Page 212 of What Lies Within Masks & Shadows

Garrik’s arm trembled with each stroke. Still, he watched her.

“Why?”

The hard lump on his throat bobbed. “I needed to feel something again. And I…” He shook his head, eyes rolling to the canvas above. “It does not matter.”

“Don’t do that. You asked me not to shut you out. Don’t shut me out.”

Something like panic flashed in his expression before he winced from the tunic, pulling away from the festering burn fused to the fabric. Before she could pull it completely away, Garrik’s hand enveloped hers, stopping her completely.

His breathing went uneven.

The blackened abyss crawled over his eyes that had glazed over, inspecting her warm hand—her naturally colored, rounded nails—with the edge of his thumb. Tracing each one slowly in deep assessment.

But she didn’t move. Didn’t feel afraid. Didn’t flinch away or tear from his hold.

Silver specks of glowing light dotted his eyes. The blackened abyss faded, and his body loosened. “Forgive me,” he breathed, blinking out the remaining whorls in his eyes as he relaxed his hold on her hand, dropping his to the armrest. It rested there, knuckles blanching in a trembling, ruthless hold. “Please, continue.”

“What is it?”

She looked into his eyes. The silver dulled as if they were screaming and felt everything of wherever they had transported him to. In the silence, Alora raised her hand.

He meticulously watched it draw near, head rolling away when the warmth of her palm slid under his tunic and met the ice of his chest.

She gently wiped the balm across the charred, peeling flesh.

Where before he hissed at the pain, Garrik’s face now sat distant, in a hard line, looking back at her. His heartbeat, slow and unusual, found the quickened beat of hers as she stroked. Garrik’s palm rose and scratched against the back of her hand until his fingers enveloped hers completely.

Then, she felt him. Trembling in a cascading shudder that wracked his entire body.

She felt him stiffen. Every hard and loose muscle tensed.

Still, he didn’t release her.

“I can hardly stand the air that touches me,” Garrik breathed. His body remained trapped in small, shuddering waves, and he squeezed her palm and pressed it harder into his chest. “But your touch—” Garrik shuddered. “Hers is … so cold.”

Like the night they’d spent in the sky, a thought rippled. But instead of her sparks, Alora willed her palm to heat without embers, pulsing soothing warmth, sinking it deep into his skin.

At last, a smile twitched on his face, only for a moment when he whispered, “You are so warm.” Garrik pressed her palm harder against his skin.

He needed to feel something again.

Pain. Control. Warmth. A touch that he would allow.

Unimaginable agony overtook his. He dropped his head back to the headrest. Breathing deep. Breathing so deep and so slow and so fractured, like every memory was flooding through him and the pain of the burn on his chest somehow tethered him. Keeping him anchored there. A way back. And he was fighting behind his eyes and behind the trembling of his body to stay. Fighting against every touch and memory it brought. Fighting to replace the freezing, phantom hands on his skin with the warmth and gentle pain of hers.

Liquid lined Alora’s softened eyes, looking at him in a way that resembled a broken heart. And a thought hit her with the force of a damning blow.

The dungeon.It was a memory.A place where she could inflict pain on who hurt her.

Somewhere, he could inflict justice on those that haunted and left him horrifically scarred.

“That place”—she struggled to pull her gaze from his chest and to his face—“the blood. It wasn’t theirs pooled on the stones, was it?”

Garrik’s face paled, and she knew.

The vague sentences he’d spoken. The insinuations of what horrors he had suffered. The idle stares into nowhere. Now seeing a bloody dungeon full of chains and cruel weapons. How his entire body seized up under her in Maraz and now the rigid expression on his face. How every single day she had watched as his hand would tremble and tug away the fabric at his abdomen.

Her scars were hidden deep inside, but his …

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