“Your fire cannot hold me,” I said. As quickly as his flame had encircled me, I dropped the temperature of the air, snuffing it out.
The fae at his side, the one with the shaggy hair, drew his sword. His magic must be too weak to bother using against me, then. Perhaps it ran stronger in the royal line. I did not care.
I threw out my hand, and the shaggy-haired male screamed as ice encrusted his fingers and froze the hilt of the sword to his hand.
The prince’s smirk grew into a grin. “Vicious witch,” he breathed.
“I prefer wicked.”
We sprang into motion, fire and ice warring with one another. The dark-haired prince drew his sword, but it was the flame that he wielded from his other hand that was the more dangerous. It was not limited by the reach of his arm. I countered with frost and ice, but I was not a warrior. My advantage was built on the power that had coalesced inside ofme over the days of my captivity. But as we fought, it strained against my tenuous attempts at control.
If I let it loose fully, I did not know what it would do.
Kill them both. Spears of ice through their hearts. They would not die, I corrected. Fae were nearly impossible to kill. But what was to say that my ice would not behead one of them? Both of them?
Why did I even care? The fae were responsible for every terrible thing that had happened in my life. They’d brought down the curse upon Velora. My father’s obsession with them had led to my sister Janessa’s death. Even my flight into the woods, where I froze to death only to be resurrected, even that I could trace back to them?—
But I had made choices, too.
This choice was mine.
Before I could make it, the fire-wielder flailed back. His hands fell to his sides, his flame and sword with them. I gulped down breaths, my weeks of hiking through the mountains still not enough to prepare me for this level of fighting.
As I watched, the male lifted his sword, considered it for a second, and then dropped it to the ground.
I gasped in another breath, stunned, disbelieving. I must be more out of breath than I’d realized… I must be hallucinating.
“Our interests are better served by letting the witch go,” he said. His blond companion nodded earnestly. They turned and walked away—down the corridor, not bothering to cover their retreat—while I stood, dumbfounded, staring after them.
They reached the end of the corridor and veered left, out of sight. But I was not alone.
He stepped out of the shadows into the space the two males had occupied moments before. They’d walked right past him, as if they had not even realized he was there, which was impossible with their heightened fae senses.
The pain that seared through my chest told me—this was not a hallucination, and it was not a nightmare. This was my reality, and he was staring me in the face with an emotion that I refused to believe.
Garrick the fucking Red.
CHAPTER 9
KORYN
I curledmy hands into fists, knowing that would not be enough to control my power if it lashed out. Garrick tracked the movement. He knew it, too.
“How?” I demanded.
His eyes raked over my body, taking in the halo of my hair—a wild mess of dark waves—to my bare toes. His gaze snagged on my arm, coated in my own drying blood. His mouth tightened, and his eyes… they glowed. There was no trick of the light to excuse the bright blue circle seated in the clover-green irises. We were at opposite ends of the corridor, but I could see the turquoise clearly.
“Koryn.”
He spoke my name like it pained him. Like he was the one in agony. How dare he.
I did not want to hear his excuses. I did not have time for him. But I did need to know what had just happened.
A ring of frost spread from where my feet touched the tiled floor. “Lie to me, and I will freeze your balls off, and you can pray to whichever god will still listen that you have enough fae blood to grow them back.”
The frost spread in his direction, but Garrick did not move. He held my gaze. “I have a mind-gift. Compulsion.”
Magic, that’s what he was saying. He’d used his fae magic to get my guards—one of them his own brother—to drop their weapons and walk away. That was… it was incredible. I’d never seen power or magic like that, not in a witch or any other being.
