Fuck. Me. I had not meant to summon him. But he could at least confirm what I already knew with certainty.
“Tell Garrick it is not here,” I said without lifting my face from my palms.
“As I said before?—”
I shot to my feet. “Enough out of you,” I hissed, immediately regretting asking him for any kind of help.
Garrick glanced between the two of us—slowly, so we could both see. Both of their masks were still in place.
“The talisman is not here. We need a new plan,” Garrick said when Syleris and I continued to glare at one another. I glared.Syleris looked perfectly content. As if he were not the one who’d sent me on this wild chase.
Fuck that. He could pretend he did not care, but I knew the truth. I’d seen the way he cupped Garrick’s face. I’d felt him inside of me and then around me, giving me what I needed before I even knew I needed it.
I flattened my hands against the hips of my gown, rubbing the intricate embroidery with my palms. “Syleris, you have to help us. You can see what Maura’s darkest desires are.” I was dangerously close to begging.
His lush lips pressed into a line, the dimple on the upper one flattening out. “Which is how I knew she had created the talisman.”
“But to what end? If she desires to keep it secret, can’t you see where she hid it?”
“It would be convenient if my power worked exactly the way you wanted, wouldn’t it, sweetling?” Syleris crooned. But it was a defense. I knew it was. It was all in the way he said my name—not my name. The sobriquet he’d saddled me with, even when he knew I hated them. But I did not hate it when he called me sweetling.
Except when he said it with so much condescension.
“What is the point of being bonded to a god if you cannot help us?” my voice shook, a second from accusation. From saying something I could not take back.
Syleris blinked. Through the mask, I imagined I could see into his soul through his blue-black eyes. He was like me—a creature made for darkness, but who sought the light. I felt certain of it. He could choose.
“I can make myself valuable to you in other ways,” he purred.
Anger rose, and this time my power rose with it. I knew it was only because it was him I was angry with. He whipped up myworst impulses. He wanted to distract me. This time not for my sake, but his own.
I threw my hands up and turned to Garrick. He’d monitored the entire interaction with keen interest, but he had not intervened.
“You reason with him,” I said.
Garrick didn’t quite smirk. The moment was too tense. But the tilt of his mouth was almost a smirk, and the familiarity of it made my knees weak. “I would do anything for you, witch, but you ask the impossible?—”
All three of us stopped talking at once. We all heard it. God, fae, or witch, all of our hearing was sharp. Even when someone was trying to be quiet.
One set of footsteps, creeping down the corridor outside of the treasury. They were too slow. A random passerby would have been walking at a steady pace, rather than inching along. And... stumbling?
I glanced at Garrick. His own brow was furrowed, confusion blurring the ring of cerulean into the field of clover to create turquoise in his irises.
I half expected to look for Syleris and find him gone. He often chose moments like this to abscond to the Dark God only knew where. Quite literally.
But Syleris remained, and he’d used the moment of distraction to inch closer to me. I stepped away emphatically. I would not let him muddle my mind with wayward caresses. Not when we were about to get caught. Not all of us could just disappear.
Unlike our friend in the corridor, I moved without making a sound. And the person in the corridor was not a friend.
We’d left the doors ajar. The three of us moved in silent concert. I encased the hinges in ice to capture any squeaking. Garrick nudged the door just enough to look out.
He eased himself back. “It is one of Edmund’s guards.”
We’d been followed.
It had always been a risk. Garrick and I were hardly inconspicuous, and with Syleris, our trio could hardly be missed. But I’d hoped that most of the courtiers would assume we’d gone back to our room after making a requisite appearance to appease the king.
“Can you compel him?” I asked Garrick.
