KORYN
“You cannot run awayfrom me now.”
I ground my teeth together with such force I expected them to break.
“How long before someone digs us out?” I demanded, planting a hand on each hip and forcing out a long breath.
Garrick gave the wall of debris an experimental push. “Once they realize we are missing? An hour, if they don’t use magic.”
Which they would not, my mind filled in. In the weeks I’d been trapped in the Court of Lies, I’d learned that the fae used their remaining magic sparingly, as if afraid it might run out at any moment. If only they’d been as circumspect before cursing the entire continent with death.
Garrick pushed away from the wall. It did not budge. I had a hard time believing that was possible. This was the man who had cleaved apart the wall of a dungeon death-cell when it suited him. He did not want us to get out. He wanted us trapped here together. More deception. More lies. He was everything I expected him to be, his fae lineage a dark plague on the human blood in his veins.
“Call for him.”
I sank my teeth into my tongue to keep in the yelp of surprise. We never used his name, both of us afraid to summon him.
You do not know Garrick’s heart, my stubborn mind reminded me. Except another part of me insisted that I did.
If Garrick truly wished to manipulate me, he would not suggest I call for the Dark God.
I tucked my hands into my arms as I wrapped them around myself. “It does not work that way,” I said, staring at the ground instead of at my Lifebind.
I heard Garrick swallow. “What do you mean?”
His voice was resigned, even as he asked the question. He did not expect me to answer. And why should I? In the gates, we’d only given small, careful pieces of ourselves. We’d never offered true windows into our pasts; only tiny portholes. And now…
I could call for Isanara, I realized. Of course, I could. But she could not communicate where we were to anyone else, and she did not have hands to dig us out. Wicked claws, yes. It was unfair to underestimate her. I could lie to myself further, rationalize that I did not want to interrupt her hunt for food. But the truth was?—
Nope. I was not ready to acknowledge the truth. Looking inward hurt too damn much.
Garrick sighed. He used his foot to scrape away debris, then lowered himself to sit. He leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes. Settling in. Giving up on an answer. Giving up on me.
My fickle, supposedly dead heart rebelled at the possibility.
“He is always with me,” I said, pushing out my chin and glaring directly at Garrick. “He lingers at the edges of my mind, ready to insert himself on a whim.” I shifted my gaze downward, as if I could see directly into the Dark God’s frozen hell. “Which means he knows about our predicament and has decided to ignore us!” I half-shouted. Futile, I knew. Notions of heavenand hell above and below were primitive human attempts to rationalize the unknowable. But it did make me feel a bit better.
As did the look of quiet terror on Garrick’s face. Enjoying another’s torment had always been the province of my sister witches, not me. But I was hurt, and I wanted to lash out.
“You can speak to him mind to mind, like Isanara,” Garrick said, his voice thick. Was that jealousy?
A dark, self-satisfied chuckle echoed through my mind.
Fuck. You.I growled internally, even though the Dark God could hear my thoughts without me needing to form them.
“Not like Isanara,” I ground out, annoyed even though I was the one who had started this conversation. “With her, it is a conversation. Withhim, it is an invasion.”
Garrick’s eyes were not closed anymore. His jaw worked around his next thought. “Why did you bind yourself to him?”
I felt my brows shoot up, but this time I did not still the revelatory reaction. “You saw. At the Memory Gate.”
He’d been there—he and Kyrelle, and then just him. He’d seen me kill McKean.
Garrick shook his head, a silvery strand of hair catching on the stubble that lined his chin. Even in the comfort of the court, he could not be bothered to waste time shaving each day. Not when there were more important matters to attend to.Not me.But despite my internal protest, a small shard of ice sheared off the block in my chest.
“I saw the tattoo on your inner thigh.”
The one I’d tried so hard to hide from him, but he’d seen and pretended no to. Another lie. But Garrick was not solely culpable for this one. I’d lied to myself. He’d attended to my every need in the week after the Devotion Gate. Of course he’d seen the mark, the two unfinished triangles nestled within one another, inked on the inside of my thigh, halfway between my knee and the apex where my legs joined my body. The mark could not be anythingbut intimate, placed as it was. But Garrick had not asked me about it, and I had allowed myself to believe that he had not seen it.
