This argument was not taking place in their minds. Koryn wasn’t making intentional choices, but Syleris was. He wanted me to hear every word.
“Syleris… she can’t choose this. She can’t choose. She will be trapped forever.”
Just like Koryn was.
Pain flashed across Syleris’ face, so intense no mask could hide it. Koryn was too irate to notice, but I saw what her words cost him.
Still, his answer remained unchanged. He didn’t release her. Even the Dark God was foolish enough to hope.
“I can’t,” he said.
Koryn threw him back with a shove to the chest. Syleris—the Dark God—stumbled.
But Koryn did not see it. She fell to her knees.
I expected him to disappear. To dissolve into shadow to escape the interminable pain of this moment. But he stood there, corporeal and real, his throat sliding as Koryn sobbed on the ground.
Syleris did not speak into my mind. There was no need. The understanding between us was deeper than words. He could not be there for Koryn in this moment. But I could.
I went to my knees beside her and pulled our bonded into my arms.
The Dark God disappeared. He let me hold her for a few moments before the ground beneath our knees, and the light around us disintegrated, and we were transported back into our bodies.
If time had passed, it was so little as to be unnoticeable to those around us. Or maybe they were all so intently focused on what was happening in the center of the pentagram that Koryna and me were of little consequence.
In truth, we were. We were absolutely useless to Alize.
There were a few sure ways to kill a fae. Beheading was the most well-known. But now I knew that suffocation worked, too, because staring at my sister’s body on the floor of the throne room, there was no question. She was dead.
Koryn was no longer in my arms. We were all held in place. Isanara was not—her tail lashed from side to side. I did not want to imagine the argument that she and Koryn were having within their minds at that very moment. Koryn would do anything to protect her familiar, but she could not physically move or use her power. That only left her with begging.
The chanting intensified. A fresh tear slid down Koryn’s cheek. I’d never hated my father more.
I could not feel power the way that Koryn could, but every hair on her body rose on end as the head witch stepped into the middle of the pentagram. She knelt beside Alize, withdrew a dagger, and sliced open her own arm, then Alize’s. She dipped her fingers into her own arm, then into Alize’s so that their blood ran together. With that macabre mixture, she drew a series of runs on Alize’s arm and then on her forehead. That one I recognized. The coven mark—the same one that glowed on Koryn’s forehead when her power surged. It glowed so often now that I’d come to take it for granted.
The blood on Alize’s forehead darkened, then surged a bright, glowing blue against her ashen skin. The crowd gasped. Koryn’s tears came in earnest, even though not a single other part of her body could move.
My rage coalesced inside of me. Alize and Edmund had offered me a family, and I’d scoffed at them. I’d left them to their own devices and investigations, and it led to this. If I had helped them, maybe the king never would have found out. Maybe this would be some other fae woman being sacrificed for the talismans.
That possibility should have been just as abhorrent, but I could not help the thought. Alize was my sister. We’d hated each other at worst and irritated each other at best. But she was my sister.
One of the other witches came forward—the shapeshifter. She wore a pale face with high cheekbones, wide eyes, and silken black hair. For a moment, she reminded me of Syleris.
A new pain arched inside of me. He could not stop it.
I knew I should be enraged by his refusal, but I was more hurt by what that refusal did to Koryn. She’d already suffered one betrayal from a man she loved.
Maura held up Alize’s arm. Elodie produced a needle and thread and stitched the wound together. Alize still lay prone in the center of the pentagram. Dead or unconscious? Where was the distinction?
Then her body arched, her back bowing off the ground as she gasped for air. Her limbs shook. The crowd of terrified and awed fae behind me grimaced as one as a fit took over Alize’s body. She writhed, joints jerking in unnatural angles until she just… stopped.
Maura knelt at her side. Elodie stood with hands flexed. The braided rope was still around Alize’s throat.
“What is her power?” the king demanded.
The authority in his voice was as absolute as the magic that held my limbs in place. I could feel my arms and legs, but no matter how I screamed at them to move, they were stuck. Turned to stone. Immovable. Like my father.
The head witch had miscalculated, even if she did not know it yet.
