“Because I was cast out from my coven,” I said. Garrick still held my hand. As I spoke, he swiped his thumb along the curve between my index finger and thumb. “It might seem like nothing to you, who has spent your entire life alone. But a witch is nothing without her coven.”
I let that information hang in the air between us. But there was not much of it, not as close as we suddenly were. Garrick just watched me, waiting.
“If I remove Velora’s curse, they will welcome me back,” I said softly. Why did it feel like admitting it would make me less in his eyes? Why did I care?
Garrick showed no reaction to my words. He turned over our hands, lifting them from the stone to rest on his knee. “You fear that Xyta will ask you to sacrifice your chance to return?”
“That. Or… there is someone I care about. Someone whose life is my responsibility. If I do not lift the curse, she will die.” I could not bring myself to use Kyrelle’s name. Not because I feared him knowing it, but… it felt like exposing myself. Making myself too raw, too vulnerable to a man who I was already allowing to hold my hand. Whose life was bound to mine by Seraxa herself.
“The woman from the first temple,” Garrick guessed. “You argued, and then you entered in her place.”
I blinked up at him. “I thought you had already gone inside.”
He smirked that infernal, irritating smirk. “You were not being quiet.”
“I know what Xyta will ask for. My coven or my… person.” Just like her name, I could not tell him exactly what she meant to me. It would mean admitting what I’d done. He likely already knew, after the Justice Gate. But still… “Why would Garrick the Red attempt the Seven Gates?”
Garrick turned away, looking down to where Nash and Xyta were engaged in a heated exchange. The deity leaned forward in their chair, eyes glinting with excitement. The back of Nash’s neck flushed red. I was not even able to enjoy the sight.
I wanted to know Garrick’s motivation. I’d given him mine. It only seemed fair. We were connected by the Lifebind, for the Dark God’s sake. Whatever his views on witches, hadn’t I proved myself… I was not quite sure what I had proved about myself. That was a thought I could not linger on, so I pressed him instead.
“You have wealth. You are healthy and strong. Does it have to do with you fae lover?” Bile tainted the last two words, but I still said them.
Garrick’s hand loosened on mine, as if the words made him forget to hold on. His blue-green eyes were wide when they swung to me. “Alize? She is not my lover.”
“You sounded quite familiar.” Dark God save me, I hated how choked those words sounded. I had enough hate in my heart for the fae. I would not allow myself to be jealous of one. But the way that Garrick held my hand even after my power had quieted…
“I…” Garrick cleared his throat. “We are familiar. But she is not the reason I entered the temple.”
“Then what is?”
He did not try to avoid my gaze. He let me catch his and attempt to turn that intensity he wielded back around on him. But the only emotion I saw in those luminous orbs was resolve. He would not tell me why he had entered the temple. Which was as good of a reminder as any. There was a Lifebind between us, but that was not the same thing as trust.
I disentangled my fingers from his and shoved my hands deep inside my cloak. The one he’d given me. Fuck.
Garrick let me go. He watched the space grow between us as I shifted my weight away. He’d offered no solution for facing Xyta, and I realized I did not truly expect him to. He’d listened to my concerns, and that was something. I’d never had anyone to tell them to. A benefit of the Lifebind, I supposed. He was forced to listen to my complaints.
“I met Alize in Balar Shan many years ago.”
My head snapped up. I’d looked away, but Garrick had not. His gaze was as intense as ever as he stared straight into my eyes, as if he could see past them into the twisted soul beneath.
Balar Shan—the walled city beyond the mountains, in the far northeast of Velora. The enchanted, shining city of the fae, where they had retreated after the gods had cursed the entire continent for the fae’s overreaching attempts to gather more magic than had already been bestowed upon them.
Garrick held my gaze, not even blinking as he spoke. “My mother sent me there so that I could meet my father.”
The unnatural speed. The sheer size of him, compared to even Nash, one of the strongest humans I’d seen in decades. My eyes strayed to his ears, half-covered by the thick, pale hair he always wore half-pulled back. But they were rounded. Not fae… not wholly.
“You are half-fae,” I breathed, even though we were alone. I’d asked for one secret and received another, a different one.
“I am half-human,” Garrick corrected.
My mind spun as I tried to make sense of what he had told me. I’d never met a half-fae, though I knew they existed. They were rare, even before the curse had driven the fae into their reclusive city. The fae considered humans to be below them. Cross pairings and marriages were unheard of, the mixed children resulting mostly from?—
Oh.
I am half-human, he’d corrected me.
He hated what he was. And I… I understood that on a deeper level than I’d ever admitted, even to myself. Garrick was a prisoner to a fate that he had not chosen, just as I was.
