“Syleris.”
Koryn shook her head slowly from side to side. “I am not sure what you mean.”
I exhaled. Everything was right about this future, except for one nagging suspicion. I knelt down in front of Koryn. She held out the ladle again, but I gently nudged it aside. My mother took it deftly from her hand.
My fingers found the hem of Koryn’s gown. Her breath hitched as I drew it up her leg, my fingertips skating across the bare skin of her calf and knee.
“Garrick,” she protested, trying to press her knees together. “Your mother?—”
“Hush,” I said.
The traitorous look in her eyes felt real enough. But she let me part her knees and lift her gown to the side to reveal her bare inner thigh. I checked the other, just to be certain. An expanse of soft, creamy skin waited for me. But no mark. No bargain.
No Syleris.
I lowered Koryn’s skirt gently, even though I knew it wasn’t really her. I gave my mother a long look as I stood. I would see her this way again, I promised myself, or die trying.
Then I folded my hands over my body and looked up, around, behind, for any sign. There was nothing—just the two women staring at me from the hearth like I’d lost my mind,
“This is not what I want,” I said aloud.
Koryn got to her feet. “Garrick?—”
“This is not what I want. Do you hear me?” My voice got louder with each word. “Is that what you needed to hear? That I want you as much as I want her?”
This time there was no light. It was just a blink. One moment I was in what I’d envisioned as my own happily ever after, and the next I was alone on a cold path in a frozen forest in the present.
I sat down in the snow. A moment later, a flash of shimmering lavender scales appeared from between the trees. Isanara padded across the snow. She glared in the direction of the tree blocking the middle of the path, now firmly back in place. I shrugged. I’d made my choice.
Now we would have to trust Koryn to make hers.
CHAPTER 57
KORYN
I walked alonein a frostbitten forest. The temperature had dropped suddenly when Garrick and Isanara were ripped away from me. The soft snow was now coated with a layer of thick ice that crunched beneath every one of my footsteps.
I stumbled on a tree root that hid beneath the snow. Lost my footing. The ground seemed to tip beneath me. No—I was falling. I slid on my bottom down the embankment until the toe of my shoe caught on a rock, and my entire body was flung forward into an icy stream.
I lay there for several seconds, the frigid water seeping into my skin, filling my nostrils, threatening to drown me. Tiny bits of ice floated in the water. They found my skin and clung to it.
This was how I died. I froze to death in a stream, forgotten by everyone until Maura found me.
Syleris had said that I’d already faced my past in the other gates. Then what the fuck was this? Was he so desperate for a chance to explain himself that he’d kill me in the Unknown Gate just so he could force me to his side after the second death?
Absolutely not.
Garrick needed me. So did Isanara. Kyrelle. Tomin. Auri, if I could convince her.
I was not ready, not for any of them, and not for myself. I wanted to live.
I shoved a hand underneath me, gritting my teeth through the cold. Enough of this. I was frost and ice and snow. I froze the river into a sheet so it would stop flowing and getting into all the curves and crevices of my clothing. I muttered a spell to evaporate the water droplets and dry my clothing and hair. I could not make the cold actually go away, but at least I was no longer wet.
I dragged myself back up the hill to the path and kept trudging down it.
A few minutes later, a light appeared. That had to be my destination, then. I closed my eyes against the brightness and monitored my other senses for threats. I kept my power ready and roiling. But the intensity of the light eventually dimmed behind my eyelids, and I was able to open them.
What I saw was… confusing.
