick, and the acolyte, Tomin, in the rear.
Of all the gates, it most resembled the Mercy Gate, situated in the heart of the continent, at the center of the divine spiral, in the old capital of Canmar.
Just like then, the temple was behind us.
Though instead of the dilapidated city, it sat at the base of the mountains.
And instead of a wall of ice, there was a wall of rock.
At least this time I didn’t have to climb it.
An iron gate covered the entrance to the cave. It was as tall as the nine-sided temple behind us, and just as wide. Inside awaited Pava, the second of the doomed lovers, the Goddess of Peace.
I wondered what sort of terms she was on with the Dark God. Ramkael and Xyta, the twins, had appeared together at the Devotion Gate. Was there any chance that the lover herself, Pava, would take pity on me as the bargained, bonded lover of the Dark God?
“I cannot interfere.”
Was that regret in his voice? A slight wobble on the first word? I expected him to laugh into my mind and deny it. But the Dark God was silent. I was on my own, once again.
Varian came to a stop, the rest of us mirroring her like well-behaved ducklings.
Another creature eaten into extinction by Velora’s desperation.
Isanara wove between my legs. Pants had appeared in my wardrobe in Balar Shan.
I was thankful for them. A much warmer, much larger, hand encased my own. Garrick.
I was not alone. Not anymore.
Which made what was about to happen even more dangerous.
If I died, so did Garrick. So would his mother.
Kyrelle would have no hope. Isanara… I hoped she would live on without me.
But I’d never known a witch with a familiar, let alone one who’d lost one.
Isanara was an ancient, magical species in her own right.
She was a child. She would choose to survive. Live, I willed her.
No one is dying today, she huffed into my mind.
Varian wasted no time with pleasantries. She’d already paraded us around inside the temple to give thanks at each of the altars to the gods.
“You enter in the order you stand,” she said. Then she stepped back, Tomin moving as her shadow.
There was nothing for me to do but watch.
Alize didn’t hesitate. Of the three of us, she was the only one who’d entered the Seven Gates for no purpose but her own.
Garrick had told me—the second-born child of every fae family must attempt the Seven Gates.
Garrick was technically the second-born, after Margeaux.
But Alize was the second-born legitimate child of her house, and entering the gate was a declaration of her claim, her place in the line of succession, her place in the world.
Only one person had ever made it to where we stood now. No one had ever successfully conquered the Peace Gate. It was very likely that one—or all—of us would not live to see the end of this day.
My stomach flipped. A cold breeze lifted my hair away from my shoulder. I did not shiver.
I watched with Garrick’s hand around mine and Isanara’s horns pressing into my thigh as Alize approached the Peace Gate. It swung open without her touch, and she disappeared beneath the mountain.
What would we face in the Peace Gate? Of all the gates, it was the one that seemed most foreign. Even the Unknown Gate scared me less; I did not understand the Dark God, but I knew his face. I was alive because of his power. But peace? I’d never felt peace in my life, living or dead.
“You have a visitor,” Garrick breathed against the shell of my ear.
Soft footsteps approached from my left. Garrick was a wall of heat on my right.
He pressed a kiss to my hair and then faced forward again, eyes on the Peace Gate. He couldn’t truly give me privacy here. But he’d let me have my space while still standing at my side—just like he’d promised, again and again.
There was still something between us that was not quite right.
A piece that I had not been able to hand back to him.
Maybe I had never given it in the first place.
But those thoughts were for later. For now, I let myself sink into the warmth he offered, the anxious power in my veins calming at his closeness.
Tomin was silent once he arrived at my side. He wore his customary emerald robes, his wild mop of dark curls creating a boyish halo around his head. But he seemed older. He did not immediately smile. Guilt curled in my stomach.
“I thought you might be avoiding me,” I said quietly. Garrick would hear every word. But Varian, with her human hearing, was not entitled. “Or angry with me.”
Varian had been the one waiting at the door of the temple.
She had served Alize, Garrick, and me meals around the blood fountain and later showed us to the dormitory.
There were just two rooms, with one bed each.
Garrick and I shared. Tomin had only appeared this morning, at the rear of our procession.
The corner of his mouth tracked up, but not as far as it had a few months ago.
“Not angry. Worried. You were gone a long time.” He exhaled.
I recognized the careful control behind it.
He was trying to master his emotions and his features, the same way he had taught me to do.
“There are no other priestesses or acolytes here. All of the preparations fell to us.”
I chewed the inside of my lower lip. I did not bother trying to hide my emotions. What did it matter now, here? “It was not my choice to stay away.”
“I guessed that.”
Tomin did not turn his head, but both of our gazes slid past the Peace Gate to a copse of evergreens.
Beneath them, a sinister group waited. The Midnight Coven—Maura, Elodie, and Auri.
The fae royal family—the fae king, Queen Parry, Edmund, and Margeaux.
We’d traveled on horseback from Balar Shan to the Peace Gate.
Until I’d seen them waiting for us in the courtyard, I had not even known that there were any horses left in Velora.
Let alone enough to carry a group of our size.
But I should not have been surprised. The fae hoarded everything.
Magic, food, riches. Why not horses? Not all of them could shift and fly through the sky like Garrick.
The anger I’d felt that moment in the courtyard surged anew.
A dark part of me wanted to freeze the creatures to death, just so that the fae would not have them.
The stronger part wanted to freeze the fae themselves, even knowing I would die in the attempt.
My power wasn’t rational. It ebbed and flowed with my emotions.
I sucked in a breath and exhaled it slowly, counting as I did. Just like Tomin had a few moments before. Just like he’d taught me.
Beside me, though, his breaths were shallow and fast. I glanced over my shoulder. Varian had not moved; her face remained implacable.
“Tomin…” I said slowly. I didn’t reach for his arm, not where Varian could see. I did not want to get him into trouble.
“I am sorry I could not do more,” he said in a rush. “After the Memory Gate.” His voice cracked.
I forgot to watch the Peace Gate for any sign of Alize’s return. The tremor in his voice… Tomin’s eyes were full of tears.
The gods had never granted me brothers. I was the youngest sister in my family and the youngest witch in my coven. I had no name for the feeling in my chest, other than… well, a word I was very uncomfortable with and had not yet given to Garrick, even. At least, not aloud.
My chest ached for him.
“We are all bound by the oaths we have made to survive,” I said quietly.
I thought of my own. Garrick’s. The blood of every supplicant who’d ever attempted the Seven Gates ran in the blood fountains in each temple.
They’d all made oaths of their own in a bid to survive.
One more hour or day or week. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
Tomin puffed up his cheek as he exhaled another slow, audible breath. “I wish that made me feel better.”
I laughed. “What do our feelings matter in the games of gods?”
He rewarded me with a smile. Not quite as wide as it had once been, but the corners of his eyes crinkled.
“Your exercises have helped. I have not lost control.” Not entirely, at least. Tomin did not need the details. He needed hope.
The notion of me providing hope to anyone was even more laughable. But Tomin, bless him, did not laugh. His smile softened. His shoulders relaxed a bit. Warmth filled my chest and stomach, and I did not even have to borrow it from Garrick.
I let the warmth radiate out into my limbs as I turned my attention back to the Peace Gate.
The physical iron gate had closed behind Alize.
She might not exit here. The Mercy Gate, the Justice Gate, and the Sacrifice Gate had all left us at a different physical location from where we entered.
I could not remember the Devotion Gate. Garrick had carried me injured and unconscious from the gate, and for many days afterward.
I knew that all around me, every set of eyes watched the gate. Waiting. Each with their own desired outcome.
Tomin shifted his weight at my side. He seemed to be working himself up to something. I held my silence. After a few purposeful inhales and exhales, he spoke.
“If they try to take you again, Varian will not intervene.”
There was no question as to who they were or what taking me meant. Garrick’s hand tightened around mine. We all understood.
I did not have time to explain to Tomin that I had no choice.
Not anymore. I couldn’t leave Maura to her own devices in Balar Shan any more than I could abandon the Seven Gates.
I had not taken an oath, but I felt the power of the covenant all the same.
Breaking Velora’s curse was not enough anymore; not if it meant returning power to the hands of those who would use it to hurt others.
I had to destroy Maura’s talisman. I could not allow her to have even a fraction more power.
If witches were monsters, then Maura was the thing monsters feared.
But before I could do any of that, I had to find fucking peace.
“First, I have to survive the Peace Gate,” I sighed. I was tired just thinking about it.
“You will,” Garrick said firmly. A command, not a suggestion.
Tomin’s smile returned, and he opened his mouth to speak, but the words never made it off his tongue.
The gates creaked open, and Alize stumbled out the exact way she’d gone in.
The same physical route. Everything else about her had changed.
She wore the same gold and tan clothing she’d worn through all of the previous gates, the ensemble that enhanced her brown hair, bright eyes, and luminous skin.
But her skin was no longer luminous. It had gone pallid, all the color drained from her face.
Her short hair pointed out in every direction, like she’d been tearing at it.
There were tracks of moisture down her cheeks.
She’d been crying. The infallible, untouchable Alize had been crying.
Was still crying, I realized.
A sob tore from her chest as she stumbled forward. A lone figure broke from the small crowd beneath the trees. It moved with incredible speed—fae speed. It certainly was not the fae king.
Edmund.
He caught her a few yards from the gate, close enough that we could hear the hushing sounds he made as he caught her. He gripped her forearms tightly to keep her upright.
“I’m sorry,” Alize sobbed, tumbling into her brother’s chest. “I… I’d seen what he did to Garrick and I… I had to stop it.
My Lifebind stiffened beside me.
“Alize, I am fine. It is fine,” Edmund was saying. His sister shook her head, her chest heaving with silent sobs.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it,” she said.
Edmund stared down at her. I could feel the intensity of it from where I stood. Then he pulled her in tight against his chest, her face disappearing completely beneath this thick cloak and muscled arms.
I did not know what any of it meant, and I did not get the time to piece it together. Varian replaced Tomin at my side, and though she said something, I did not hear it. I did not need to. I understood.
It was my turn to enter the Peace Gate.