“Koryn?” Auri said softly.
Inhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Exhale.
“Give me your hand,” I instructed, holding out my own free one.
Auri placed her palm face up in mine. I ignored the eerie parallel. Closing a thumb around her wrist, I angled it carefullyso I could see the artery that, if severed, would make her bleed out in minutes. I pressed the tip of my ice dagger against her pale, freckled skin.
She did not flinch. I did not deserve her trust, but I would not squander it, either.
“Where is the talisman?” I asked.
I watched carefully for any sign of struggle. Auri was fighting a three-way internal battle—witch covenants, my question, and her own will. But she would have to answer my question truthfully. It fell to me to make sense of that truth.
Her throat slid, but she was able to get the words out without too much trouble. “Hidden in the castle,” she said.
That was a wide net to cast. The talisman could be anywhere in the vast palace. But I had to believe that if the warring powers tearing at Auri allowed her to be any more specific, she would have been. At least she had not said Velora. I was already trapped here for the foreseeable future. Which brought me to my next question.
“Why did Maura bring me to Balar Shan?”
Auri opened her mouth, then closed it. She tried again. Her lower lip wobbled. She knew the reason, but she struggled to find the words to tell me.
When she finally got the words out, they were pained. “Because of your familiar.”
A chill of rage snaked up my spine. Maura wanted Isanara. No, that was not what Auri had said. I had to take her words exactly as she'd said them. Isanara was the reason that Maura had pulled me from the Seven Gates. She’d risked my death—the gods would hold me to the vow I’d made in the first temple. And the reason was my familiar.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Across from me, Auri shivered. The temperature in the room had dropped. So much for having control over my power. Auri’sgreenery was still alive, but a sheen of frost coated the outermost edges of her little oasis.
I had to finish this and get out of here before I lost control fully.
My last question may have been a waste. But I could not sit in this room, mere feet from the pentagram, and not ask it.
“Why did Maura kill that fae woman?”
Auri’s bright green eyes widened. She had not known that I’d seen her with my other sister witches. Then her eyes filled with tears. A surge of protectiveness blasted through me. I shoved that down with my power. No one had ever benefited from my protection. It always ended badly. Kyna and Kyrelle’s familiar faces tried to invade my mind. I pushed those down, too. Emotion would only make this worse. I was solid. Strong. Ice.
Across from me, Auri shifted in her vine-covered chair. My ice dagger pressed into her skin without me moving it. Another fraction of an inch, and it would pierce her skin. Was she trying to remind herself—her body—that she had to answer?
“Power and protection,” she rasped, the words scraping out of her throat. The most dangerous—and the vaguest.
I pulled back my dagger.
But Auri didn’t let me go. She grabbed my hand, gripping it hard. Pain pulled at the corners of her mouth and dug ditches around her eyes.
“Auri,” I began. But she shook her head violently.
The agony in her eyes broke something inside of me. There was more she wanted to say but could not within the parameters of my question and the covenants by which she was bound. She was fighting as hard as she could. She understood Maura’s evil, wanted to rebel against it, but she could not.
Casting me out from the coven had saved me, I realized.
I did not want to go back.
I released her hand. She let me go. If I’d been standing, my knees would surely have given out.
I did not want to go back to my coven.
I had never let myself form those words, even in thought. They pressed into me, a new weight in my chest, so heavy they cracked the wall of ice I’d built around my most tender parts. I struggled for each breath. There was nothing that counting flower petals could do for me now.
