For Auri and Kyrelle. For all of Velora.
This time, the gold locking mechanism was not sealed. The doors were propped open, though I doubted any of the fae courtiers were bold enough to enter. Auri was right where I expected her—in the same room I’d found her in before. She wore a column gown of deep emerald green with brown sleeves. Long, dancing vines dripped from her arms and along her body, swishing around her ankles. She wore no mask, but the costume was effective without it. She was a weeping willow.
“Koryn.” She jumped as she said it, as startled by the sound of her own voice as by my arrival.
“Auri, we don’t have much time.” And I was not going to waste any of it.
“No, we don’t.” She wrung her hands, glancing over my shoulder to where Garrick and Isanara waited just inside the room. Garrick had his sword in hand.
“They will not hurt you,” I promised. “I have to ask you about the talismans.”
Her bright green eyes flared. “Koryn, I can’t tell you?—”
“Yes, I think you can,” I said, grabbing her hands. “I found the talismans. One for each bind. That is why Maura took us from the gates. She needed me to consecrate and charge the water-bound talisman.”
As I talked, Garrick moved behind me. He’d tucked the talismans into the pockets of his doublet, but I felt them even before he removed them. I had not stopped feeling them since we’d stumbled through the mock wall into Isanara’s hoard.
Auri’s eyes went even wider, still.One more surprise, and they’d take up half of her face. But she nodded.
“Good. You are doing so well,” I said, soothing her the way I might a child. There was not just surprise in her eyes, but fear. “The talismans are for protection, right?”
She pursed her lips to blow out a breath. “Yes.”
“Protection from what?” Garrick asked. I’d been thinking about that, too.
“Fae magic. When the curse is broken, the talismans will protect the witches from fae magic. That is what Syleris meant about upsetting the balance of power in Velora. Without the fae as a counterbalance, witches will reign supreme. Covens will return—and Maura will get everything she’s ever wanted. She will rule not just the Coven Lands, but all of Velora,” I said.
But what did that have to do with Isanara? That was the only bit I had not been able to piece together yet.
Garrick looked between us and then tucked the talismans away again, as if he was afraid that Auri might try to snatch one. He did not understand, of course.
“How can you trust her answers? Isn’t she bound by allegiance to her coven?” he asked.
No. Of that, I was certain. Finally, absolutely certain.
“Not theirs,” I said, gripping Auri’s hands even tighter. “Ours.”
Her eyes filled with moisture. Mine were blurring, too, but I rushed on, drunk on the overwhelm of the talismans and my own roiling emotions.
“I realized it when my power reacted to the fire-bound and earth-bound talismans. The salt cellar and the signet ring. They didn’t call to my power… well, not exactly. I could feel them. But they felt wrong. At first, I thought it was because they were the two that are already consecrated and charged, but I don’t think that is it.” I paused only long enough to drag in a breath.
“It is because Maura and Elodie are no longer members of our coven. Or at least, our ties to them are secondary.” My bloodwas thrumming through my veins at such speed, I expected my veins to give up and burst. But as I said that word, secondary, it calmed. My power was peaceful. Content. Relieved. “Secondary to our covenant with one another. You are the one who left me the four-leafed clover.”
Auri rewarded me with a jerky nod. A tear broke loose from the corner of her eye. “I hoped it would help.”
I was shaking now, too, but I turned to Garrick. He would need a more thorough explanation. “Elodie and Auri are both earth-bound witches. But Elodie was the one who consecrated and charged the signet ring talisman. That is why my power reacted to it. It felt foreign because Auri’s and my allegiance to one another is stronger than to Maura or Elodie. Allegiance to coven… but covenants go both ways. And Maura has hurt us both.”
Auri had tried to tell me in every way she could. The bond between us was not absolute. We were both still tied to the Midnight Coven. But one was stronger than the other. It was why she’d been able to warn me in the forest before the Memory Gate.
“We are sisters.” I felt the word inside as well as out. My chest ached for it. Three hundred and seventy-seven years, and finally—finally—I had found a true sister among the witches.
“Yes. Yes to all of it,” Auri said. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks now, but she was back to wringing her hands. Or rather, she was wringing mine, as they were still clasped together. “But there is more that I cannot?—”
All of us stopped, our heads turning toward the source of the sound even though it was obscured by floors and walls of brick. Even Isanara’s head twitched. The bells were ringing again.
I released Auri’s hands and turned back to Garrick. “We have to destroy the talismans.”
He nodded but did not reach into his pockets to retrieve them. “The king’s spectacle. He has commanded every resident of Balar Shan to attend, down to the last servant.”
