Page 145 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Alora slipped her hand in his with a grin, remembering the last time they’d flown together and didn’t question herself this time. His icy arms lifted under her knees and around her low-cut back as she toweled hers around his neck and asked, “Where are we going?”

Their takeoff was much smoother this time. Though she admitted, she’d hoped for the sharp jolt if only to have an excuse to hold him tighter.

Garrik must have had the same thought. Those incredible muscles swelled as he tightened his hold and murmured, “I need a drink.”

She smacked his chest. “Not funny.”

A beautiful, real laugh echoed from his chest. “I think it would be far more exciting if I surprised you.” Garrik brushed his nose against her cheek, and she couldn’t help the pleasant hum in her throat or the way she paused for a few moments to drink that touch in.

Without argument, Alora resettled in his arms as he flew them in a comfortable decline across the library to a section labeledElysian History. His footsteps were near perfect, smooth against the golden oak floor before he settled her on her feet.

Deep within the bookshelves and nestled inside a small room, he guided her. Along the walls waited the most detailed map of Elysian she’d ever seen. Cities, streets, trade routes, villages, towns, rivers, mountains… It was all there. So immaculately detailed that the simplest glance made her neck tighten at the thought she would lose her head for treason.

Faelight orbs floated in the air, illuminating every stroke of ink, every tree and building and name.

Garrik cupped her lower back. She shivered at the contact, but her eyes couldn’t stop searching. Until…

Telldaira.

There it was. Maybe a two-week’s ride north from Castle Galdheir.

Every kingdom was unfathomable. So many cities. So much of this realm she didn’t know, had never seen. Alora wondered what those cities looked like. Were they covered in dreary brownstone and crumbling buildings like Telldaira’s Outcastle Alley? Soaked in mud like Maraz or cobblestoned streets like Alynthia?

Cold breath fanned against her ear, pulling her from her daydream. “What do you wish to see? I will show you,” he insisted and led her forward until they were inches from the wall.

Alora ran her fingers along the wall of flames surrounding Kennazar, finding Garrik smiling down at her before she felt that gentle caress against her mind. And she half-wanted to tell him he didn’t need to ask anymore—that she would gladly allow him in every time.

Instead, she willed her starflames to part for his shadows, and the instant they danced inside, her vision changed to a picture-play.

Fiery forests and golden castles—the first thing he showed her.

As if they flew with dragons soaring in the skies around them, every inch of Kennazar was covered in the colors of autumn. Not muted. No. Every orange and red and yellow outshined Sun himself. Rivers of fire weaved through the kingdom to where she guessed was the main city. Gleaming in gold, that castle reflected against the mighty rivers and ocean surrounding it as the city itself basked in its incredible light. It looked to be where dragons were born. Where they called home.

Mindlessly drifting her hand, Alora traced to Evanoran.

Her world exploded in a sea of colors so bright that Garrik’s shadows had to shield her eyes. A crystalline glow met her, radiating off every surface smooth as glass. Light glares and prisms of color danced across a land of crystals. The sky was filled with colorful auroras, sparkling and waving until it reached a city so glassy that it looked like it could easily shatter.

He didn’t stop there.

Garrik showed her the airborne lands of Illmataria. How they were connected by bridges high in the sky. How the entire kingdom hovered in clouds and its subjects were all wing-born. Even animals she had only known to live on the ground donned wings.

Every kingdom—it was nothing she could’ve dreamed of.

Even Edrea and its lightning fields were breathtaking.

Garrik frowned when she pointed to the northernmost kingdom, admitting, “I cannot show you Dellisaerin. I have never been there.” Likely because of that ice wall separating the three kingdoms and Tarrent-Garren Keep. So, she pointed to Miratara—the star island—and he shook his head.

“Krysenka?” she asked.

Again, his response was the same. “No. In all the histories I have read, there is no written evidence of anyone ever entering. Darkness lives there. A different kind like … the dark side of the moon. There is a thick veil around it—much like Kennazar’s wall of flames or that of Dellisaerin that Magnelis cannot breach. Impenetrable, according to texts. Magnelis tried once. His ship only succeeded in bursting to splinters.”

Alora grinned at that. Garrik did too.

“Elysian is so beautiful,” she breathed. Seemingly unable to stop marveling at the images in her head. “It’s just as the stories told.”

“Stories?” he repeated carefully but didn’t move.

She shrugged. “The Evening Star and Moon.”

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