Chapter 40
GARRICK
Sweat poured down my cheeks, but I did not stop. I should have opened the window or let the fire go out. I could not compel firewood to stop burning, but I could douse it with the pitcher of water in the corner. But I did not stop. I could not stop.
I swung the greatsword again, pivoting on my heel and landing heavily on my right foot. My arms ached with the effort. Hours had passed since Koryn left me alone in our room, Isanara at her side. I’d spent every minute with this sword in my hand, trying to drive away the memories.
I’d survived. Seven people hadn’t. Forgiveness did not mean forgetting.
“You are lagging to the left,” a silken voice observed.
I knew exactly where I was lagging. I always lagged on the left when I got tired. But it should not have been perceptible to anyone. Except maybe a god.
I spun back, the tip of the blade slicing through the floor-length curtains that covered the entire northeastern wall. The room was too small for this. But I did not stop.
“If I wanted input, I would train in the courtyard instead of a cramped bedroom,” I growled between jabs. I imagined the blade sinking into Amero’s gut. I hadn’t killed him with a blade. But I was trying very hard not to remember any of the exact events of that day.
The voice took shape in the shadowy corner of the room. The same leather pants, the familiar black vest. At least this time he had a damn shirt on beneath it. I was torturing myself enough. I did not need his muscles and that tattoo taunting me as well.
He drummed his long, elegantly tapered fingers across the mantle. “An opponent might help you drive away the faces that haunt you.”
I slammed the blade down into the ground. It sliced through the thick carpet and buried itself in the mortar between the bricks.
How did he know?
“You are welcome to join me. I’d enjoy stabbing you,” I snarled. I knew I was no better than an animal. I was a second from shifting. Maybe then he would leave me alone.
He only smiled. “I prefer to do battle with words.”
“Coward.”
He ignored the barb. The Dark God himself could not be insulted by puny half-immortals.
Except he was not the Dark God to me, not anymore.
At least, not only the Dark God. He circled the hearth and lowered himself to sit.
He propped his ankle across his knee, reclining easily in the wingback chair that had been my bed for nearly a month.
Elbow to chair arm, chin in palm. He tapped a finger against his lower lip. “If this is what making peace with your crimes looks like, I am thankful I’ve never been forced to such reckoning,” Syleris said.
“You do not have to torture us both. You and I do not have a bargain.” I ripped the sword from the ground.
I tried to rip the sword from the ground.
And again.
It didn’t move. Not a single damn inch.
“Would you like help, halfling?” Syleris purred.
“Stop.”
“A god can do what a man cannot.”
“Just stop!” I yelled. The sword came away in my hand. I did not stumble. I was too fast for that. I caught myself. I stood in the center of the room that had been mine since childhood, my chest heaving up and down, shoulders shaking with rage. Most of it was directed at myself.
Syleris put both of his feet firmly back on the ground. He stood. Stepped closer to me. Every movement was graceful, his beauty deeper than his physical appearance. His scent was like mountain air, fresh, but deceptively dangerous. It would be too easy to lose myself in him.
Another step closer.
I was shaking. But his movements were steady. He reached up and cupped my chin. He dragged his thumb over the stubble on my cheek. I tried to turn away, but he held me in place, his grip soft but solid. His message was clear. I was not going anywhere until he allowed it.
“You do not have power over me,” I said, even as my heart rate increased. If I had not been half-fae, I was almost certain the rapid pace would have killed me.
“Only what you give me willingly,” he said, leaning in closer. I knew what was coming. I could have jerked away. I should have.
Syleris brushed his lips over mine with more gentleness than the god of death and darkness should have had in his possession.
The second kiss had more pressure, but it was an invitation, not a demand.
An offer of comfort, in contrast with the sharpness of his words.
I did not deserve that tenderness. But I took it anyway.
I forgot to hold on to the sword, because I needed to hold on to him. His arms were solid enough to keep me in place. Not as thick as mine, but unyielding. It was the perfect word for him. He did not give an inch, and somehow, I was still grateful.
I dipped my tongue into his mouth, desperate to know if his taste matched his scent. It was better. Different than Koryn, or any lover who had come before. But perfect in his own right.
His tongue was just as long and skillful as his fingers. He curled it around mine with an almost serpentine dexterity. He was not human, and he’d never pretended to be. This man was a god, and he was not afraid to be every inch of what he was.
I pulled him in against me until our chests were pressed together.
I was soaked with sweat. It took only a minute before he was, too.
Could he have prevented it? Kept himself dry?
Apart? Probably. He was a god. He had never disclosed the length and breadth of his powers to me.
But when I moved my hand between us and spread my fingers across his chest, he was soaked with my sweat, too.
In that minute, I felt a thousand colliding emotions.
Need coiled in the pit of my stomach. Sex was an easy form of escape.
I’d seen him give it to Koryn, and I wanted it for myself.
I wanted to lose myself in him. He was steady and hard while I careened sideways.
Koryn had let me back in, but she kept an intentional distance between us.
With Syleris, there was no past to hang between us.
No past that belonged to us alone.
Betrayal. It was a betrayal to Alair in a way that loving Koryn never had been.
She was a woman. She could not be taken by the ancient darkness that had infected my first love.
Dark God’s hell, maybe Syleris could not either.
He was a god. But he was still a man, and feeling anything for him felt like I was forgetting the one I’d loved before.
I broke the kiss, rocking away. But Syleris kept his hand where it had slid to the nape of my neck, threaded through my hair.
“Deep breath,” he instructed.
My body listened to his command. He nodded as I did what I was told.
“Another.”
Again.
My cock was rock hard. My heart was about to burst.
Then the door opened.
Koryn made it two steps over the threshold. Her mouth fell open. Her eyes widened until the whites almost disappeared entirely. She reached for the nearest bedpost, knuckles whitening as she gripped it.
“You are both here,” she said. She blinked twice. She questioned whether she’d imagined the entire scene.
My instinct was to spring apart. But Syleris kept his hold on the back of my neck, though he shifted his stance so that our two bodies made an open triangle, ready to welcome Koryn in.
“Do you wish to join us, sweetling?” he invited.
She wore a thick velvet gown. But I saw the outline of her legs as she pressed her thighs together. My cock twitched. My heart reminded me that this was… I could not bring myself to call it wrong, even in my mind. But it could not happen.
I exhaled in measured increments as I reached up and disentangled his hand from my hair. “Syleris…”
Koryn’s eyes widened even more, the brown irises brightening against the black pupils. “Syleris?”
He shot me a look of pure annoyance. “That is my name,” he confirmed.
She looked between the two of us again, with renewed interest, and what I thought might be hunger. Whatever she saw, she dragged it back under control. The bedpost splintered, just a tiny bit, beneath the bite of her sharp-pointed nails.
“Syleris,” she said, trying it out. “I was getting very tired of calling you the Dark God in my mind.”
“I like being reminded that you worship me,” Syleris said. He lifted one brow in my direction as I nudged his hand away.
Koryn rolled her eyes. “If we aren’t going to…”
She was trying to kill me. I loved the woman more than I had ever realized I had the capacity to love another being, and yet she was going to reduce me to a mess of need on the floor.
“We aren’t,” I said through my teeth.
Syleris shrugged his shoulders and smirked. My smirk. A perfect imitation. Damn it all, I hated him. Except for when I didn’t. “I have other things to attend to, then—”
“No.” Koryn’s singular word held him in place. He was as lost to her as I was. He may be better at hiding it. Or he might not have admitted it to himself yet. But Syleris, the Dark God, was in love with Koryn.
I didn’t feel any jealousy. Compassion, maybe. More than a little heat. But no jealousy. She deserved to be loved.
Koryn released the bedpost. She’d gotten herself under control, without even realizing the force she exerted on the two of us standing in front of her.
“The king is angry with Maura. While we waited outside the Peace Gate, he reprimanded her for not moving fast enough,” Koryn said.
She might as well have thrown a bucket of icy water over me. She could have shot it from her fingertips. It was well within her power. But words worked just fine, too.
“He knows about the talisman?” The possibility turned the desire in my stomach sour.
“I do not think so,” she sighed, sinking down onto the edge of the bed. “I think it has to do with Isanara.”
Who was no longer at her side. It was a reasonable conclusion.
Her sister witch had told her that her familiar was the reason that we’d been taken after the Memory Gate.
The king did not tell me his plans; he had no reason to and never had.
But Isanara was a creature of legend. Dragons had been rare before the curse and disappeared entirely not long after it.
She was power in its purest form. Of course my father would want her for his own purposes.
Koryn sighed again, but I had no answer. She pursed her lips at our brooding and suddenly silent companion. “Anything to contribute, Sy?
“That is not my name.”
“Do you see how irritating nicknames are?” she asked with mock sweetness.
“I am pleased to see you so recovered from your ordeal in the Peace Gate, sweetling,” he countered.
I pressed two fingers to my temple. I had a new appreciation for Koryn’s annoyance with Syleris and me.
“Where is the dragon?” Syleris asked. He crossed his arms over his chest. It was casual—or trying to be. Interesting, that I was beginning to see the slight difference.
“Finding her supper. Do not change the subject,” Koryn sniped. “You can see someone’s darkest desires, the pieces of themselves they do not want anyone to see. What does the fae king want?”
I spun to face him. “You can do what?”
Syleris lifted the corners of his sumptuous mouth. “Worry not, halfling. I have already seen your dark heart. The raven is the bird of death. You were as meant for me as she was.”
Before I could respond to that, he turned to Koryn. “The fae king will stop at nothing to acquire the power he desires. He wants absolute dominion over this continent. That is all I can tell you.”
Koryn and I exchanged a look that Syleris surely saw. There was a double meaning to that last sentence. All he could tell us because it was all he knew… or because there was some other restraint that prevented him from telling the complete truth?
Syleris was playing games. Still.
Koryn made a sound of annoyance in her throat.
It was almost a hiss. She sounded eerily like her familiar.
“We cannot stay away from the Unknown Gate for long. If we do not destroy the talisman before we lift the curse, Maura will have an advantage over the fae forever. She is just as dangerous as the king. We are running out of time.”
She was right. We had to find the talisman and destroy it. Then we had to get back to the Unknown Gate. The last test—the one set by the god standing between us now.
“The Winter Tithe is only a few days away,” I said.
Koryn recoiled, her entire demeanor changing. Her worried frown transformed into disgust, her lips pressing outward, pupils contracting with outrage. “The fae celebrate the Winter Tithe?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Though not in the same way the humans do.”
I’d avoided the event successfully every year by hiding away with my mother in her room in the base of the tower. But not this year.
“The entire court is expected to attend,” I said. That would include Koryn and me.
She hated the idea. She was decent at hiding her expressions most of the time, but she did not bother to hide the disgust on her face.
Only the fae would have the audacity to subvert a human holiday created in response to the very curse they’d brought down on this continent and make it their own. But it was a chance.
Koryn’s fingernails were at work again, this time shredding the coverlet instead of the bedpost. “Which makes it the ideal opportunity to search for the king’s treasury for the talisman,” she admitted. “Fine. We have no choice.”