Chapter 44
KORYN
“I will keep watch.”
I tripped over my own feet, even without Isanara there to weave between them. She certainly wasn’t there to catch me. I bit back the thought that tried to reach out for her, to reassure myself that she was well. Now was not the time.
Garrick’s arm was there, ready. Good, because it was the other male in my life who’d made me trip.
“That is not the plan,” I said. We were outside the treasury. The corridor was deserted. This was our best chance to find the talisman. If it were not here, I did not know what our next step would be.
Syleris wore a mask—not just the white one that stretched across his face, but the implacable expression that he favored when he pretended he did not have feelings. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the red brick wall of the corridor, right outside the treasury.
“I already have one obstinate teenager to deal with,” I seethed.
He ignored me.
“This is because of earlier.”
Garrick sighed heavily. “Argue aloud so I can hear you.”
Both of them knew me too well.
Syleris swiped a thumb across his exposed bottom lip. I crossed my arms over my chest, the sleeves of my gown swishing along the floor. Distraction would not work. Not right now.
“The talisman was created by your coven. It is tied to your power. You are best positioned to feel it,” Syleris said.
It was the same reasoning I’d used to deduce that my blood would be enough to break the blood spell that Maura and Elodie had placed on the salt to keep me in my cell down in the bathhouse. Except—
“You are the creator of the witches. Our power flows directly from you,” I countered.
“I am the creator of all witches. Even the ones who have left Velora.” He jutted out his lower lip. “I can feel the tug of all their power, all the time, all at once.”
The emotion that speared through me was sharp, hot, and entirely unwelcome.
I was his bonded. I was the one tied to him.
But every witch who’d ever been made had a place in his mind?
There must be thousands of them. Maybe he could not talk to them the way he did to me, but they were still tied to him.
They had a piece of him. It was one thing to share Syleris with Garrick.
It did not even signify; they were both pieces of me, but with another witch—
This was Syleris’ doing.
My cheeks burned with embarrassment and rage.
He’d whipped me into a frenzy, magnifying what should have been a momentary dark turn in my thoughts. Before I could get the accusation past my lips, he caught my arm and tugged me against him, kissing me.
It was fast and hard. I bit the tip of his tongue, but Syleris just chuckled against my mouth.
“Do not be jealous, sweetling.”
“I hate you.”
“That, I heard,” Garrick sighed again—as if he was the one inconvenienced. My emotions were already high because it was my death date. Now we were headed into the treasury to find and destroy the talisman and give Velora its best chance of survival. And Syleris dared to mess with my head?
Garrick tugged on my arm until I was well away from Syleris, and then inserted himself between us. I dug my fingernails into my own palms. I stopped just short of making myself bleed. I didn’t want to ruin Iravena’s hard work with blood.
Inhale. Hold. Count to four. Exhale. Hold. Count to four.
My power was calm. My temper wasn’t.
I took in the doors of the treasury for the first time.
They stood well above my head; only a couple of feet above Garrick’s, and were covered in a gold-wrought locking mechanism similar to the one on the door to Maura’s chambers.
It made sense. The treasury was also located in the center of the spiral, low down in the core of Balar Shan’s primary tower.
“Why aren’t there guards?” Or had Garrick already dispatched them?
“Hubris,” Garrick said. He studied the mechanism. “This is a blood lock.”
I lifted a brow. It did not look any different than the one I’d already destroyed.
Garrick took my finger and guided it along the intricate gold design. “This is the Penruddock crest.”
It took me a moment to see it, among all the other branches and swirls of gold.
But as Garrick swept our hands along the curved border, it came into focus.
The pentagonal pennant shape, containing a stylized bird in flight and a flower I wasn’t sure about.
A poppy, maybe. Penruddock was the family name—the one Garrick would have been entitled to if he were legitimate.
“I could destroy it the same way I did before.” But even as I said it, my power reacted. The ice that should have spread from my fingertips stalled. It coalesced inside of me instead of streaming out. There was something wrong.
“The fae are not strangers to blood magic, either,” Garrick said. “He’s sealed the door so that only blood of the Penruddock line can open it.”
“He trusts you all that much?” I did not trust Garrick’s siblings even when I had them firmly in my sight.
“He thinks he has us all under his control,” Garrick said.
There was something he was not telling me about his siblings; I could feel that. Margeaux could freeze and die, for all I cared. But Garrick cared about Alize, whether he acknowledged it or not. He’d tried to send her away from the Seven Gates months ago. I did not know how he felt about Edmund.
Garrick leaned down and pulled something from inside his boot. A knife. He swiped it across his palm before I could comment, then lifted his hand so he could smear blood across the crest wrought in gold.
For a moment, I thought we’d have to ask Syleris to intervene. He could appear and disappear at will, it seemed. Maybe he could appear himself behind the doors and do the searching. I did not care if he had to filter out the influence of thousands of other witches. That is what I told myself.
But thankfully I was saved from such an act of desperation.
A low hum filled the air. The sound seemed to come from the gold itself. It quivered, blurring slightly in my vision. Then there was a snap, and the mechanism jumped into action. The lock was open.
“Whatever we take from here, he will know. We will not have much time to act,” Garrick warned. “Another enchantment.”
“That would have been useful information before we made this plan.” I pushed on the door. It gave easily under my fingertips. “How long?”
“There is a lot here. That helps us. A few days, I think,” Garrick said.
As usual, no comment from Syleris. Not when he could offer insight, a solution, or otherwise be even slightly helpful.
I squeezed Garrick’s arm. “Your mother is ready.” I’d checked on her myself that morning. I knew Garrick had, too.
“Are you?”
To leave Balar Shan? To enter the final gate, knowing that it would change everything? If I lived, I would see Velora reborn. If I died… Garrick would, too. And my afterlife with Syleris would begin much sooner than I imagined. I would not die. I would not lose Garrick. Somehow.
“Yes,” I said. For better or worse.
We stepped together into the treasury. I gasped loud enough that Syleris surely heard it, even from outside in the corridor, where he was supposedly on watch.
The footprint of the room wasn’t much larger than the antechamber where Maura had tortured the fae woman.
But this was not a series of connected rooms. It was a hollowed-out core.
Stairs made of the same red-orange brick as the floors and walls led up to two more floors laden with treasure.
Gold. So much gold. But also jewels on display, walls of ancient texts, and statues taller than Garrick gilded with gold and gemstones.
I swallowed hard. “How much time do we have?”
“It’s a few hours to midnight.” Garrick sighed.
“That won’t be enough.”
I was wrong. In every possible, conceivable way, I was wrong.
It took less than an hour for me to know, with complete certainty, that Maura’s talisman was not in the king’s treasury.
My power was completely dormant. Even as my frustration rose, it remained at a steady ebb in my veins. Damn Syleris for teaching me to control it. Two months ago, I would have encased half of the fucking room in ice. It would not have helped, but it might have made me feel better.
“We will go over everything again,” Garrick said. But I could hear him grinding his teeth even from the other side of the room.
I sank down to sit on the stairwell between the first and second floors, after taking my third lap around the tiered perimeter and feeling nothing.
I pressed my palms against my eyes, mask long discarded. “There is nothing here. Damn it all to the Dark God’s eternal hell.”
“You called?”
Fuck. Me. I had not meant to summon him. But he could at least confirm what I already knew with certainty.
“Tell Garrick it is not here,” I said without lifting my face from my palms.
“As I said before—”
I shot to my feet. “Enough out of you,” I hissed, immediately regretting asking him for any kind of help.
Garrick glanced between the two of us—slowly, so we could both see. Both of their masks were still in place.
“The talisman is not here. We need a new plan,” Garrick said when Syleris and I continued to glare at one another. I glared. Syleris looked perfectly content. As if he were not the one who’d sent me on this wild chase.
Fuck that. He could pretend he did not care, but I knew the truth. I’d seen the way he cupped Garrick’s face. I’d felt him inside of me and then around me, giving me what I needed before I even knew I needed it.
I flattened my hands against the hips of my gown, rubbing the intricate embroidery with my palms. “Syleris, you have to help us. You can see what Maura’s darkest desires are.” I was dangerously close to begging.
His lush lips pressed into a line, the dimple on the upper one flattening out. “Which is how I knew she had created the talisman.”
“But to what end? If she desires to keep it secret, can’t you see where she hid it?”