Page 233 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Fire starbursted from the swirling chaos. Rampaging, furious, and crazed until it connected with her skin.

Alora inhaled as if it were oxygen. Entering not her lungs, but scorching through her being.

Arms wide, she released a scream so colossal it shook the arena, the glass dome, and commanded the skies as starfire turned her into living flames.

Ladomyr’s face was a furious shade of crimson. Erissa fled behind her guards. The entire crowd cowered, screaming in fearas the arena exploded into a sea of starflames. Only dying down to rage at Alora’s back.

Then.

Wings.

The size of a great dawnwood tree flexed from Alora’s back as High Guardsmen jumped from the walkways and royals could do nothing but flee.

But not Silas. The spymaster simply smirked as starfire ripped through every one of her veins.

Leathers steaming, Alora stepped forward and melted the collar around Jade’s neck, then hers.

Jade’s wide eyes met the embers of hers.

“Take my hand,” Alora demanded with ethereal authority, outstretching her flaming hand.

Terror—unspeakable, desolate terror—at the flames, at the star before her, froze Jade in place.

Alora lunged, scooping Jade into her embrace and scorching the grass beneath her as she took to the skies.

Garrik moved only to determine if the guards who patrolled overnight had forgotten to administer the next dose of poison. The sounds of the arena in the cold of the night had lessened. Before Ladomyr and Erissa had slithered to their bedchambers and left him hanging there, the last of the screams had echoed from an ash tree.

“Wake up, boy. You’re going to miss the finale.”

Garrik groaned as that hand gripping his hair slammed his head into the stake.

At least it was not spiked with nails like Brennus’s sessions. Tearing into his back, paralyzing him not by drugs but by his spine being too shattered to function.

Although the crown of glass Erissa shoved on his head mirrored that pain. And as the blood trailed down his forehead, nose, into his mouth, the sound he made was mostly choked off when the darkened silhouette tightened a fist around his neck.

Garrik gasped for breath; his heart skipped a beat as his brutally numb fingers shackled above twitched. Something he had not been able to do since suffering the effects of the poison two days ago.

So, the guards did forget.Either that or they got the dose wrong, having not learned their mistake from the Cullings when he could last move and speak.

The king opened his mouth, surely to gloat, but Erissa cut him off with a vicious laugh. “Father, you’re missing the pathetic little wretch. Look how scared she is.” The princess cawed another laugh.

Garrik felt it slithering down his body like her touch did every time she had circled the stake.

Ladomyr turned to Erissa and devilishly grinned.

That hand at Garrik’s neck withdrew.

A terror Garrik had never known crept over him as the sound of whirring and flying things pierced the air. He could do nothing more than hang there, bound and lifeless against that pillar, forced to watch as Kadamar’s elite was unleashed on his mate.

Alora evaded the first release of arrows. Twirled and tumbled in the air just as he had when they had made love in Airatheldra’s skies. She remembered. He was damn proud of her for it. But when the Made wings of High Guardsmen—somewooden, others of leaves and iron—forced them into the sky, she looked behind.

He wanted to shout to her. Tell her to keep going. To get away.

To not look at him and Jade as if considering who she would save.

She would risk everything for him. And he for her.

But it only took that small moment.

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