Chapter 43
KORYN
My anxiety notched higher with every step up the spiral toward the center of Balar Shan. The bells stopped ringing, but music poured from the presence chamber through the swirl and spokes of the tower.
Garrick held my hand tightly against his arm, his fingers a constant and calming anchor. Syleris loomed over my other shoulder, a fraction of a step behind.
The fae courtiers who’d avoided me for weeks now filled the corridor, jostling for entrance to the masquerade. But none of them touched me, not with Garrick on one side and Syleris on the other.
Dark God be thanked. Truly.
“You are welcome,” Syleris’ dark voice rumbled in my mind.
I ignored him and hoped he would return the favor—for once.
Even without the press of bodies, the flood of noise and sound and sensation nibbled away at my composure. But it was more than that. I could hold on to Garrick’s hand, take a few measured breaths, and wrestle back control. That at least dulled the edges.
But it was the wrongness of everything around me that crawled beneath my skin and refused to go away.
We reached the top of the spiral. The center. Where magic and power coalesced.
Where magic and power were wasted on frivolous opulence.
“The humans fear the Winter Tithe. They gather their families together in one room for warmth and safety on the longest, coldest night of the year. They spend precious fuel to keep the fire burning high all night, in an offering to the gods, asking that they might live to see another year.” My voice shook.
The painted ceiling had been enchanted to show a clear night sky, each constellation glowing a slightly different hue.
They moved with the music in a sensuous dance that the real night sky could never have managed.
The dais was festooned with night-blooming flowers.
Had Auri lent her power to this? Or were there fae here with flora gifts?
This was what they spent the precious magic remaining to them on, while the rest of Velora died.
“And the fae do this,” I said.
Garrick’s face was grim. “This is just the beginning. The tradition is to generate warmth through as many physical matings as possible.”
Syleris was conspicuously silent.
Garrick had mentioned glamours… but it was not difficult to tell the courtiers apart. At least, the ones I was already familiar with. I easily picked out the royal family. Princess Margeaux was dressed as a harpy. How fitting.
But the costumes and masks gave the illusion of anonymity.
That fit with what Garrick said… politics did not matter tonight.
Only having as much sex as possible, with as many people as possible.
Who did not matter. That was why they wore disguises—so they could fool themselves into thinking that their actions did not have consequences.
I leaned into the places where my hips pressed against Garrick’s side. He should have been surveying the crowd, but his intense cerulean and clover eyes were focused on me, his jaw ticking away with agitation.
I had to get myself under control. I was angry. But we also had a purpose. With a mighty effort and a lot of chanting of silent mantras, I schooled my features back to neutrality. Garrick did not believe it. That did not matter, so long as the rest of them did.
He darted a glance over the top of my head. Over my shoulder. To the dark presence lingering just behind me.
“I will be back,” Garrick said.
He released my arm, and though I knew he had to go, I couldn’t help my small gasp at the loss. It was part of our plan to get into the treasury. He knew all the routes, and he’d tell us when the way was clear.
The courtiers kept their distance after the spectacle with the salt and ice.
Good. I needed less attention on me tonight, not more.
But even though no one touched me, I could feel their presence.
They whispered to one another, their voices rebounding off the curved walls.
Some of them had doused themselves in artificial scents to enhance their costumes.
A woman dressed as an orchid—a flower I had not seen in hundreds of years—floated by in a cloying cloud of perfume.
My power hummed beneath my skin. Not enough to worry about, not yet. I knew the warning signs now. By the time the whorls of frost appeared on my skin, my power was difficult to pull back. But I was not there yet.
The confluence of bodies made even the vast presence chamber heat up. I was a frost witch. Ice, real or metaphorical, flowed in my veins. But my cheeks still felt flushed.
A cool breeze slipped beneath my hair, down the nape of my neck, and across my collarbones. I recognized what—and who—it was. He’d been silently hovering since Garrick left.
“Dance with me.”
What an absurd proposition. The dance floor—just the center of the circular room, a swirling eddy that moved and glided around the dais—was even more packed than the perimeter where we stood.
“Do I have to?”
Letting him touch me gave him power. Yes, I’d let him take me in the throes of my despair and confusion.
That was about release. Garrick had ensured I had plenty of release every single night since we’d returned from the Peace Gate.
But letting Syleris put his arms around me for another purpose?
It would be too easy to get swept away. Even if that sort of distraction sounded like the next thing to heaven at that moment.
“You want to.”
“Just for tonight, can we speak aloud?” I did not want to spend any more time in my own head than necessary. He must have seen my distress. And for once, he decided not to actively contribute to it.
“Yes,” Syleris said simply. He no longer hid behind me. He was at my side, hand extended in open invitation.
Why did he try so hard to stop me from hating him?
Worse—what if he wasn’t trying at all?
One hand in mine, cupping my palm. Distinctly different from the way Garrick always tangled our fingers together. Still a perfect connection. The other hand at my waist, drumming out a pattern with his long, elegantly tapered fingers against the layers of soft flesh beneath the velvet.
Syleris did not speak at all as he swept me out onto the dance floor.
He did not speak into my mind as he led us deftly through the swirl of fae courtiers, lending me his otherworldly grace with each step.
Nor did he speak aloud as my body moved against his.
We were not the only ones in a close embrace.
Garrick had said that was the point of this night.
But despite the hard planes of the male holding me, my mind was elsewhere.
Far away, long ago, on a frostbitten night in a dark forest.
I stared at the gold and silver brocade pattern embroidered into Syleris’ vest.
“It is my death date.”
This winter solstice marked three hundred and seventy-seven years exactly since my resurrection.
His chest moved up and down. “I am aware.”
From one angle, the pattern looked like leaves. From another, distorted stars. It was easier to study his vest than to let myself feel. “It makes me…” I felt nothing. Everything. Unmoored. “I don’t know.”
Syleris stroked his thumb along the back of my hand. “You don’t have to tell me. I can see it all. Feel it all.”
As much as it was an invasion, it was also a relief.
He could see the mess that was inside of me, and still he did not turn away. Still, he chose me as his forever. He saw the darkness, the deep desires I tried to hide even from myself. Maybe it was because evil lived inside of him, as well.
I’d made peace with my crime against Rylynn inside the Peace Gate. Could I make peace with the darkness inside of myself, as well?
“I died on the longest night of the year. Maybe I was always meant to be a witch.”
Syleris hummed. I felt it in his chest. He did not release my hand or my waist. But some impulse or silent communication let me know that he wanted me to raise my chin and look at him. His eyes were waiting. Black, yes. But striated with crooked lines of blue that throbbed with power.
“You were meant to be mine,” he said.
I did not know if I believed in fate or predestination. But in his arms, I could not argue the truth of those words. It was their stark, unyielding truth that gave me the courage to ask the questions that had burned in my mind since the Dark God began to open himself to me.
“You are the Dark God. You created the Unknown Gate. You were party to the curse. Doesn’t this opulence bother you?”
Syleris’ gaze went distant, over my shoulder, but not to the crowd of other dancers and onlookers. He went to another time and place. Maybe even another world.
“The fae have not changed,” he finally said. “I did not expect them to.”
“Then why cast the curse in the first place?”
“Because there were no better choices.”
His eyes softened, but he still did not look at me. His mouth was a new shape. Not quite a frown, but heavy. He looked older than ever before, even though he was an immortal. He looked… guilty?
“What is waiting for us in the Unknown Gate?” I asked softly.
He heard me, even over the crowd and the music. Yes, that was guilt in his eyes. I swallowed back the emotion that clogged my throat—fear.
“I wish that I could tell you, sweetling.”
My breath stuttered in my chest. “How can you not know? You created it.”
“I did not say that I did not know. I said that I cannot tell you.” Syleris fixed me with an intensity that I’d thought only Garrick could muster. He was trying to say a thousand things with a single look, and I had no prayer of hearing them all. “Not even gods are all-powerful.”
What was powerful enough to coerce a god? I wondered. But not for long. I already knew the answer. I’d experienced it not once, but twice.
A bargain.
Syleris was bound by a bargain—but to whom, for what reason… that I did not know, and he could not tell me.
But he would have. If it were possible, I believed he would have told me. He did not want me to suffer. He lo—
“Do not mistake my desire for balance as goodness,” Syleris said aloud. It was not a snarl. He was always much too composed for that. But there was a warning in those syllables as they scraped out of his throat.
He’d been in my mind. Hearing my thoughts even as I thought them.
Balance. Maura had spoken of it before, yet she sought to destroy it by creating a talisman to give witches precedence over the fae.
I did not want the fae to have more power, either.
But if I had to go through all Seven Gates, then at least the witches and fae would check one another’s power and magic once it was freed.
Balance was an excuse. Syleris could read into my mind, but I had no window into his. That did not change my opinion, and because he was privy to my thoughts, he knew it.
I lifted my brows in a challenge that he could avoid but not ignore. “I wouldn’t dare.”
His nostrils flared, his eyes flashing beneath the edges of his white mask.
This time, I tightened my hold on him.
But just as he opened his mouth to speak, a wide, familiar hand landed on the small of my back.
Garrick pressed into my back, pinning Syleris’ hand between us. Desire jolted through me, but I did not get long to savor it.
“The king has planned some sort of spectacle at midnight. Everyone is expected to attend. He will look for us,” Garrick said.
The heat that had built so quickly between my legs quelled. “What is he up to?”
“Nothing good,” Garrick said. “Our time is now.”
I nodded, even as I continued to pin Syleris with my stare. “We are not done with this conversation.”
“Yes, we are.”
I’d argue with him later. I slipped from his arms into Garrick’s. “Let’s go.”