“You lied.” There was no mistaking the shake in my voice now, nor the emotion that caused it. Cold rage. “You are a subject of the fae king once again.”
“I am a subject of you, Koryn,” Garrick yelled.
He followed me across the room. I thought he’d shown me his emotions before? Now they were truly bared. He bore down on me, unbothered by the imposing difference in our height or the snapping of Isanara’s jaws in warning.
He threw out a hand, over his shoulder, vaguely in the direction of the door. “If you wish to flee, then we will flee.”
Garrick filled my vision, shrinking the room, but not me.
I glared up at him. “You would condemn your mother as easily as that.”
Even as I said it, I knew the response.Iwould not condemn her. Garrick knew that.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“I know you,” Garrick growled. The intensity and certainty of his voice should have felt unearned. “We will find a way out of this together. He means to make us uncomfortable, forcing us together when I have committed the ultimate betrayal. But it will not work, not the way that he thinks.”
“You think you can outsmart them.” I shook my head. “But you are wrong.”
I was wrong. I should not have stayed. The Dark God had manipulated me, I knew that. I’d allowed it to happen. But it was a mistake. What hope did I have of outsmarting the king of the fae and the head witch of the last remaining coven in Velora? Together, they had a thousand years of scheming between them.
Garrick leaned closer. His body was inches from mine, but I knew instinctively that he would not touch me without my consent. Still, the intensity of his closeness pressed in, a hammer against the block of ice I’d built inside of myself.
If his body was the hammer, his words were a flame.
“They do not understand love,” Garrick said. His breath brushed against my face. “I love you, witch. Every piece of my heart that is mine to give belongs to you.”
What more could I ask for than that? I had pieces of myself that I’d been unwilling to give, or unable to. My dedication to Kyrelle had not stopped me from developing feelings for Garrick. One did not exclude the other. Until it did.
“You do not hurt the people you love,” I said. That was a lie. I’d loved my sisters. My father was not capable of such emotion, but my mother… she’d loved me, and she’d died just the same.
You hurt the people you love more profoundly than anyone else. Garrick knew it.
The touch of his gaze was as real as his hand would have been. It mapped the lines of my face. First, my eyes. His narrowed, focusing in on mine with excruciating intensity. Then they slid to the side, following the line of my jaw until they arrived at my mouth. My lips parted without my permission, asking for what my body wanted.
“You can only truly hurt the people you love,” Garrick said, eyes still on my mouth. “If you did not love me, this would not hurt so much.”
I would admit no such thing.
I slid away from him, the back of my shift catching on the carved mantelpiece behind me. It was already in tatters anyway.
Garrick let me go as far as the foot of the bed before he turned.
“I understand the gravity of what I have done. I have endangered your familiar and your quest for the gates. You asked me to protect your sister’s descendant, and I failed you. I have risked all of it.”
He folded his arms over his chest. My own eased slightly.
“But I will earn back your trust. I will beg your forgiveness on my knees during the day and between your thighs at night.”
Those thighs quaked. It was exhaustion, the adrenaline of the last few hours finally crashing out of my system. Not the promise he made.
Garrick stayed there, with his back to the mantle, several feet of space between us. But I felt just as affected by his presence as I had when we’d been inches apart. Even Isanara, half-lying on my bare feet, was not enough to separate us.
“Koryn,” he said, the words scraping past the emotion in his throat. “No matter how many gods we face or how many gates we conquer, you are the only altar that I worship at.”
The words were so beautiful. But they were just words, and I could not let myself believe them. Not when the ache of my separation from Isanara was still fresh inside me. Not ever.
I had to arm myself against his determination.
