Page 158 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

His knees were bent, boots flat on the rug. Corded forearms rested on them as his head slumped back against the wall, tilted toward the ceiling. Garrik’s eyes were closed, face ghastly white. Sweat slicked his brow and beaded on his chest. It peeked through the half-open jacket he’d worn all day.

“Forgive me,” Garrik rasped, dazed, and adjusted his head on the wall, pointing his desolate expression at her.

Alora sat up further on her bed, relieved at the mere sight of him as her throat knotted. “For what?”

He spoke like the words would have a whip laid into his back. “For … intruding.”

The caved-in feeling that had cracked her chest all day returned as she said, “You can always come to me.” And added, “Are you okay?”

The moon. The rain. How he looked sunken and depraved. She knew what this was. Knew exactly what had happened to him tonight.

Garrik ghosted a smile. He pivoted his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and spoke roughly, “I … had a nightmare. You were in it. I needed to see that you were safe.”

“Is that what upset you on the balcony?” Had he returned from the ball and tried to sleep without her starfire? Why hadn’t he come to her?

A muscle feathered in his cheek. She wondered if he’d speak again when, at last, his mouth quivered. “No.” And said nothing more. He only closed his eyes, shuddering.

Alora pulled back the blankets beside her. “Come here?”

His jaw clenched before the movement of his hands rubbing down his thighs caught her attention. They drifted up to his knees, and he murmured, “I should go.”

“I’ll just follow you.” It wasn’t an empty threat.

“Even if I command you not to?”

Alora softly scoffed. “Has that ever worked before?”

Garrik breathed a chuckle, angling his chin to his chest, and shook his head. “No. And I would not expect anything different.”

The blankets tore away. She didn’t give him a moment to protest before she ignited the candle with a spark at the tip of her finger and moved along the whitestone and rugs.

Garrik watched her approach. That dazed expression from coming out of a nightmare made the circles under his eyes appear more daunting.

He didn’t argue as she offered her hand to him. And when his weakened palm clasped hers, she helped him stand and guided him to her bedside with his back facing the bed.

Hardly breathing, he watched her.

But she kept her eyes on her fingers, gently tracing up his chest. Finding every button of his jacket as she felt the sweat that’d soaked through. After wanting to touch him all day, to feel the cold touch of his skin, if he asked her to stop now, she was certain the caved-in feeling would completely crumble her into dust.

”Take this off?” she asked, whispering cautiously, tugging at his jacket sleeve.

Without a word, Garrik obeyed, tossing the jacket to the floor. His eyes half-lidded, lazy and heavy, his gaze unmoving from her face as her fingertips brushed over his tunic.

She noticed every wrinkle in the sleeves he had rolled to his elbows. The fine silver threads lining the fabric. The matte swirls like Smokeshadows over his chest and the shine of the black sapphire buttons.

Alora traced those buttons. Drawing her hands along the fabric clinging to his skin. Not because it was tailored perfectly to display the impressive swells and dips of his muscles but because he was soaked entirely through.

One by one, he allowed her to pop the buttons and pull the fabric from under his belt and pants. Garrik rolled his shoulders slowly as if sore and threw the tunic on the jacket.

He didn’t say anything, only stared at her when her fingertips traced the star-shaped burn scar on his chest. Her every thought narrowed on it—and on the way his heartbeat felt. So, so unusual. So slow even when it raced.

“I would let you ruin me, Alora,” he said thickly, brushing his palms up her forearms as he trembled. “Do whatever you want to me. Burn me. Make me bleed. Even break my heart if you must.”

Alora flattened her palm over his heart, steadying a breath.Burn me?She regretted the very last time she had.

And maybe because it was pain in her eyes, but if only for the sake of her, Garrik placed his hand on hers. Not pulling it away but guiding her, pressing it harder into him as if to acknowledge what had happened there.

Garrik didn’t retreat, didn’t balk, his hold was unwavering as she gazed into the enchanting, polished steel of his eyes and managed through her quivering breath to say, “Lay down and wait for me.”

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