No direction as to order or whether we ought to enter together or alone. Then she led her band of acolytes back through the mist.
Waiting would get us nowhere. “I will go,” I said.
“We will go,” Isanara corrected.
“We go together,” Garrick said at the same time.
I rolled my eyes at my bonded and my familiar, who did not even realize they were talking over one another in their hurry to protect me.
“And if I asked you to stay and protect my bonded?”I said to one and then the other— “I’d rather she didn’t enter the gate.”
“No,” they said in unison.
For fuck’s sake. “Fine.”
I turned to Alize. Garrick and Isanara I could tolerate. But I’d rather freeze off my own arm than expose myself to vulnerability with the treacherous fae female at my side.
“By all means,” Alize said, crossing her arms. She dropped her pack and pulled out a bit of chocolate she must have swiped from inside the temple.
That was the least of my reasons to resent her, though it certainly did not help.
“Are you awake now?”I asked Isanara as the three of us approached the cottage.
She answered me with a growl. Moody ass teenager.
Garrick already had his favorite blade in his hand, though he left the greatsword sheathed and still hadn’t touched the bow or its arrows. I checked the two blades in my belt as we walked, but I knew my most effective weapon lurked beneath my skin.
Thick emerald ivy curled over the cottage’s door, its color more verdant than I’d seen in Velora’s foliage in years. When we were halfway between the gate and the cottage, the doorway swung open and a blast of heat rolled over us. A buttery scent floated on the wind. Everything about the cottage was meant to invite us in. Maybe I should have reached for one of my daggers after all.
The sensations only intensified as we entered the cottage. The heat was hotter, the scent thicker. They pressed in on me, whipping my power up from a low hum to an anxious whine.
Without thinking, I reached for Garrick’s hand.
Once I saw who waited inside the cottage, I realized that was a mistake.
CHAPTER 54
Xyta tookthe form of my mother once again.
They stood before a massive hearth, the flames licking high enough to reach my shoulder. I could have walked into the stone mouth without bending. The rest of the cottage was bare, the scent an illusion.
The warmth was not. The flames threw off an unnatural amount of heat. From the corner of my eye, I could see the sweat already beading on Garrick’s temple. My own temperature remained steady, the frost rising in my veins to counteract the brutal heat. But that was not the only oddity. As I watched, they shifted color. They were at once blue, then bright gold and red before shimmering purple. Beautiful and dynamic, like Isanara’s scales. But while I felt drawn to every detail of my familiar, my instincts warned me against those enticing flames.
“You are looking well,” Xyta said, and though they’d met Garrick at the Sacrifice Gate as well, I knew their greeting was aimed at me.
I lifted my chin. “I did not expect to see you again so soon.”
“You owe me two sacrifices,” they said, crossing my mother’s arms across their chest.
“I did not imagine that gods were so given to mortal vices like impatience.” I forced my hands to remain at my side, but my fingers curled in on my palms. “This is not the Sacrifice Gate,” I reminded them.
Xyta smiled, apparently delighted by my impertinence. “My twin is always happy to share.”
The flames behind them surged, transforming into a vivid red as another figure emerged.
Ramkael.
The God of Devotion, doomed lover of Pava, the Goddess of Peace, and twin to Xyta, the Deity of Sacrifice.
