I shrugged out of my quilted surcoat and draped it over her shoulders.
Koryn scowled up at me. “Only until we get the fire going. I will not die of the cold.”
Neither would I, I wanted to counter. At least not for a while. But the distant look in her eyes kept the words inside. An hour later, we had a fire, a bed of dirt dug out between the tree roots,and scrambled eggs I’d pilfered from a nest while flying earlier in the day.
Koryn scooped another bite up with her fingertips. We had no utensils. We’d been woefully unprepared for our flight from Balar Shan. I should have known better. I had made my way in Velora for nearly twenty years as a bounty hunter, and part of my success was founded on preparedness. Always being aware of the worst-case scenario and planning for it. But I’d allowed myself to be distracted.
“I am sorry,” I said as Koryn took another bite of bland eggs.
She chewed slowly. “Not up to your usual standard,” she agreed. “Does eating eggs count as cannibalism for you?”
I sputtered, spitting eggs all over the front of my linen undershirt and across the snow before us.
Koryn almost smiled.
We lapsed into silence again. We finished eating and melted a bit of snow to drink. I took one last walk around the perimeter of our meager camp, collecting a few extra pieces of firewood before returning to the nest we’d made beneath the tree. Isanara was sprawled in a crescent moon shape around the fire, no more than a foot from Koryn. The dragon lifted her head in my direction, blinking her citrine eyes at me expectantly.
While I was gone, Koryn had laid out all four of the talismans.
We were done sitting in silence.
I folded myself into the space next to her, careful not to disturb the four items. If they had any particular relevance, I had not been able to work it out. A salt cellar, a signet ring, a dagger, and a jeweled comb. The only thing that seemed to bind them together was the inscriptions.
“The king knew what she was doing all along,” Koryn said, frowning.
She picked up each talisman and examined it carefully. I looked too, though I had no desire to touch them. I had been all too happy to turn them over to Koryn’s keeping. Thankfully, my mother had equipped her Winter Tithe gown with pockets.
The king had known about the talismans. He’d known about the fae woman’s murder—an attempt to create an air-bound witch to create a fourth talisman. There had likely been more murders that Koryn and I did not know about. But none of it answered the question, which Koryn asked after she set down the final talisman.
“The talismans were not a secret. But then why create them?”
I rubbed the back of my hand over the day-old stubble on my chin. “I have been thinking about that, too.”
Koryn’s frown shifted to a glare. She glowered down at the talismans, as if her displeasure might scare them into revealing their secrets. It was as good a strategy as any at this point.
“I keep looking for something I might have missed, or thinking of some other meaning for these runes. But the spell that is said when they are consecrated directs the talisman’s function, and I did not hear the spells.” She paused to sigh, her whole body moving with the force of her exhale. “Maura must have lied to him. She must have convinced him that the talismans would be mutually beneficial in some way. You did not know what the runes represented. How would he?”
It could not be that simple. “My father is not that naïve.”
“Or Maura is more cunning than even we realize,” Koryn countered. But the deep divot between her dark brows informed me that she did not believe that, either. At least, not enough to trust it as a full explanation.
We needed Syleris. He was the one who’d sent us after the talismans in the first place.
Koryn’s hand dropped into her lap. She sat cross-legged, the voluminous skirt of her gown giving her legs plenty of room. Herfingertips skimmed over the inside of her thigh—right where the two nested chevrons marking her bargain with the Dark God were inked in the same deep blue as our Lifebind.
She missed him, too.
How had this happened?
Koryn dropped her head onto my shoulder. “You are beautiful when you shift,” she said quietly. “Thank you for letting me see.”
It was too much. The ache in my chest I did not want to acknowledge, the weight of what we’d left behind and what came next. And my love for her. It filled me up, smoothed all the jagged edges that I’d formed over years of trauma and repression.
I tugged her into my lap with her back pressed against my chest.
Koryn squeaked in surprise, but settled immediately when one hand cupped her breast and the other slid to her knee. I stroked the outside of her thigh until she relaxed her legs in front of her. Then I nudged them apart.
“Isanara hates it when we do this,” Koryn moaned as I kissed my way from the shoulder of her gown up to her ear.
