If she asked about the Dark God, I was dead. If she asked about my reasons for staying in Balar Shan. If?—
Garrick’s thumb skated over the back of my arm. My power fucking sang in response. I had not even noticed the whorls of ice that appeared faintly on my skin.
“Aurienna.” Maura motioned my sister witch forward.
Surrounded as I was, there was no question that I was at their mercy. But in this choice, Maura had unknowingly given me a possibility.
Aurienna moved to stand before me, keeping her head lowered as she did. She did not need sight. Like every witch, her other senses served her in abundance. I inhaled as quietly as I could, trying not to draw attention to myself even as every single eye in the crowded throne room turned to me.
“Koryn,” Aurienna said. She lifted one hand and tucked back an unruly strand of red hair behind her shoulder. She still did not look me in the eye, not with Maura and the entire fae court looking on. But I took the chance.
“Auri,” I said, uttering the name she’d told me she preferred.
She gave no sign of recognition. But I did not expect her to. Aurienna cleared her throat and then spoke, her voice loud and musical and clear.
“Will you attempt to leave Balar Shan without your head witch?”
She could have said without your head witch’s consent. She could have added in the fae king. But she phrased it so carefully that I could honestly answer?—
“No.”
Auri was still my friend. My sister, she’d proclaimed that night in the forest before the Memory Gate. I could not bring myself to give her that title, not when it had only brought death and doom on those who’d previously held it.
“Do you intend to abide by the witch covenants while you are here in Balar Shan?”
Intend. That word changed everything. Discovering what Maura was up to was not the same as intending to break my allegiance to the coven, nor the other two covenants.
“I do,” I answered honestly again.
On the dais, someone scoffed. A woman. But I kept my attention firmly on Auri.
“Will you harm anyone at Balar Shan?”
She’d saved this question for last, so that there could be no follow-ups. There was no way I would leave this palace without harming someone. Not when my power swam in icy rivers through my veins, eager to make the fae pay for what they had done. But it was the last question, and I thought I could answer it.
“I will harm anyone who attempts to separate me from my familiar.”
It was a clever dodge. But if what I’d heard about the Court of Lies was true, this place may thrive on words and deception, but they were no strangers to violence.
Auri did not linger. She retreated immediately to Maura’s side, giving every pretense of a subservient coven witch. Thecorners of Maura’s lips lifted into a triumphant smile as she turned to face the king.
But before he could speak, the auburn-haired fae woman surged forward, brushing past Alize and coming to stand at the king’s side.
“You cannot be satisfied with that, Father,” she demanded, gesticulating with her hand in a motion of disbelief. There was no doubt in my mind where the scoff had come from.
The king caught her wrist and twisted it sharply.
“Hold your tongue, Margeaux,” the King said. He did not release her as he addressed Maura. “The matter is settled. She is paroled into the Duke of Sein Talam’s custody.”
The other woman recoiled when the king released her, catching herself before she stumbled back. Alize made no attempt to steady or catch her sister. Another sister—a bastard like Garrick? But she stood on the dais, while Garrick was with me at the bottom of it.
It was not his presence that gave me the temerity to ask. It was Isanara, curling around my legs once again. It was the absurdity of the entire situation—me in nothing more than a tattered shift, dirty and barefoot, with the opulent fae court arrayed around me.
Or maybe it was the darkness that lingered at the edge of my mind, igniting my darker, more dangerous desires.
“Do I get to ask questions?” I asked.
The room around me stilled. The king opened his mouth, temper flaring in his too-familiar cerulean and clover green eyes, but my own were fixed on Maura. He made a sound low in his throat, a gruff expression of interest.
