Page 99 of What Lies Within Masks & Shadows

His bed.

Alora shakily lifted a heavy arm and rubbed across her face. “How did I get here?”

“I carried you,” that deep, honeyed voice answered.

Alora blinked her burning eyes. Through shards of darkness, she recalled the faint memory. She’d fallen. Blood had drained from her head as she fought to stay awake. Strong arms caught her mid-collapse and lifted her against his tense body. Her vision had darkened soon after. Then flashes of sunlight. The High Prince’s face, weaving through tents, a clouded sky around ashy hair. Until she had completely given into the darkness.

He carried her.

Water trickled down Garrik’s broad hands, along his corded veins to his elbows, as he rang out a white cloth in the water basin. He turned to her, focusing on her head and removing the warm cloth, before replacing it with the new, cooled one.

Alora’s eyebrows pinched as she flinched back.

“Easy.” Garrik held his hand up near her. “It is only cloth. I am not asking you to marry me.” His face was close enough to smell a strong scent of vanilla and oak.

She nodded and closed her eyes as he carefully draped the cloth on her burning forehead.

The touch of cold metal brushed against her lips. “Drink this.”

Normally, she would refuse his chivalry, but given how dry her mouth was, Alora opened to icy, sweet spring water.

“I heard you calling for … Rowlen. I have heard you for days … wondering, the guilt of leaving him behind.” Garrik fell silent as he gradually poured another sip into her mouth. “He is alive—safe. Now living in a … city south of Telldaira.”

Had the sun always been so bright? Especially through thick canvas. The furs wrinkled as she pushed herself up on her elbows and sank back against the piled pillows in the corner of his bed. All the feeling had returned to her body. Every sensitive touch against her skin from the soft furs, the scratch of the cloth on her aching forehead.

With raw eyes, Alora pleaded into the silver of his. “Rowlen’s alive?” Her voice cracked, and she fought back burning tears.

“And well.” Pivoting on his feet, Garrik leaned for the water basin. He rang out another cloth and wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead before glancing up to where the sky waited beyond the canvas. “The Ravens have moved east. He is safe there. I wanted you to know that. So you can have some peace.”

Alora’s lip quivered. Warm tears spilled out over her lashes. “Thank you.” She wrenched in a breath, fighting the urge to sob in front of the High Prince.

Rowlen was alive. He didn’t suffer a terrible fate in the raid. And now she knew. After wondering, after pleading with the stars to give her a sign. Now she knew.

“Thank you,” she repeated. But her eyes widened. Rowlen was a Mystic, just like them. “He doesn’t belong here. Please, don’t bring him here.”

“Rowlen is a healer?—”

“Leave him out of this.” Embers lit inside her eyes.

Garrik fell silent, his jaw clenched at the sharp edge of her tongue. Observing the sapphires threatening to ignite, he gritted his teeth. “Very well.”

Instead of a white, fiery glow, Alora’s eyes welled with tears, and she nodded. She refused to subject Rowlen to this.

“I need to tell him what happened. He needs to know I’m okay. He’ll come looking for me.”

Garrik dropped the cloth in the basin with a splash, beads specking the bedside table. “He knows that you are safe. Thalon sent word. He believes you have made your way north. Once settled, he expects correspondence from you. I had planned, in the case of your disapproval, to keep him updated, if that is what you wish.”

“Yes.” Without question, at least he would know. At least neither of them had to wonder.

Alora bent her knees to her chest at the thought, excited to communicate with Rowlen for the first time since the cliff, but that excitement was short-lived. Wincing, she whimpered when a brutal sting burned up her leg from where freezing Smokeshadows whorled over a wound. Pulling a knee to her stomach, her fingers picked at the edge of a blood-soaked bandage covering her training leathers.

Garrik’s shadows receded, leaving the cruel warmth of the tent to settle on her wound. “I need to clean that.”

She lifted the bandage to reveal a gash the size of her hand to the inside of her right knee. “Why didn’t you?”

He nodded at her pants. “You will need to remove those for me to do so. It is not serious enough for me to make that decision for you.”

Alora’s cheeks heated at the thought. Close to bare in the High Prince’s tent. In his bed…

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