“Your success in the Gates has made you bold.” The gold in Maura’s black eyes glinted with disapproval. “Maybe you will finally be something other than a disappointment.”
I could pretend to be wounded by her words. Fuck—I hated it, but I was wounded. Even after everything she’d done to me, there was still a part of me that craved Maura’s approval. I wanted to freeze that part until it was dead. But I needed it now.
My hands started to shake. I let them.
I let that old weakness and vulnerability that had plagued me for so long—that had marked me as less in her eyes—show through. If I could not overcome it, then at least I could use it.
She would not answer me honestly—whether we were alone or in a throne room full of dubious fae allies. But I wanted to hear what she’d say, because as much as I hated it, I could not ignore the voices in the back of my head. Alize. The Dark God. Maybe even my own.
Maura was playing at honesty. She pretended to be open with the fae king, to let him in on the secrets of our kind. He couldn’t be stupid enough to fall for it, and neither was I. But her answer was another piece in the delicate balance that I would have to strike if I were to survive Balar Shan and stop Maura.
Stop her from doing… what?
Fuck me. I did not even know. Creating a talisman? I did not know to what end she acted. Power was the only thing that made sense. But I’d learned many harsh lessons in my brief human life, and one of them was that power was never enough. Once you had a taste, you always wanted more.
Maura had been the last head witch on a dying continent. If she’d allied herself with the fae king, the bitterest enemy of the witches, then she had a purpose… and she was too cunning to let any one person see the whole of it.
I pushed on. “I did as you asked. I passed through the first five of the Seven Gates. Why have you taken me from them when I am so close to completing my quest, freeing Velora, and regaining my place of sacred sisterhood?”
“You are so eager to face your death in the Seven Gates?” Maura tipped her head to the side as she asked.
I was not eager at all. The Dark God awaited me after the second death. Garrick was here. There was no escape in either reality.
But Maura was not waiting for an answer, just like she was not going to truly give one to me.
“You will get your chance to prove your worth, Koryn,” she said. It was a promise—and the only explanation I would get.
Maura turned her back on me, on the rest of the court, and bowed her head to the fae king again. The third time since I’d entered the throne room. I’d marked every instance. They left together, the courtiers opening a path to a door that had been obscured by the crowd. The rest of the royal family—Alize, Edmund, the other sister, and the queen—remained on the dais.
A large, warm, too familiar hand closed around my upper arm.
“We must go now, Koryn,” Garrick whispered into my ear.
My brain’s instinct was to jerk away. My body’s instinct was to lean into him. But my familiar turned immediately to go with him, and that was what ultimately guided my feet. The king had granted me a limited freedom within Balar Shan, but under the supervision of the Duke of Sein Talam. From the urgent press of Garrick’s hand, still on my arm, that could not be a good thing.
Whatever game Maura was playing, it was dangerous. Not just to me, but to Isanara as well. Maura had not said it, but if she’d gone to the trouble of separating us, that told me she was not sure of the amount of power Isanara might give me.
Garrick guided me out of the throne room as the path created by the courtiers began to close.
The Dark God had manipulated me; Garrick was correct about that. But I’d allowed it because I could see the truth of what he said, and what Alize had pointed out. Power was tooeasy an excuse. It would take significant expenditures of power to create the talisman the Dark God had suggested. If Maura was truly making one, there was a reason beyond Velora and lifting the curse.
Down the spiral, once, twice.
And I had a whole new group of supplicants to contend with. The fae royal family and my own coven were now players in this dangerous game in which my allies were also enemies, and I did not know the rules.
The icy block in my chest thickened as the frost flooded my veins. I had to keep control of myself. There was no going back now. I had to keep a hold on my emotions, frozen in my chest. Dead, just like my heart.
We’d just started the third descent when Garrick pulled me into one of the radiating, linear corridors. There were doors on either side and intricate tile and brick murals on the walls.
“Where are we? Is this my new cell? Where you surrender me to the Duke of Sein Talam?” Whoever the fuck that was.
Garrick released my arm. The look of loss on his face as he did angered me. He was not allowed to feel broken or bereft. He was the one who’d hurt me.
“I am the Duke of Sein Talam,” Garrick said. “And this,” he leaned past me to open the door, “is my bedroom.”
CHAPTER 14
KORYN
