Garrick didn’t waste time with any more words. He spun on his heel, leading me in the same direction that the two fae guards he’d sent off had disappeared.
I am coming, I told her as I scrambled to keep up.
Garrick ran through Balar Shan. Two months of hiking through the mountains helped me keep pace, though my chest heaved while he was barely winded. Still, I did not slow down.Some of the corridors curved, only to be intersected with straighter ones like the spokes on a wheel.
“We should be going down,” I huffed as Garrick stopped at one of those intersections, whipping his head from side to side.
He only said, “We will,” and then grabbed my hand, hauling me against him.
I tried to scream in protest at the touch, even as my traitorous body sang at every point of contact. But Garrick’s huge hand curved over my mouth, cutting off any sound.
I sank my teeth into the soft flesh of his palm.
Garrick’s hand just tightened over my face.
A second later, the reason appeared around the corner.
I recognized her face. She’d stood at the fae king’s side while he took me captive. She’d worn the same diadem that had killed my sister.
But her straw-blonde hair was adorned with a different set of jewels now, alternating oval sapphires and rubies the size of chicken eggs, each framed in a halo of diamonds. I wanted to rip it from her head and feed the gems to my familiar.
Garrick’s quick reaction was not quick enough. She stopped in the middle of the corridor—one of the curved ones—and stared directly at us. Too bad my death hadn’t been a disappearance. Maybe then I would have had the power to make myself invisible.
The tall, slender female lifted her golden brows, considering the strange sight we made, pressed against the wall. Garrick’s hand was still clamped over my mouth.
“Neither of you are where you are supposed to be,” she said. The depth of her voice surprised me. She appeared middle-aged, but fae immortality made it difficult to truly judge.
“Your Majesty,” Garrick said, inclining his head, while not relaxing his hold on me even an inch.
This was his stepmother, I realized. The fae queen. Was he protecting me from her, or the other way around?
“Your father will not be pleased,” the queen said, though she made no move to retrieve her husband or anyone else. Whatever magic she had, she was not using it. Or it was not visible.
The same could not be said for Garrick.
“You should return to your quarters, Your Majesty. You are tired,” he said. I sensed it was for my benefit, rather than because his magic required it. He’d compelled the minds of the two fae males without a single spoken word.
The queen pursed her lips, as if considering Garrick’s words. There’d been no time for me to interrogate him as to how his magic worked. Did he plant thoughts in her head or sway what was already there? Did it work on some people? All? Was there a way to repel him?
If there was, the queen did not use it. Or could not.
My pulse stuttered as the otherwise elegant woman lifted her arms and stretched with the abandon of a toddler, a massive yawn claiming her delicate features.
“I shall go lie down,” she declared. For a second, her eyes were slightly unfocused before settling again. She turned in a smooth swish of silk and crushed velvet, floating away down the curved corridor from whence she’d come, ignoring us completely.
I stumbled forward when Garrick released me. Disbelief turned into horror. That kind of magic… it was a violation. Nausea churned in my gut. He said he’d never used his compulsion on me.
But I had to amend that thought. He said he had never compelled me, and that his magic did not work on me, not that he’d never tried. My blood pounded in my ears as I took a step back, putting space between us.
Garrick’s throat slid, but he did not flinch under my gaze.
It was like I’d never seen him before. His compulsion magic reframed every experience we’d had together in the Seven Gates, every interaction in the temples and outside of them.
“We have to get to Isanara,” he said after a moment.
He was right.
“The corridors are a spiral. At this level, they intersect with straight lines radiating out from the center. But if you are caught on one of the higher floors, there are fewer intersections to allow for bigger rooms. The spiral will be your only way out—and the king knows that.” Garrick walked as he spoke, following those straight lines as he did, occasionally turning to take a curved section of the spiral he’d described before returning to the radiating straight corridors.
