Maura and Elodie began to chant. “Heed the call of earth and bone, shift his form, return him home.”
Alone, Maura could not have done it. Shapeshifting was an earth-bound power, like the many faces that Elodie could wear. But when she lent her fire, they were able to do the impossible.
Garrick’s body twisted, contorting as he fought the power of the spell. My stomach lurched, my twisted feelings rebelling at the sight of him in pain. Every muscle in his body stiffened, and then all of the fight whooshed out of him. He transformed in an instant. One moment, the man so familiar I could outline his face with my eyes closed. The next, a ruggedly beautiful black raven.
There had been a crow on the roof of the general store the night I was attacked in Canmar. In the woods over the past few weeks, whenever Garrick and I were separated.
Not a crow. A raven. I’d never paid much attention to the difference, though it was plain now that I saw his shifted form. It must have been how he beat me back to our camp that night I’d snuck up to listen to him and Alize argue. He had not walked—he’d flown.
Not just the halfling bastard of a human mother, raped by the fae, but a shifter. A half-fae whose eyes matched those of the brother that Alize had tried to murder in his cradle.
I forced myself to look at the fae king. I did not bother to beg the Dark God for a different outcome. I already knew what I would find.
Cold turquoise eyes stared back at me.
No. No, no, no, no.
This could not be happening. Not to me… not after I’d been so careful for so long, after I’d spent lifetimes alone and?—
“Koryn,” Garrick choked, landing on his knees. His shirt was gone—how that worked for a shifter, I did not fucking care. But I did care about the tattoos that I could see, the ones he’d hidden from me just as effectively as I’d hidden the one on the inside of my thigh.
A series of rings looped around his left bicep. I did not know their meaning or significance. But there was no mistaking the dark wings etched across his back. They were beautiful, those raven wings. In a different time, I might have pressed my lips to each one of those elegantly wrought feathers.
But in this reality, betrayal was burning up my throat. Frost swirled in my mouth.
“I am so sorry,” Garrick choked out, his chest heaving as he tried to drag in breaths, still recovering from the force of Maura and Elodie’s spell.
That’s why he’d apologized over and over again. Not because choosing to save his life had cost me my coven and my future—but because he’d betrayed me.
“It was real,” he said between breaths.
Maura was not the only one laughing now. The king chuckled, a cruel, cold sound that put my own ice to shame.
“You said you had no magic. You lied to me.” I’d known there were secrets between us. But I’d thought that we understood each other, that even if there were secrets, there were not lies.
I’d thought a lot of misguided things.
Now I knew better.
I was alone, just as I always had been.
“I said none manifested while I was in Balar Shan,” Garrick said, dragging himself to his feet. “Myabilitiesappeared long before that.”
He didn’t look at Maura or at his father. His father, the King of the Fae. That’s what those eyes told me. Garrick was not just any half-fae bastard. He was a half-fae prince.
He reached for my hand, but I jerked it back. He huffed out a breath, but he did not retreat. “It was real, Koryn. I promise that it was. How would I have gotten through the Devotion Gate if it was not? And after… when we…”
But I shook my head. I wanted to believe him. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted him to be the man I thought he was, the man I thought I knew.
“I don’t know what deals you made with the gods,” I whispered.
Garrick opened his mouth to argue, but Maura cut him off.
“Give yourself credit, young man,” Maura interjected. “You did exactly as we asked.”
I closed my eyes.
“You risked your life, and she saved you, just like I knew she would. She’s always been afflicted by the remnants of her human heart.”
