The achebetween my legs would not let me forget the night before. But it was the horn pressing into my shoulder blade that woke me up.
You are getting too big for this, I groused as I rolled onto my stomach and away from the dragon who took up the other half of the bed. Goodness, she’d grown more than I realized in the last month.
Movement on the other side of the room announced that Garrick was awake, too. Waiting for him to wake up and leave had not done me much good. So instead we’d replaced that with awkwardly dressing in silence while looking in the opposite direction—as if we were not intimately familiar with one another’s bodies.
As I’d lain alone the night before, I’d come to a decision. I couldn’t avoid Garrick any longer. Not physically. He was one of my few allies in Balar Shan, dubious though that alliance was. I had too few to squander even a single one.
Isanara wriggled around behind me, stretching her wings and rolling her head side to side in that eerie, serpentine motion. Her lavender scales shimmered in the diffused morning lightthat leaked in from the window. But it was the glint of gold behind her that caught my eye.
A goblet sat on the bedside, its wide brim gleaming in the morning light.
I frowned, sifting through my lust-addled memories of the night before. Neither the Dark God nor I had drunk anything.
What is that?
Isanara flexed her claws and hopped down from the bed, circling toward the window.I am going.
Garrick glanced in her direction, caught my eye for a moment, and then determinedly turned away. Great.
I pressed the heel of my palm to my forehead. It was too early for a headache.
Have you been stealing again?I asked, even though a large part of me did not want to hear the answer.
The magic here is all stolen, Isanara huffed.And the diadem was merely a snack.
Her wing had already healed. Dragons cannot be felled by puny fae princesses, or something like that. But I would never forget finding her like that.Stay away from Margeaux.
She snapped her jaws at me.You want me to stay so you are not alone with your Lifebind.
I ignored her—and tried not to look at Garrick—as I pulled a dressing gown over the shift I’d been wearing as a nightgown. New garments appeared in the wardrobe in the corner almost daily, all of them a perfect fit, despite the distinct lack of variation in fae bodies. But questioning the provenance of my clothing was so low on my list of priorities that it barely registered.
At least partially dressed, I walked to the window and pulled at the latch. This had become part of the morning routine, too.
If we find the talisman, I may need your help to destroy it,I reasoned.
She leapt onto the windowsill in one graceful motion.Excuses.
Coward, I thought in her direction. But she’d already launched and, based on the sound of disgust that echoed in my mind, I was glad of it. I did not know what it looked like for an adolescent dragon to stick out their tongue, but I doubted Isanara was above it.
I heard Garrick’s footsteps behind me. The room just was not big enough to ignore each other completely, even without both of our heightened senses.
“Do you want me to go with her?” he asked.
He could, I realized. There’d been no occasion for it, but he was a shifter. I had not even seen it, I realized. Not since the Memory Gate, when the fae king had forced him to shift. But I could pinpoint the moments. When I’d followed him up the mountain between the Justice and Sacrifice Gates, and he somehow still made it back to camp before me… it was because he’d flown.
I could picture it. The two of them, soaring through the muted gray sky. Isanara’s scales shimmering between lavender and turquoise, her keen citrine eyes surveying the landscape. Garrick, his black feathers as lustrous as the ones inked across his shoulders. The beauty of it clogged my throat with emotions that I did not have the luxury of feeling. Not now. Maybe not ever.
I shivered, but I recognized it for what it was. Not the Dark God, but Velora itself. The reminder was plain. I reached up and closed the window.
“I am going hunting for the talisman,” I said, turning around and resting my back against the same wall where the Dark God had pinned me the night before.
Garrick loomed over me, his frame dwarfing mine as always. The Dark God had been all smooth, sensuous touches. Garrickwas raw, unadulterated power. I missed the way his body enveloped mine so completely. Standing in his shadow like this was a sorry echo of what I truly wanted.
“I see,” he said, watching me carefully. “Is that an invitation?”
I bit the inside of my lower lip, then released it. “Do you want it to be?”
Shadows filled the hollows beneath his eyes as they drew together. He was thinking deeply. I had expected him to leap upon the suggestion. Maybe I’d been wrong, and he’d finally given up on me.
