What I felt for my father was the least complicated of the visages they’d shown me. I had nothing but hate for the man who had sold my family to the fae. The father who had abandoned his children after the death of their mother, more concerned with fortune than any of the three daughters left in his keeping.
But I did my best not to let Xyta see any of that. I let the hate shine out, they would expect that. But everything else, I kept at bay by folding my hands together in my lap. I told myself that it was not my own hand gripping the other, but Garrick’s. I imagined warmth instead of cold.
It worked well enough to cause the deity to sit back in their seat and reconsider me.
“You had two reasons for entering the temple,” they finally said.
“Yes.” I grasped my hands tighter together in my lap. The conversation with the Deity of Sacrifice was proceeding exactly as I had expected and feared.
Xyta shrugged as if our conversation covered nothing more controversial than the weather, and then said simply— “Choose.”
My stomach jolted. I’d expected them to tell me which one they expected me to sacrifice. They were the Deity of Sacrifice. They must know which would hurt me more to lose. But they twisted a different knife instead.
For a little more than a week, for the first time in nearly four hundred years, the two competing interests in my world had been aligned. And just like that, Xyta set them against each other once again.
“I cannot,” I choked out. There was no hiding my distress from the deity, no matter how hard I clasped my hands. My hands weren’t even clasped anymore, I realized. They gripped the dark stone arms of the chair, and that was frost climbing down the legs, spreading across the ground. I was perilously close to losing control again. “I… haven’t I already… didn’t I when?—”
“Whenwhat, Koryn?”
Haven’t I already chosen?My mind screamed.When I?—
I slammed a dagger of ice down on that thought. I could not even think it, it was too dangerous. Whether Xyta had some special power that allowed them to see supplicants’ history or they were looking directly into my head, I could not let them have that memory. There would be no coming back if they did.
Xyta watched from their chair. Reclined, but carefully noting every movement I made. When I did not answer, they shrugged their shoulders again. Strange, their mannerisms overlaid on the face and body of my father. It was enough of a distraction that I reclaimed a bit more control over my power.
“If you will not choose, then you are free to go,” they said. They looked up toward Garrick, already considering their next victim.
“Where?” I asked, even though I suspected the answer.
“I do not care. Follow your blonde friend from earlier as she bumbles her way through the mountains, back to her preciousvillage. So precious, not even the fate of Velora was worth its destruction.” Nimra. She’d refused to make the sacrifice Xyta required, just as Garrick thought.
But…“You let her go.”
Xyta pretended that they were not paying attention to our conversation, but their smile deepened. “For now.”
“A gate is always near,” I whispered.
Xyta was not looking at Garrick any longer. “A god is always watching.”
“You will come for her.”
“She made her choice.”
Did Nimra understand? Even though Xyta had allowed her to walk away unharmed… it was temporary. No one could walk away from the gates. Xyta had gotten their sacrifice either way. By refusing to sacrifice whatever—or whomever—Xyta had demanded, Nimra was sacrificing herself. But it would not get her through the gate and onto the next. She would just be dead.
It was not just a choice between my coven and Kyrelle that Xyta had presented to me, but between those and my own survival. I could try to get off of Velora before they came for me. But this encounter had solidified in my mind what I’d been foolish enough to forget in my misery and desperation—there was no escaping the Seven Gates. Not for the residents of Velora. We either lived under their curse or we died trying to break it.
The gods ruled us all, fae, witch, and human.
But who ruled the gods? Orwhat?
My tattoos burned. I knew what I had to do next, dangerous as it was. Garrick had the right of it. Xyta was a bored deity. Now was my chance to be entertaining. I leaned forward in my chair, unflinching. I would have to be made of ice in order to brazen this out.
“I will make you a bargain.”
Xyta’s eyes shone. The pupils—my father’s pupils—dilated in his hazel eyes. The rough flesh of his cheeks flushed to a ruddy, excited color.
“You have dealt with my kind before,” they said, leaning forward to match me.
