Maybe the Dark God knew of a way to dissolve it.
I waited for him to invade my mind. But there was no shiver of cold or dark presence waiting in the wings of my consciousness.
But Isanara was there, her voice as bright as her viridian eyes in my memory.
You are close,she said, drawing out the last syllable as if savoring it.
I understood the sentiment. The closer I got to her, the more the anticipation built. Having the connection restored between our minds had dulled the ache inside of me, but I would not fully be able to breathe until I saw her with my own eyes.
I forced myself to focus on putting one foot after another, channeling my power into creating the next handhold, then a foothold, while avoiding looking down to the churning water as much as I could. Garrick outpaced me easily, and when his hand closed around my calf, relief came with it.
We met another wall of ice, but I melted it as easily as the first. I even let him put his arm around my waist and haul me the last few feet. There must have been some vestiges of trust left, because I knew he would not drop me.
The Lifebind. That’s all it was. If I died, he died. The calculation was painfully simple and torturously free of emotion.
Rough stone tore at the soles of my feet as I tried to find my footing. This level was nothing like the colored stone and intricate beauty of the levels above. The bathhouse had been an abandoned luxury, coopted into use as a prison cell for a witch. The stone room where we stood was built for one thing only—torture and confinement. Two things, then, inextricable though they were.
The stones were the deep brown color of dried blood. Whether that color was natural or acquired, I was thankful that even my senses were not able to detect the source. They formed a circular cell. A half-circle, really, bisected through the middle by the wall of ice I’d melted. Except that on the other side, the floor dropped away entirely, down to the icy sea.
I flattened my back against the wall. Regardless of the origin of its color, it felt safer than lingering near the ledge. But as I worked my way around…
My head whipped to Garrick. “Where is the door?”
Garrick’s mouth flattened into a line. “There is no need for a door. Prisoners sentenced to these cells can choose to starve to death or drown themselves in the Northern Death.”
A violent shiver gripped my spine, shaking my entire body. What power would a witch who suffered such a death have upon her resurrection?
A wave crashed violently against the stone below us, sending a spray of cold water over the floor of the cell. Without thinking, I froze the droplets so that they were little pebbles by the time they made contact with the stone. Ice, I could handle. But that endless darkness of the sea…
“Can you tell which direction she is?”
It took me too long to realize that Garrick was speaking to me. There was no one else, but my mind was swimming in the sea, swirling downward.
My lips parted. I wasn’t sure, but I did not want to say so.
I knew I was closer to her than before, but not in a way that I could quantify or describe. At first, the joy of having our mental connection restored had subsumed everything else. And now… I tried to focus, but the crashing waves drove at my senses. I flattened myself against the wall, but the tug of the rough stone on my skin pulled at the edges of my mind, refusing to let me form a clear thought.
A warm hand cupped my elbow.
“Close your eyes. You can do this,” Garrick said. “I’ve got you.”
He offered comfort and calm when he had been the one to steal it from me. He’d tricked me into loving him, made me dependent upon him, and still he touched me like he was entitled to it… as if his touch could calm me, the same way it had in the emotional tempest of the Sacrifice Gate.
My mind rebelled, lashing at the thought, careening toward chaos, even as my power started to relax. A soft hum spread through my body, a vibration so subtle the word almost did not fit. Damn it all, but it worked. The roar of the ocean faded away. The scrape of the stone was eclipsed by the warmth of Garrick’s touch. My mind began to clear.
I could accept it—not forever, just for now, just long enough to let me center my mind and find Isanara. I would never forgive Garrick. But I could endure him, for my familiar.
I’d felt Isanara’s absence as an ache that began in my chest and then flooded the rest of my body. But I always heard her voice in my head. I tried to picture darkness, but that did not feel right. Isanara was not darkness; she was light. The image of the snowy forest where I’d first encountered her formed in my mind. It had been deserted… then there was the flash of an iridescent tail, the graceful flair of a lavender wing.
Cold air assaulted my lungs as I gasped, my eyes flying open.
“She is there.” I swallowed, tipping my head back to indicate the wall I’d pressed myself against. “At the center of the spiral.”
Garrick kept his hand around my arm for another beat of his heart. I felt it between us. A part of me even wanted it. I was angry. So angry. But I was also alone, and I’d felt what it was to not be lonely anymore, and my soul wanted to remember.
Then he stepped away, close enough to the edge that my breath stuttered. The cold air rushed into the space between us. I told myself that the cold did not bother me.
I lifted a hand and pressed it against the stone, assessing. “There is no moisture in this. I cannot shatter it,” I said.
