Chapter 44 #2
“It would be convenient if my power worked exactly the way you wanted, wouldn’t it, sweetling?
” Syleris crooned. But it was a defense.
I knew it was. It was all in the way he said my name—not my name.
The sobriquet he’d saddled me with, even when he knew I hated them.
But I did not hate it when he called me sweetling.
Except when he said it with so much condescension.
“What is the point of being bonded to a god if you cannot help us?” my voice shook, a second from accusation. From saying something I could not take back.
Syleris blinked. Through the mask, I imagined I could see into his soul through his blue-black eyes. He was like me—a creature made for darkness, but who sought the light. I felt certain of it. He could choose.
“I can make myself valuable to you in other ways,” he purred.
Anger rose, and this time my power rose with it. I knew it was only because it was him I was angry with. He whipped up my worst impulses. He wanted to distract me. This time not for my sake, but his own.
I threw my hands up and turned to Garrick. He’d monitored the entire interaction with keen interest, but he had not intervened.
“You reason with him,” I said.
Garrick didn’t quite smirk. The moment was too tense. But the tilt of his mouth was almost a smirk, and the familiarity of it made my knees weak. “I would do anything for you, witch, but you ask the impossible—”
All three of us stopped talking at once. We all heard it. God, fae, or witch, all of our hearing was sharp. Even when someone was trying to be quiet.
One set of footsteps, creeping down the corridor outside of the treasury. They were too slow. A random passerby would have been walking at a steady pace, rather than inching along. And... stumbling?
I glanced at Garrick. His own brow was furrowed, confusion blurring the ring of cerulean into the field of clover to create turquoise in his irises.
I half expected to look for Syleris and find him gone. He often chose moments like this to abscond to the Dark God only knew where. Quite literally.
But Syleris remained, and he’d used the moment of distraction to inch closer to me. I stepped away emphatically. I would not let him muddle my mind with wayward caresses. Not when we were about to get caught. Not all of us could just disappear.
Unlike our friend in the corridor, I moved without making a sound. And the person in the corridor was not a friend.
We’d left the doors ajar. The three of us moved in silent concert. I encased the hinges in ice to capture any squeaking. Garrick nudged the door just enough to look out.
He eased himself back. “It is one of Edmund’s guards.”
We’d been followed.
It had always been a risk. Garrick and I were hardly inconspicuous, and with Syleris, our trio could hardly be missed. But I’d hoped that most of the courtiers would assume we’d gone back to our room after making a requisite appearance to appease the king.
“Can you compel him?” I asked Garrick.
He inclined his head. He would send the guard away, and we would leave the treasury as we found it.
At least we would not have to worry about alerting the king.
Though there was a twinge of disappointment in my stomach.
More than a twinge. I’d felt so certain that the talisman was here—that we were close to escaping the rancid stasis of Balar Shan.
The bumbling in the hall continued. Was the guard drunk?
A soft yelp echoed off the walls.
I grabbed Garrick’s arm. He let me nudge him aside so that I could see—
The person who’d followed us was not a him. And it certainly was not a guard.
She wore a long, silken silver skirt and a stylized doublet complete with epaulets on the shoulders. But that was where the similarity ended.
Her mask was silver as well, made of metal to look like chain mail. But even with it on, I knew who she was. It was the woman who’d thrown the salt. Her name appeared from the recesses of my memory. Cala.
My hand was still on Garrick’s arm. “That is not a guard.”
He frowned in confusion, trying to move around me. But Cala was nearly to the treasury doors. She was weaving on her feet, but even a drunk was unlikely to miss the fact that the treasury had been breached.
I didn’t hesitate. Unlike the woman Maura had tortured and killed, Cala had already proved herself dangerous. She’d followed us down here. She was putting all of Velora in jeopardy.
It was an easy decision. Maybe I’d become a bit too comfortable with the darkness inside of me.
I’d already encased her with ice once. But that was too distinctive. She’d know it was me who attacked her. I had to be subtler.
It took only a few seconds for her movements to become even more uncoordinated. She lurched to the side and tried to grapple for the wall, but it was too late. She lost consciousness, her head colliding with the brick wall on her way down.
She crumpled to a heap on the floor.
There was no more need to hide in the treasury.
“Did you kill her?” Syleris asked, nudging her with his foot. He looked only vaguely interested in my answer.
“No. I froze her blood to a slurry. It is moving so slowly that she could not maintain consciousness.” I was rather proud of the application of my power.
Garrick had the presence of mind to close the treasury doors behind us.
His blood had been absorbed into the gold locking mechanism.
There was no remaining visual evidence of our visit—other than the prone woman on the ground.
The one that my Lifebind was staring at with an intensity usually reserved for me.
“What is it?”
Garrick’s frown deepened. “You should not have been able to see that.”
I looked down at the woman, trying to figure out what he meant. Her guard’s costume was a little less obvious at this angle, but she was still clearly female.
“What do you mean? It was plain as…” But Garrick had not seen a woman in a costume. He’d seen a guard. “Oh.”
“It was a glamour,” I said, understanding clicking into place.
“Yes,” Garrick said slowly, looking between me and the prone woman on the floor. “I was only able to see it once she was unconscious and lost control of her magic. Do witches use glamours? Is that how—”
I shook my head to stop him. Garrick watched intently as I slipped my fingers down the front of my bodice and withdrew the tiny green stem, perfect despite the fact that I’d had it stowed away between my breasts where no one could see.
A disbelieving laugh bubbled out of his chest. “How?”
“Someone slipped it into my cell with the tea leaves when I was imprisoned in the bathhouse.” I’d kept the four-leaf clover on my person ever since.
Garrick had said that most of the courtiers would use glamours at the Winter Tithe, but I’d easily recognized everyone—not because of my own astute awareness, but because of the clover.
“I have never actually seen one,” Garrick admitted. “You don’t know who gave it to you?”
“Not Alize,” I said. Garrick made a face; she hadn’t even been a possibility in his mind. “Auri, maybe. I haven’t asked her.” I nodded back to where Cala lay. “What are we going to do about her?”
Syleris nudged her again, harder than was strictly necessary. She did not stir.
“She followed us here with the intention of separating the pair of you,” he said. He could read her misguided, dark intentions even while she was unconscious. That was discomfiting. “She wishes to make her offering to the gods with Garrick.”
Fae bitch.
“Can you make her forget?” I asked my Lifebind. Mine.
“The halfling is difficult to forget,” Syleris interjected before Garrick could answer.
Garrick rolled his gaze upward. I did not think he used the same counting methods to calm himself that I did, but he was doing something to meter his temper. Syleris enjoyed torturing both of us.
“That is not how compulsion works,” he said. “I can compel her to think of other things, but the distraction is temporary. Eventually, she will remember coming down after us. Whether she remembers anything else… depends on how hard she hit her head.”
“Then let’s ensure we are not here when she wakes up.” I threaded my arm through Garrick’s. Syleris took up his place at my shoulder—but not before I saw him give Cala another not-so-gentle nudge with his foot.
It seemed I was not the only one who did not appreciate the woman’s sexual designs on Garrick the Red.