Chapter 48
KORYN
My circumstances had not changed that much since my arrival in Balar Shan. I still sat cross-legged and almost naked on a hard floor. Tile or brick, they were both uncomfortable.
I was no longer alone. Isanara sat atop her hoard, muttering adolescent nonsense into my mind. Garrick rubbed circles on my back. Syleris lurked. Physically, on the threshold between the bedroom and Isanara’s dirty secret. And at the edges of my mind.
I was not scared anymore. But I was worried.
Maybe things were not quite the same.
Answers were laid out before me in a line.
A porcelain salt cellar embossed with gold.
Thankfully, empty of salt. A signet ring the size of a quail’s egg, but whose engraving was almost entirely worn away.
A sapphire and jade comb with golden tines.
And a dagger nearly identical to the one that Garrick and I had seen on display in the presence chamber more than a week before, with the strangely swirled metal blade.
I stared at the four objects. Four. Not one talisman. Four.
As I stared at them, my vision blurred. I’d only just managed to force my power back into submission. It was not like the training sessions Syleris had put me through, but without them, I knew I would have been in the fetal position on the floor, sobbing. Probably surrounded by ice.
My power was trying to protect me. The power in the talismans felt foreign, even though… it couldn’t be.
Garrick’s hand paused to massage the base of my neck. He could tell I was still struggling for control. Conscious I might be, but steady? Not even close.
I tried to look away from the talismans to give myself a moment of relief.
The amount of treasure stuffed into the small room was remarkable.
There were gold coins of every mint. Tiaras and crowns, though the diadem I’d wrested from Margeaux was conspicuously absent.
So much jewelry that someone must have noticed…
but if she took one item at a time, here or there, from every courtier…
This is what you’ve been doing all the hours you’re gone. Not foraging in the mountains or the forest.
Isanara blinked down at me from atop her hoard, citrine eyes glowing. I have been foraging in Balar Shan.
This is how you ended up with Margeaux’s diadem.
I ate that after a particularly difficult day of foraging. It was delicious.
I would not mourn its loss. Knowing it would not take another human life was a relief. It was one thing, at least, that I could clear from my conscience. But the knowledge did nothing for the pulsing pain in the back of my head.
The four talismans drew me back. They sparkled and gleamed. I imagined that if I closed my eyes, I might hear the spells they held whispering to me.
They were going to make me lose my mind.
Garrick’s hand slid down to the center of my back. He shifted his body, and with it, his attention, though his hand remained.
“Why couldn’t she feel the talismans?”
No one spoke. Syleris—
“Because she is a dragon, not a witch,” the Dark God said, his velvety voice floating in and filling the smaller room. “She knew they were powerful. But she could no more distinguish a spell cast a millennium ago from one cast a week ago.”
Garrick growled low in his throat. He had better control than anyone I’d ever met. But it was possible that the power of the talismans weighed on him as well. “I meant Koryn. They have been through this door the whole time.”
Syleris continued in that unbothered voice. Not monotone, but not… feeling. “The dragon has magic of her own. She shields her hoard.”
I did nothing of the sort, Isanara protested.
“She is young and orphaned. It was probably instinctual, not intentional.”
She huffed in my mind but did not argue with the explanation.
I felt Garrick move, looking from Syleris behind us back to where Isanara rested, surrounded by gold and gemstones.
“You seem to know a lot about dragons,” Garrick said.
It wasn’t quite an accusation. What would he even be accusing Syleris of?
“I am immortal,” Syleris answered. He’d been here before the curse, and he’d keep on living forever even if we did not manage to break it.
But I could not think about that now. Not with those four objects pulsing with power in front of me, making my head throb.
“Four,” I said, speaking for the first time since regaining consciousness. My voice was raspy. My whole body ached. But I kept going. “You didn’t say there were four.”
Syleris was silent. That wasn’t fucking acceptable anymore.
He must have heard the thought in my mind.
“I have told you before that I have limitations,” he said. There was almost emotion in it.
My lower lip wobbled. I sank my teeth into it to stop, but then my body decided to shake instead. Garrick squeezed my shoulder with one hand and reached for a talisman with the other. He held up the salt cellar between us.
The porcelain was painted to depict a cityscape. A castle overlooked an orange-gold valley with a tower in the middle and smaller buildings in between. The mountains in the background were gilded with gold. On the bottom was the inscription.
“What do the markings mean?” Garrick asked. They were carved into the porcelain itself, their style totally different from the rest of the salt cellar’s decorations.
“To create a talisman, the witch must inscribe it with a rune. Consecrate it with a spell, then charge it with power. Channel her power into it, essentially,” I explained.
My voice grew stronger as I spoke. The power was still there, loud and demanding.
But having a purpose helped. I pointed to the straight line with two diagonal lines extending from it in parallel to one another. “This is the rune for fire.”
Garrick set the salt cellar down and picked up each of the other talismans in turn, finding the runes and showing them to me for identification.
The signet ring— “Earth.”
The jeweled comb— “Water.”
And the dagger— “Air,” I confirmed. “Each of the four binds of witch power.”
“So, Maura made a talisman for each of the four binds?” Garrick was trying to put together the pieces because I was too fraught to do it myself.
I managed a nod. “Yes, but… no.” My power swirled inside of me. It was not any one sensation that I could put a name to, just a wrongness. I had not touched the talismans before. But I forced myself to, then, one by one, turning them over in my hands until I was sure.
I set down the last one and turned to look up at Syleris. There was so much I wanted to infuse into that look. But I did not need to. He knew exactly what was in my mind. And my soul.
“Do you want to explain?” I asked.
Syleris’ only acknowledgment was his words. “A witch’s power is determined by her death. When she resurrects, her new power falls within one of the four binds. She is only able to cast spells within that bind, unless she allies herself with a sister witch.”
I turned back to the talismans laid out in a line on the brick floor.
“These two are finished.” I motioned to the salt cellar and the signet ring first. Then the two others, the dagger and the comb. “But these two have not been consecrated—no spell has been said over them. And they have not been charged. They are inactive. Little more than what they appear to be—”
Dessert. Isanara’s forked tongue darted out from between her fangs.
You cannot eat the talismans.
Wasn’t your goal to destroy them?
When there was only one, yes.
Had that plan changed? I did not think so. But there was still some part of this plot that I was not seeing. Not clearly. Not yet.
Garrick pointed to the dagger and the comb. “Why didn’t she consecrate these two?”
“Because she couldn’t.” I sighed. My throat was very dry.
Maybe some water would help ease the headache.
But I pressed on. We were building toward something, and I could feel the importance.
My power nearly screamed it. “Maura is fire-bound. Elodie and Auri are both earthbound. I am water-bound. And the air… I killed the only air-bound witch left in Velora.”
“When we made our bargain,” Syleris said. But we all knew. Both of them understood what I’d done, and they’d still chosen me.
A new sort of overwhelm threatened me.
Garrick cleared his throat. “The green witch told you that Maura was after power and protection.”
I did the same, trying to speak around the emotions. “Yes. These symbols here, beside the marking for the bind—that is a protection rune.”
Garrick hummed. “But why four? If they are so powerful… surely one would be enough.”
“Maybe now, with magic and power constrained as they are by the curse. But if we conquer the Seven Gates… who knows,” I said. I did not have an answer.
It was a good question, and one I’d been mulling. Along with one other. One that might change everything. But it was almost midnight. “We must find Auri. I think I know what is happening.”