“You need a mask,” I said, trying to give us both room to breathe. I lifted my own from where it dangled in my hand. The feather motif continued, though my mother had used real raven’s feathers to decorate the mask that covered the upper third of my face.
I held it out to Koryn and turned around. I had to kneel so that she could reach, but she understood my request. She secured my mask in place, tying the ribbon just below the knot where I’d tied back half of my hair. It was almost as long as hers now, but I was loath to cut it.
I lifted a brow in question as I turned back around, only to realize she could not see it behind the mask.
But Koryn understood me on a level no one else ever had. Even my mother. Even Alair.
Her own brows were already raised. “As if that will fool anyone.”
The corner of my mouth twitched. “The courtiers will use glamours to hide their identities. Unless there is an element to your power that you have been hiding, you’ll need a mask.” It would not hide her identity entirely. But that wasn’t really the point. The anonymity was mostly a farce, anyway. An excuse for what came later.
Koryn pursed her lips.
“No. I’m not Syleris,” she said. Because he was hiding things. But even though she said it, she did not seem quite ready to talk about it. She flicked her eyes up and down, examining me again. “I don’t see a glamour.”
I took a step closer to her. I couldn’t help myself. The twitch at the corner of my mouth was a smirk now.
“No amount of magic could hide me from you,” I said into the close space between us.
I watched Koryn’s skin prickle with more than a little satisfaction. My own heated in return. I wanted to peel that beautiful dress off of her, because what lay beneath was even more precious.
She lifted her hand and slowly twirled her index and pointer fingers together. Whorls of power frosted the back of her hand. I watched her face for any sign of distress, of her power surging. There was a divot of concentration between her brows, but she remained in control.
From her fingertips formed a mask of crystallized frost that sparkled even in the low evening light. The whorls that covered her skin now decorated the white and silver mask.
Pride surged in my chest. My magnificent, powerful, perfect witch.
She required no assistance to fit it to her face. Her power did the job easily.
Her warm brown eyes shone out through the eye holes, luminous against the cool, sparkling silver. “Will this do?”
“Beautiful.” The word was so painfully insufficient, but I had nothing else. I finally let myself touch her. Just my palm cupping her elbow, the thin, shimmery fabric of her sleeve between us.
Koryn shivered, then settled into me, into that singular point of contact. Her lids were heavy behind the mask. She pursed her lips and blew out a measured breath.
“Syleris is keeping things from us,” she said, shifting the subject.
This territory was terrifying in its own right.
She’d adopted his name as easily as me. It felt right. He was more than the Dark God. He was the person who’d been there for Koryn when she wasn’t ready to let me back in. He’d offered me comfort in the wake of the Peace Gate. He was more than the Dark God. But he was not separate.
My hand tightened around her elbow. “The Dark God is keeping secrets. Syleris?—”
“You think they are not one and the same?” Koryn interrupted.
Yes. No. “One part of him is inextricable from the other, just like either of us,” I said. Koryn was a witch, but she was still ruled by her heart. I was half fae, but I was also human. We were, all three of us, a mess of contradictions. “But I think that it is his place in the pantheon that silences him.”
The man who had forced himself into our lives? I wanted to trust him. But the Dark God, who’d been party to the curse that was killing Velora, who had created the witches?
Koryn bit her lip as she considered that.
“We could use sex against him,” she huffed. “As an incentive for truthfulness.”
I knew it was a jest. But she made them rarely, and I did not believe this one. She was trying to protect herself from deeper feelings by focusing on the physical. It was a strategy I knew well.
I brought my other hand to hers, threading our fingers together. “I don’t know if I could,” I said honestly.
Koryn’s eyes shone up at me through her frosted mask. Desire thickened the air between us.
