Page 134 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

When they were not trying to kill each other.

Overnight, word had spread as swiftly as a plague that their princeling would spar with the gray-haired demon of Elysian. That was why so many were gathered. His Dragons too. Sitting high on the course platforms and bridges, feet dangling over. Others on the stones of the cliffside as far as they could climb without risk of a deadly plummet below.

Garrik was better suited pretending they were not there. Nothing more than irritating distractions hovering like gnats—and murmuring like them, too.

In a gracefully brutal spin, Ezander whirled around and brushed his blade inches from Garrik’s shoulder. A move most believed generated power within the rotation but only left vulnerability. It was something he taught his Dragons to avoid. Foolish parlor tricks used for entertainment, not defending a life.

“You think this is fucking younglings-play?” Garrik snarled and knocked Ezander’s blade sideways, but the prick held strong. “Leaving yourself exposed for theatrics?” Whythe fuckwas he schooling him right now? It almost felt like … like old times. A glimpse of who he once was. Back so long ago when they were friends. Before Ezander?—

The heir to Land and Growth produced a baiting grin.

If Garrik could see color, the princeling would be cast in crimson. Darkness had transformed his vision into a grayscale long before he descended from the sky. Garrik raged forward, parting clouds of shadows at his feet. Scolding himself for nearly forgetting what Ezander had done when iron swung for Ezander’s exposed chest.

Subtle movement stirred at the edge of the crowd—beside Alora and Aiden. And before his blade sunk into the flesh and bones protecting the traitor’s heart, Thalon twisted a ring on his finger.

Garrik’s sword met a wall of nothingness—of air as solid as the mountain—and bounced off.

No one would have noticed it; the scheme his brothers concocted as they had flown from the castle. Their only hope to keep Ezander alive against Garrik’s all-consuming desires. Against the magicsheleft inside him. The new silver ring on Thalon’s finger was not only equipped with Garrik’s powers of shielding but of illusions, too. To the spectators’ eyes, they would have seen Ezander block it.

But the confusion rushing off the princeling posed a threat to their efforts.

Ezander was not convinced. He skeptically stared at his sword and cut his suspicion to Garrik. Glaring, he stuttered, “What … you?“ That confused expression hardened. Ezander retreated a step and repositioned, sword extended. “You’reholding back,” he accused, now humored. “Because of me? I didn’t think you cared.”

With a rotation of his wrist, Garrik twirled his sword by his side and crossed a foot in front of the other, stalking in a semicircle. “I have killed princelings before.” Another step. “What makes you think your life is any different?” He did not allow Ezander a moment to consider anything more.

Ezander whipped his head up. Managing to swing into the edge of Garrik’s blade before it cleaved him in two.

Vibrations thrummed through Garrik’s arms. Daggers sliced into every inch of his veins from a massive clang of metal that should have reduced his old friend to pieces. Should have pooled blood at his boots and stained the air with a coppery taste, leaving the High Guard crowded around them without a leader and Kadamar without its eldest male heir.

“Yield,” Garrik snarled. If the fight continued much longer, serpent darkness would completely take hold. And he was already suffering the effects of warring her off this long. He was about to snap.

But the princeling pushed, “Wasn’t it you who once said,surrender to no one—not evenyou?”

“Wasn’t it your tongue that convinced our High King to see my mother killed?”Too close. He was close to snapping that tether on his faemanity.

Garrik risked a glance at Alora. A plea for help or simply for a reminder—he didn’t know.

If Ezander kept pushing?—

“No.” It appeared Ezander had been punched in the gut. His baiting grin fell, and pleading clouded his russet eyes. “It wasn’t me—” Ezander bent his spine backward, nearly missing Garrik’s neck-splitting swing.

He should make him beg—make him begfor his unworthy life.

“And you expect me to believe that? After you hid in your golden kingdom all these years without one fucking word—not even a mention of grief?” Nearly six decades’ worth of pain and rage and vengeance darkened his eyes and cracked the iron hilt beneath his grip. “You loved her—the same as I.You were like her son!”

She was gone… His mother.Gone.Because of him—because of him.

Darkness flared in his sight and crowded the borders of his vision in tendrils and whorls of ink. His control … it was slipping. Seeing nothing but shadows, his veins burned so badly he was not entirely sure they were not split open and bleeding. Venom blackened every vein as he felt the bite of poison. Felt that vital piece of him beginning to shift. His mortality—his will—crumbling and splitting and fracturing.

A rapid succession of brutal, merciless attacks followed as Ezander stumbled and scrambled to keep his footing. Keep his head.

Do not kill him. Do not kill him. Do not?—

Kill. Him.

The full force of Garrik’s powers slammed into Ezander, barreling him into the crowd at the cliff’s edge. Those with battle-black armor and wings retreated to the skies, but others adorned in the colors of autumn were not so lucky.

Garrik barely registered the white flames or the golden sunlight calling to him—to his mind. His shadows formed a higher barrier inside his head. He could not let them in now. Not when he had Ezander backed to the ledge. Not when he tasted his fear and reveled in it.

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