Alize watched the interplay with cruel amusement etched into her features. “You are blessed to have Garrick the Red bound to protect you, or you’d have zero chance of surviving the Seven Gates.”
How did she know about the Lifebind? We hadn’t specifically tried to keep it secret, but I hadn’t walked around waving the brand on my wrist for the other supplicants to see, either.
“Your scents are intertwined,”Isanara informed me.“She can probably smell it on you.”
Unlike me, she’d been born with her immortal gifts. She probably used her wind magic to carry odors to her so she could scent her opponents. Like the animal she was.
“The Dark God stands at my side. What gods do you have left to defend you?”
“I don’t need the gods to defend me, witch.”
It was the same epithet that Garrick used, but there was none of the nuance that he lent to the syllables. Alize hated me as much as I hated her.
Good. It would make it even easier to kill her. The remnants of my human heart had nothing to say about this particularimpulse. They were the reason for it. I’d held back from killing Nash and that was a mistake. But this would not be. Alize was a threat just by breathing. I could take care of that.
“Stand back. She’s mine,”I said to Isanara.
“We are one,”my familiar answered, her voice different than I’d yet heard it. More distant, mature. But she stepped to the side with a flick of her spiked tail that said what she did not need to.
I moved clear of my familiar and my Lifebind. It was time for me to stand on my own, and they would both respect it.
“Think carefully about this, Koryn,” Garrick said. He did not tell me to stop, even though my death meant his and the downfall of whatever had propelled him through the Seven Gates.
“I won’t kill your witch.” Alize smiled, showing her pointed incisors. “I can teach her a lesson without doing permanent damage.”
Fuck her and fuck that.
I shot a look at Garrick, daring him to intervene. But he’d placed his back against the sheer cliff face that rose on one side.
I rolled my shoulders and snapped my fingers to the side. The sharp spikes of ice crumbled to frosty dust.
Alize understood the challenge. For the first time, I saw a genuine smile on her face.
I’d thought Garrick was fast. But Alize was the wind itself. She sprang forward, halving the distance between us in a single bound. By the time her feet landed on the stone ledge, she already had her blade in hand. It sparkled even in the muted light, the blade a swirling alloy of diamond bright metals.
The blade was like her—lithe and punishing. She bore down, not giving me a moment of grace. I did not want her fucking grace, anyway. I wanted her dead.
I threw up a wall of ice between us, thickening it with power that gave and gave without a hint of resistance. But I was too distracted to question that.
Alize drove her entire weight into the wall of ice, crashing through it without any regard for the shards that sliced into her skin like glass. Her fae healing would take care of those minor wounds. But my power surged in victory at the stream of blood that flowed down her cheek.
Janessa’s face flashed in my mind. But it wasn’t the freckles I’d adored or the beauty I’d admired outside the temple that fateful spring day. I saw the blood as it drenched her face, smelled the acrid burn of her hair and flesh as that fae-cursed diadem killed my sister.
I threw myself into the maneuvers that Garrick had taught me. Step, turn, stab. This time, I put my full weight behind every thrust.
I am going to kill her. Kill her. Kill her.
The words moved through my veins like the beating heart I no longer possessed.
But for every thrust, she parried. I knew my stabs were well-aimed, but she commanded the air and used it to guide my hand off course.
I dodged to the side, barely avoiding the tip of her blade. My faltering steps brought me to the edge of the cliff. Garrick growled behind me—or was that Isanara and it was in my mind entirely?
Sweat poured from my temples, my power too busy keeping me alive to bother with regulating my body temperature. But before I could get any closer, I collided with a wall of hard air that sent me stumbling backward.
Alize was playing with me.
The realization turned the rivulets of sweat to frost. Between my brows, I felt the burn of my coven mark as cold power searedthrough me. It coated my skin, spreading in glistening whorls over the backs of my hands. I felt it lick up my throat and curl across my cheeks.
