Chapter 53
GARRICK
She looked impossibly fragile from the sky. I knew that she wasn’t. She’d proven it to me again and again. In Balar Shan, she had proven it to everyone. I did not care about anyone else. I cared about her.
A pair of sultry blue-black eyes flashed in my vision. But the flash was only the tip of my wing as I banked to circle down and land.
Syleris was gone, and there was no telling when he would return, especially now that we were out of the castle. I would honor his last entreaty because it aligned with my own priorities. Priority. Koryn.
It was not because I missed him or wished that he was with us.
I shifted in the air, my wings expanding into arms, feathers absorbing and reforming into skin and clothes. The elongated black talons were the last to disappear, retracting back into my fingers.
Koryn watched me with wide eyes. She’d only seen me shift once before today, when Maura had forced it outside of the Memory Gate. Whether she found it beautiful or grotesque, I did not know. She did not offer an opinion.
I shook off the ice that clung to my clothing, as it had to my feathers. It was still snowing. At least in my human form, I was within the shelter of the trees.
“We will reach the Unknown Gate by tomorrow evening. I imagine they will feed us and then send us through,” I said. “Unless they have tired of waiting for us.”
Scouting had been my stated purpose for soaring overhead rather than walking at Koryn’s side. I’d flown high enough to see where we were within the spiral-shaped mountain range and to verify that we were not being followed. Not yet, at least.
But I’d also sensed that Koryn needed the solitude. She kept one hand on Isanara’s back at all times. The usually difficult dragon must have sensed her witch’s need, because she did not join me in the skies despite the cold slog that the snow drifts demanded.
“Varian seems to value protocol above all else,” Koryn said, frowning at the mention of the priestess even though she was the one who’d spoken her name. She shook her head slightly from side to side before refocusing her eyes. “Should we camp here?”
We’d hiked straight through the night and into the next day. Our ceremonial clothing from the Winter Tithe was in tatters. We needed a fire and food. Luckily, I could see to both.
We picked out a sheltered spot beneath the branches of an evergreen. Koryn started digging through the thinner layer of snow.
I shrugged out of my quilted surcoat and draped it over her shoulders.
Koryn scowled up at me. “Only until we get the fire going. I will not die of the cold.”
Neither would I, I wanted to counter. At least not for a while. But the distant look in her eyes kept the words inside. An hour later, we had a fire, a bed of dirt dug out between the tree roots, and scrambled eggs I’d pilfered from a nest while flying earlier in the day.
Koryn scooped another bite up with her fingertips.
We had no utensils. We’d been woefully unprepared for our flight from Balar Shan.
I should have known better. I had made my way in Velora for nearly twenty years as a bounty hunter, and part of my success was founded on preparedness.
Always being aware of the worst-case scenario and planning for it.
But I’d allowed myself to be distracted.
“I am sorry,” I said as Koryn took another bite of bland eggs.
She chewed slowly. “Not up to your usual standard,” she agreed. “Does eating eggs count as cannibalism for you?”
I sputtered, spitting eggs all over the front of my linen undershirt and across the snow before us.
Koryn almost smiled.
We lapsed into silence again. We finished eating and melted a bit of snow to drink.
I took one last walk around the perimeter of our meager camp, collecting a few extra pieces of firewood before returning to the nest we’d made beneath the tree.
Isanara was sprawled in a crescent moon shape around the fire, no more than a foot from Koryn.
The dragon lifted her head in my direction, blinking her citrine eyes at me expectantly.
While I was gone, Koryn had laid out all four of the talismans.
We were done sitting in silence.
I folded myself into the space next to her, careful not to disturb the four items. If they had any particular relevance, I had not been able to work it out. A salt cellar, a signet ring, a dagger, and a jeweled comb. The only thing that seemed to bind them together was the inscriptions.
“The king knew what she was doing all along,” Koryn said, frowning.
She picked up each talisman and examined it carefully. I looked too, though I had no desire to touch them. I had been all too happy to turn them over to Koryn’s keeping. Thankfully, my mother had equipped her Winter Tithe gown with pockets.
The king had known about the talismans. He’d known about the fae woman’s murder—an attempt to create an air-bound witch to create a fourth talisman.
There had likely been more murders that Koryn and I did not know about.
But none of it answered the question, which Koryn asked after she set down the final talisman.
“The talismans were not a secret. But then why create them?”
I rubbed the back of my hand over the day-old stubble on my chin. “I have been thinking about that, too.”
Koryn’s frown shifted to a glare. She glowered down at the talismans, as if her displeasure might scare them into revealing their secrets. It was as good a strategy as any at this point.
“I keep looking for something I might have missed, or thinking of some other meaning for these runes. But the spell that is said when they are consecrated directs the talisman’s function, and I did not hear the spells.
” She paused to sigh, her whole body moving with the force of her exhale.
“Maura must have lied to him. She must have convinced him that the talismans would be mutually beneficial in some way. You did not know what the runes represented. How would he?”
It could not be that simple. “My father is not that na?ve.”
“Or Maura is more cunning than even we realize,” Koryn countered. But the deep divot between her dark brows informed me that she did not believe that, either. At least, not enough to trust it as a full explanation.
We needed Syleris. He was the one who’d sent us after the talismans in the first place.
Koryn’s hand dropped into her lap. She sat cross-legged, the voluminous skirt of her gown giving her legs plenty of room. Her fingertips skimmed over the inside of her thigh—right where the two nested chevrons marking her bargain with the Dark God were inked in the same deep blue as our Lifebind.
She missed him, too.
How had this happened?
Koryn dropped her head onto my shoulder. “You are beautiful when you shift,” she said quietly. “Thank you for letting me see.”
It was too much. The ache in my chest I did not want to acknowledge, the weight of what we’d left behind and what came next. And my love for her. It filled me up, smoothed all the jagged edges that I’d formed over years of trauma and repression.
I tugged her into my lap with her back pressed against my chest.
Koryn squeaked in surprise, but settled immediately when one hand cupped her breast and the other slid to her knee. I stroked the outside of her thigh until she relaxed her legs in front of her. Then I nudged them apart.
“Isanara hates it when we do this,” Koryn moaned as I kissed my way from the shoulder of her gown up to her ear.
“She can go play in the woods if she wants,” I said. I had to have Koryn now. I just… had to. Nothing either of us could do would fill the void created by— “I need you.”
The words came out raw and honest.
Koryn wasted no time. She shifted herself up so that she could pull her gown out of the way.
I stopped kneading her breasts long enough to free my rigid cock from my trousers.
In the next second, she was pressing down on me.
I guided the head of my cock through her layers of warmth until her pussy sucked it in with a satisfying pop of wetness. I almost came inside of her right then.
Hands on her hips, I lowered her down on my cock.
The fit was even tighter than usual in this position.
Thank the Dark God I’d worked her so hard climbing the mountains between the Seven Gates, or she never would have been able to match my pace.
The position was different but perfect. I tugged the neckline of her dress down, freeing one breast from her corset and rolling the nipple between my thumb and forefinger.
“Garrick,” Koryn moaned. “Please.”
I kept one hand on her hip, supporting her rocking back and forth on my cock. As much as I worshiped her breasts, I would never deny her what she needed. I slid my fingers past the velvet folds of her gown to find her clit. But Koryn stopped me short, covering my hand with her much smaller one.
Her fingers guided me not to her pulsing center, but to the tattoo on the inside of her thigh. The intimacy of it undid me.
My cock twitched inside of her and, on the next thrust, began to fill her with ropes of thick, hot release. Any other day, any other time, I would have massaged her clit until she joined me. But instead, I pressed my thumb into the tattoo that marked her connection to Syleris and made it ours.
Koryn threw her head back as her climax overtook her. I cradled her against my shoulder, pressing wet kisses to her cheek as we both rode out wave after wave of pleasure. We sat there in silence for a long time, the only sound our breaths slowly evening out.
The fire was low when Koryn turned in my arms and buried her face in my shoulder. I laid her down with her back to the banked embers and held her all night. I could not see her tears, but I felt them against my chest. I only let one fall for myself.