Chapter 59
KORYN
If I had not already visited the Dark God’s realm, I would have thought this a fitting description.
Lines of fire crisscrossed the sky. The mountains were now green, only their tips capped with snow.
Clusters of wildflowers had sprung up all around the valley.
And people everywhere were screaming. Not just the humans.
I saw pointed fae ears in the melee as well.
Some tried to collect their belongings. Others ran with just the ragged clothes on their bodies.
Tomin and Varian stood at the doors of the temple, now thrown wide open, ushering people inside. The curse was lifted. The temple was no longer reserved for supplicants.
They scrambled over each other to escape the ominous fire overhead and the bloodshed.
Ramkael, the God of Devotion, stood over Maura’s body, blood dripping from his battle axe. Even from several yards away, where we’d appeared, I could see the gaping wound in her chest. She was not moving, not even slightly. No one could survive a blow like that. Not even a witch.
Maura, the head witch of the Midnight Coven, was dead. Murdered by a god himself.
Garrick tried to shove me behind him, but I’d gained enough strength to resist.
“This is what you felt,” he said.
“Yes,” I gasped.
The shift of power within Velora now that Maura was dead was immense. The absence of the curse, unburdening us, only made it worse. But now that the initial wave was over, I could at least breathe without pain. A strange, heavy sensation remained between my shoulders, weighing down every movement.
Ramkael stared at us. I stared back.
“Why are the gods doing this?” I asked.
Plumes of fire reached out of the sky, incinerating a line of meager tents along the far edge of the valley. More screaming. So much screaming. Velora was free of its icy curse, only to suddenly be bathed in blood.
Ramkael did not answer. My mind began to throw out its own explanations.
The gods were not content to let Velora live free of the curse. They would rain down fireballs rather than let the people of Velora live in peace.
The bulky, heavily-tattooed god tilted his head up to the sky. “This is not the work of the gods,” he said. Then he disappeared, in the same strange way that Syleris did.
I did not understand. I looked up at the sky, trying to see what the God of Devotion meant, but my eyes were too blurred to make out any details.
Garrick’s grip on my arm tightened. He gasped. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my eyes enough to see—the outline.
“Those are dragons,” Garrick said.
The shape overhead came into focus. The two large wings, four legs, a snapping tail. My familiar was their perfect miniature… and there were dozens of them in the sky above the Unknown Gate.
Isanara, did you know they were coming?
She was at my side, but she did not answer. Her head whipped around, tracking one line of fire and then another. One dragon and then another. Oh gods… was Isanara’s family somewhere up there?
The questions I’d tried to ignore found their answers.
The talismans had been runed for protection. The fae king knew about the existence of the talismans and both he and Maura were desperate to create them. Protection.
Protection from the fire-breathing terrors tearing through the sky above.
A cold breeze punched through the hazy air, thick with dragon smoke now. I knew what was coming this time. He pulled Garrick and me into that pocket realm, the bit of darkness where our consciousness manifested our bodies but our physical forms remained behind.
I did not care what version of me this was. I launched myself into his arms.
“Syleris!”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed against his chest. Garrick was there, right behind me. He gripped Syleris’ forearm, resting his head atop mine as my bondeds exchanged a hasty kiss.
“We have only seconds,” Syleris said. He pulled back enough to get a view of my face.
“Koryn, you are now the head witch of the Midnight Coven,” he said. The weight I’d felt between my shoulders settled even deeper. I’d known. Hoped it wasn’t true. But that power that left Maura… it was now in me.
Syleris lifted his gaze up to Garrick. “I am sorry I could not save your sister from her fate. Koryn will need every possible ally.”
“Dragons—all of this has been about fighting the dragons,” I interrupted.
“Auri—she said that the reason Garrick and I were taken from the gate was Isanara. I thought it was because she made me powerful. But it was because she is a dragon. The talismans were not protection from the fae; they were protection from the dragons.”
Syleris nodded but added more. “Not just the dragons. But the gods.”
My stomach flipped. “You are a god.”
“I am your god.” He looked at both of us as he said it. “I belong to you. But the others… they will sacrifice every living thing on Velora in their battle with the dragons, just for the chance to reign over the ashes.”
Gods… dragons… I had not been thinking on this scale. I’d been sick with worry over Maura and the fae king, when the real enemies… I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
Syleris cupped my face between his hands. The blue striations in his black eyes pulsed and gleamed. How many of these tiny details were Garrick and I the first to know? Would this be the last time we would see them? Is that what he was trying to tell us?
I covered his hands with mine in a grip stronger than I’d ever commanded before.
Syleris did not flinch. “Your power never faded, Koryn, because I did not want it to. You are bound to me because you are different from all others. I created the witches to be the saviors of Velora, but they were poisoned by the power I gifted them. Everyone except you.”
“Me.” I shook my head. It was too much. To think, to believe, to shoulder.
“I have no right to ask it of you. I know that. But Velora needs you, Koryn.” The Dark God shuddered. His entire body—strong, resolute, unflappable—shook with the weight of emotion as he confessed. “I never expected to love you. Either of you.”
My heart surged within my chest as the three of us crashed together.
For one exquisite moment, I was lost in their embrace. Syleris’ mouth was on mine, and Garrick held our three joined hands tightly against my chest. I was safe here, with the men I loved. But then that moment ended.
Syleris eased himself away. His last words were for Garrick.
“Protect her,” he commanded.
“Always.”
The darkness whipped us away and deposited us back in the hellscape of Velora after the curse. In the seconds we’d been away, our bodies remained unscathed. Isanara’s twitching tail told me she’d stood guard over us, even though she still refused to speak to me.
But another figure had appeared.
He stood atop a pile of discarded debris, looming over the crowd trapped in the valley. There were only so many ways through the mountains, and there were just too many of them to all make their way out at once. All around us, sections of the tree line burned, further hemming the crowd in.
The King of the Fae looked over the heads of the humans and fae running for their lives, and smiled. Margeaux stood at his side.
He lifted a single hand.
“Listen!” He could not compel them all… but with his magic freshly infused by the lifting of the curse, he managed to halt the two dozen bodies nearest him in an instant. It was enough to send a ripple through the crowd. They did stop, and they did listen.
“It is she! The wicked witch of Velora! She is the one who destroyed the talismans I created—the ones that would have kept the dragons away forever! It is she who lifted the curse and brought them back!”
Me. The hand he’d lifted was now pointing at me.
My power recognized the threat and surged. Even with the bright sun overhead, I could see the blue glow of my coven mark burning between my eyebrows. Hundreds of sets of eyes turned, found me, and began to move. To riot.
Garrick pulled the bow from its sling and nocked an arrow in one fluid movement. I’d never seen him wield the weapon, but his proficiency spoke for itself. He was going to kill his father.
“Kill her!” someone screamed.
“Burn the witch!” yelled another. More took up the chant.
The king released his hold on the crowd, and we were surrounded. Garrick did not have a clear shot at the king any longer, and the crowd was too close. He swung it back into place over his shoulder and drew his sword.
Get on my back.
I stumbled at the authority in Isanara’s high-pitched voice.
You… no. Riding a dragon is... insanity. A death wish.
If you stay in this valley, they will kill you.
“What is she saying?” Garrick demanded. He recognized that I was speaking to Isanara at long last.
Less than a minute, then the crowd would be upon us.
“She wants me to get on her back.”
Garrick’s eyes went so wide they consumed the entire upper portion of his face. But then his silver brows notched down. I recognized that expression. Calculation. Garrick the Red, the bounty hunter. “Do it.”
I grabbed his arm. “Garrick.”
I cannot carry you both. Not yet.
She was still an adolescent. One day, she would be the behemoth I’d seen in the Unknown Gate, but not yet.
Garrick did not need a mind connection to Isanara to understand. She had grown considerably since she’d chosen me as her witch in that snowy mountain forest.
I held tighter to Garrick’s arm and began to summon my power. A wall of ice would hold them back for a few minutes at least. Then it would melt in the heat from the fires overhead and all around. But I could reinforce it. I had a new, deeper well of power now.
“I won’t leave you,” I said.
But Garrick disentangled my hand from his arm. He gripped both of mine between his to keep me from grabbing him again. “Koryn, there is no choice here. If you die, I die too. But beyond the Lifebind—there is no world for me without you in it. Syleris is safe. Let me see you to safety, too.”
“I cannot lose you.” Without either him or Syleris, there was no future.
His familiar smirk curved the corner of his mouth. “I am very good at surviving.”
Now. We go now.
Garrick gave me a little push.
They were the hardest three steps of my life. I grabbed onto one of Isanara’s spikes and threw my leg over her back, careful to keep from impaling myself. She gave me less than a heartbeat to adjust my seat before she launched into the sky.
This was what I had truly been training for when I climbed through the mountains. My thighs shook, but they gripped the shimmering lavender scales of Isanara’s back. I was wedged between two spikes, preventing me from pitching forward or back. I just had to hold on.
The sky was thick with smoke. I heard a roar—much deeper and louder than anything that had ever come out of Isanara. A plume of fire shot by us. Isanara dove to avoid it, then swept upward with a beat of her wings.
She swiveled her head through the air, just like she did on the ground, and roared. But instead of sound, plumes of ice spewed from her mouth. Not a dragon of fire, but of ice.
Two more beats of her wings, and we were past the ridgeline.
We flew over the mountains, away from the fire and carnage, and both of the men I loved. But I already knew, no matter how long or how far we flew, we would not find safety anywhere in Velora.