“Not a bargain. A promise,” I corrected the Dark God. “You burdened me with this power. You will teach me how to control it. You will stay, here in Balar Shan, and help me.”
I felt a keening in my soul that I was not sure belonged to me. I refused to look at Garrick.
“A promise, then,” the Dark God agreed. He did not argue. That should have warned me off—I was doing what he wanted, too easily. But I did not have time to debate any longer. I did not need my sharpened witch senses to know that we had mere seconds before the fae guards were upon us.
“They are coming. This is your last chance.”Please. The word was there in the clover green and cerulean blue of his eyes, glowing together to a bright turquoise. It was in the tick in his jaw, the tension that lined every muscle as he begged me with his eyes while steeling his body for battle. His pain was fierce. But it was not enough to make me forget my own, or his part in it.
I pushed past the agony in his eyes. Fear had centered my entire existence for four hundred years. Fear that my family did not love me. Fear that I was less than my sister witches. I was still afraid. But I could make a decision in spite of that fear.
The Dark God’s blue-black eyes sparkled. He’d taken physical form, but he was still in my mind. He knew my decision before I said it.
“Let them come.”
CHAPTER 11
GARRICK
Before
“Do not speakunless the king addresses you directly,” my mother said.
She reached down to adjust my surcoat for the third time in as many minutes. The deep burgundy fabric and mother-of-pearl buttons edged in gold had cost almost the entirety of the bounty from selling our meager cottage and parcel of land. Every possession inside had been sold as well, including our clothes. The entirety of our life’s savings had been put toward the garments now on our bodies.
“I should have paid for the pure gold buttons,” she fretted. She wet her thumb with saliva and rubbed the button fastened at my throat.
I sidestepped her before she could lift that wet thumb to my face.
“You needed a gown, too,” I reminded her.
She jerked upright. Even at twelve, I was as tall as her. It made it impossible for me to miss the emotions that scurried across her face. Worry made lines around her mouth. Anxietyabout her appearance had her smoothing her hands over her dress. It was wool, but well-made. I’d tried to get her to buy silk; she’d protested it was too expensive and spent the money on velvet ribbon to edge my surcoat, which she’d quilted by hand on the ship as we crossed the Northern Death.
She exhaled through pursed lips. “It does not matter how I look,” she said. “You are the one he wants.”
The thought filled my chest with warmth. Until the scarlet letter arrived, my mother had never spoken about my father. I’d asked, of course, but she’d always demurred, and I could see with my own two eyes that her life was hard enough without me adding to it.
But then the letter arrived, and everything changed. We’d been summoned. We were crossing the sea. My father was not just a mysterious man—he was not even a man at all. He was fae. A race of beings that people in our homeland only whispered about. He had magic. He was a king.
Did that make me a prince? When I’d asked, my mother’s eyes glossed over with moisture. I wasn’t sure what that meant, and I did not ask again.
Sharp footsteps sounded, and a guard appeared.
“His Majesty will see you now,” he said. He turned away without waiting for a response, his wooden-heeled boots clicking against the herringbone-patterned red brick that lined every corridor of the fae palace.
Balar Shan, I corrected myself. My mother had taught me about the fae city and its desolate continent in the dark, quiet evenings aboard the ship. The port city where we’d disembarked had been quiet too, occupied by humans who kept their heads down. Then we’d traveled north, snowy mountains rising from the west, a frigid ocean to the east.
But when Balar Shan came into view, it had not struck me as a dying city. Everything was coated in ice, but it only made itmore brutally beautiful. The bright colors were not muted by the frost; they sparkled because of it.
This was where my family awaited.
I’d always been stronger, faster, taller, different than the other boys. Now I knew why. Iwasdifferent. I was not even fully human. I was fae. I was the son of a king. Illegitimate, yes, but it had to mean something that my father had summoned my mother and me to his court.
We followed the guard across an open courtyard, then along a strangely curved corridor, up and up and up. It felt like we were going in circles, spiraling around and around. My heart beat faster in my chest with each foot we climbed upward. Mother was a half-step behind.
She would not be alone anymore, either. She would not have to work herself to exhaustion. My father would provide for us. I might even have siblings. A brother who could keep up with me, maybe, unlike all the boys I’d befriended in the past.
I worried if my heart beat any faster, it might come right out of my chest.
I was breathless by the time we reached the top. At my side, my mother took shallow breaths, each one moving her chest a measured amount.
