I was still in my nightgown, but he was already dressed. While I was rubbing sleep out of my eyes and stretching, he was ready to face the day. Efficient as always.
Except, apparently, when it came to answering my question.
I was about to open my too-big mouth and ask why it was such a difficult question, when the battle on his face disappeared and his brow smoothed.
“Yes. I want to be with you,” Garrick said.
Oh.
What was I meant to say to that?
Nothing, I admonished myself. That was not new information. Garrick had been adamant from the moment he met me outside of the bathhouse and used his compulsion powers to send away the fae prince, Edmund. But a part of me had just been waiting for him to waver.
Yet here he stood, hands folded neatly over his chest, silver hair tied back, ready. While I was still in my damned dressing gown. Garrick’s gaze dropped to my throat.Dark God help me… he had helped me, right to a climax. I turned before my cheeks could start to burn. But I had a feeling that if I looked down, I would see the marks the Dark God had left with his mouth.
I would not be ashamed. Embarrassed, maybe. Ashamed, no. “I should get dressed.”
Garrick cleared his throat. I did not reach for the belt of my dressing gown until I heard him returning to the hearth.
Despite the mouth bruises and the pleasant ache between my legs, my movements felt lighter than they had in days. My tryst with the Dark God had not erased the bone-deep exhaustion that trying to save an entire fucking continent had caused. But it had changed something. Not between Garrick and me, but within myself.
My mind had been spinning until late in the night. As I dressed, I let the thoughts start to tumble loose.
“Aurienna told me that the talisman is hidden in the castle,” I said as I draped the dressing gown around the bedpost and replaced my shift with a fresh one.
“And you trust her?” Garrick asked.
Irritation burned the back of my throat. But it was a fair question, and if I wanted Garrick back…
Was that what I wanted?
I should have asked the Dark God. But he’d disappeared so quickly in the aftermath that there hadn’t been time for a kiss, let alone delicate questions about my mental state that I was not entirely sure I even wanted him to answer.
I pulled a gown over my head—this one made of dark turquoise velvet alternating with panels of lustrous silk in the same shade. The waist cinched in with a cleverly woven leather belt.
“I used the same trick that Maura used against me in the throne room,” I said. “Her answers were truthful.”
The other two answers burned just as brightly in my mind. Isanara was the reason Maura and the fae king had taken me from the gates. Until we figured out why she was important toMaura, I was glad she kept her distance. At least, that’s what I told myself to ease the ache of missing her.
As for the fae woman’s murder… power and protection. They amounted to the same thing. If I could stop Maura, break her alliance with the fae king, I could stop any more women from being murdered. Which brought me back to the talisman.
I walked to the hearth to join him as I finished lacing the belt across my abdomen.
Garrick nodded, accepting my answer without further question. Faint lines formed at the corners of his eyes, his mind already spinning through possibilities.
“There are many possible hiding places within Balar Shan. Do you know what we are looking for?”
“No,” I admitted. “But I know Maura.”
I reached up and began to comb out my thick waves with my fingers as I spoke. The one thing that had not appeared in the wardrobe was a hairbrush. “In technicality, a talisman could be anything. The object only has to be large enough to be inscribed with the requisite runes. Then it is consecrated with a spell that directs its purpose, and charged with power from a witch within the bind of the spell.”
As I spoke, Garrick went to the pack he’d stashed in the corner behind the wingback chair that was his bed.
“The bind?” he asked with his back to me.
“My power is frost. I am water-bound. Maura…” I paused, sucking in a breath, mentally quieting the surge of power that rose at the memory of Maura using her power on that young fae woman. “You’ve already seen her power is flame. She is fire-bound. Elodie and Aurienna’s powers are earth-bound. We no longer have an air-bound witch in our coven.”Because I killed her.
Before I could freefall into that spot, Garrick straightened. When he turned back, he held out his hand. I blinked down at him.
