“Why?”I wanted to scream. A thousand words crowded my throat, fighting for their chance to give shape to the pain. I swallowed them all. “Why?”
I did not bother to look around the room Garrick had led me to. What did it matter if it was well-appointed and comfortable? It was just another dungeon, even if there was no salt in sight.
Garrick closed the door behind us, shutting out the rest of the world. We should be quiet. But I did not know if I was capable of it. Isanara wove in between my legs, wrapping her tail around my bare calf in a show of silent solidarity. She intended to stay out of this argument.
The fucking Duke of Sein Talam did not avoid my glare as he spoke. “The title was granted by my father before my brother was born as a threat to his queens, should they continue to fail to produce a male heir.”
I don’t give a fuck about your title—but Garrick spared me having to swallow the words by cutting me off. “I don’t want it. I don’t use it. This is not my home, and I do not answer to the king.”
That information would probably be valuable someday. An hour in the Court of Lies and I knew that understanding thecomplex inner workings would be essential to my survival. But I could not bring myself to care, not when one knife competed with the other for how it could carve up my chest.
“Why does the king trust you with my keeping?” I’d worked most of the rest out. As best I could. While trying to figure out how everyone was related.
I’d figured very little out, actually. I had no confirmation that Maura was creating a talisman, for what purpose, or where she’d hidden them. Auri was still an ally. The fae king was exactly as awful as I’d always imagined. Everything was deeply fucked up.
But none of it explained why the king had agreed to allow Garrick to guard me and ensure my good behavior, when he clearly hated his father.
Which meant that Garrick was still keeping secrets.
I waited for him to try to dodge the question. Offer me some stupid tidbit about his very special royal fae title.
Instead, Garrick the Red lowered his hands and offered them to me, palms up, in a gesture that could only be interpreted as submission. Maybe even supplication.
“The woman standing at the edge of the dais was my mother,” he said, still holding my gaze.
I knew immediately who he meant. The slight, dark-haired woman I’d noted and dismissed. Her hair must have been styled over her ears, if I hadn’t noted her humanity. That made sense. Who would advertise that weakness in the fae court?
His mother… the one who’d been raped by the fae and forced to bear a bastard child. Not any fae, I amended, but the evil king himself. Thirty-some odd years later, she was still not free of him. Her son was grown, and she was still forced to stand at the beck and call of her abuser.
Others’ rage might be fire, but mine was ice. The block in my chest hardened, giving strength to the power that surged in my veins. Garrick’s eyes shifted, the blue subsuming the green,the lids pulling in opposite directions as his gaze widened. He noticed the shift in my power. At least he did not reach for me. If he did, I was certain I would shatter. The events and emotions of the last hour would turn outward, and I would not care who the icy shards cut—including myself.
And from the way his eyes softened, Garrick knew it, too.
“When I was twelve years old, my mother and I were summoned to Balar Shan. The king’s wives had failed to produce a male heir. I came here expecting a family, only to find myself a weapon in a war that had already been raging for centuries.”
Garrick could not touch me with his hands. So he reached for me with words instead. His voice was steady, even as he recounted what must be among the worst moments of his life, pressing warmth against the ice and slowly melting it.
It was shared trauma that had drawn us together. We’d both lost so much. We’d never talked about what we each stood to gain from conquering the Seven Gates and lifting Velora’s curse, but the feeling had been there. The significance lingered just outside the pocket of reality created by the gates, the one where we’d fallen in?—
The sound of ripping fabric accosted my senses, rupturing my reverie.
My gaze snapped free of Garrick’s.
One of Isanara’s spikes had caught in the coverlet of the bed to my right, tearing a large gash in the thick, quilted brocade. It might as well have been through my skin.
No. No, no, no. I could not let Garrick comfort me, even if it was just his words. In the throne room, it had been a matter of survival. But here, alone, it was dangerous.
It would be too easy to forget. I could not let myself make the same mistake twice. That was why I’d built that block of ice in my chest, to protect myself—and everyone I cared about.
Kyrelle and Isanara. But more faces swam in the eddies of my consciousness. A flash of red hair, a sister I’d never known I had. A head of dark curls and laughing eyes, an unexpected light in the darkness of the temples.
Too many people.
I could not protect everyone. Not if I could not first protect myself.
My fingernails pressed crescent moons into the flesh of my palms as I forced out an exhale.
Focus.
