We’d survived. Both of us were alive on the other side of the Memory Gate.
Garrick pressed his forehead to mine, breathing me in the same way I was him. I savored the slide of his silken silver hair against my cheeks.
“I am so sorry. You should not have had to?—”
“It is done,” I said, cutting him off by pressing my mouth against his. I needed to taste him, to reassure myself that wewere both still here, still alive, if only for this moment in time, for the space of seven gates.
He caught my face in his hands, holding me in place as he drew away. His eyes met mine, the turquoise irises as intense as ever.
My throat tightened, but I did not try to talk. I let myself get lost in his eyes, the otherworldly mixture of clover and cerulean that formed a pattern as unique as any fingerprint. I’d never seen eyes like them, except… except maybe I had.
Gods, my mind was a frazzled mess. I was misremembering memories that did not even belong to me.
“I am so sorry,” Garrick said again.
I nodded, releasing my grip on his chest to curl my hands around his wrists. I leaned into his caress where he cupped my cheeks.
I could never return to my coven. But if limited time remained before I was summoned to the Dark God’s side, I wanted to spend it with Garrick. For as long as the Seven Gates would allow.
“It was my choice,” I choked out. And in the end, it had been an easy one once I realized how I truly felt about him. “I would make it again, because despite everything that is going to tear us apart, I lov?—”
Pain ripped through me. Visceral and instant, like someone had ripped a limb from my body. All thoughts but one were eclipsed by the sudden emptiness inside of me. I stumbled out of Garrick’s arms. He let me go.
“Where is Isanara?” I choked out, reaching for the nearly vertical wall of rock behind me to steady myself.
“Do not worry, sister. I have your familiar well in hand,” the head witch of the Midnight Coven said as she stepped into view.
CHAPTER 69
Maura.
She waved her hand, and the others appeared just as suddenly, like a curtain had been pulled back.
Garrick and I were not alone in the gorge. Far from it. Behind us, the narrow passage that led back to the temple was crowded with a line of acolytes in emerald robes. Varian stood at their center, her jewel-toned purple stark against the grays of the stone cliffs that sloped upward on either side of the gorge.
The Memory Gate was gone, no hint of sparkling black mist left behind.
Just me and Garrick, trapped on one side by the priestess and the other by witches.
Maura was not alone. But the others—those I recognized and those I did not—were all secondary.
“Where is my dragon?” I demanded, forcing my legs to straighten under me.
“Isanara!”I screamed into the shared space of our minds.“Isanara, where are you?”
Maura waved a dismissive hand, her halo of tight, dark curls bobbing around her. “She is perfectly safe. Though I admit, figuring out how to dim the bond between a witch and herfamiliar was quite difficult. It would not have been possible at all without our combined power and magic.”
Powerandmagic.
It was not just Elodie and Auri who stood with Maura, flanking their head witch on either side. There were several more figures, clad in rich, shimmering garments that looked completely out of place in the barren gorge. It was not their clothing that snagged my attention, but their ears.
Fae.
Ice crystallized in my veins. I could not kill them all, but I could do considerable damage, especially with Garrick at my side. He hated the fae, and rightfully so after what they had done to his mother.
But it wasn’t Garrick that moved at the periphery of my vision. A swirl of emerald caught my eye.
I threw out my hand, releasing my power in a torrent until it formed a wall that reached my waist. But Varian had already yanked Tomin back. I did not know her motivations, but at least she agreed with me on that—neither of us wanted Tomin anywhere near this encounter.
