Page 237 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Then a voice, small and frail, stopped him cold.

“I thought you didn’t care, High Prince.”

Garrik stumbled, wrapping his fingers around a bar to steady him because his knees almost gave out. “You offend me by suggesting I do,” he answered, turning to find a weak smirk twitching the corners of Zander’s mouth.

But it swiftly fell and before anything more slurred from his lips, Garrik was at his side among the blood-muddied dirt. “I tried to save her.” Ezander’s lips trembled.

Alora.

Taking the princeling’s hand, Garrik squeezed it on his chest. “You did, brother.”

Something gleamed in those russet eyes. Zander winced. “Father punished me for it.”

“Here I thought you pleasured in being beaten and hanging in chains.” His warm hands brushed through golden waves. “Welcome to the guild of shit fathers.”

Ezander barked a painful laugh, then winced. “The Hunt. Did she? Is she?”

Garrik understood his broken question and had to squeeze his eyes tight to refuse the reminder of her screams before answering, “She lives.” And waited until Ezander deepened a relieved breath to say, “Come, princeling. Let’s get you out of here and find my mate.”

The weak smile of Kadamar’s beloved prince widened slightly.“Starsdamn. Save my heart only to break it. Here I thought she’d be my?—”

He did not require his powers to know what Zander thought. Garrik growled, “Finish that sentence and I will happily leave your ass here.”

Ezander did not say another word.

There was only the thought of Alora and Jade, the hallways and bodies, and that sword gleaming in his hand.

Blood painted the ornate wood of the ancient hallway. Every faelight that had flickered over millennia of rulers and offered warmth to the royal families that dwelt there for generations passed, dimmed as the demon of Elysian and his reapers prowled forward.

Garrik had not laid one blow to any of the royals and guardsmen littering that hallway.

Not Aiden, half-carrying Zander. Not Thalon by his side.

This was a massacre. A damned battlefield.

As if some outside force had sieged the castle and laid ruin to anything standing in their path.

Garrik had expected an uproar of alarm over their escape. Not … this.

Serpent darkness swirled in his eyes as something whispered a warning along the back of his neck. It was only a shame the drugs used to immobilize him did not castheraway, too. Regardless, Garrik weathered it, his eyesight turning to shades of gray as he scanned every blood-soaked body and face, prepared for any one of them—all of them—to be executing a ruse.

Leather groaned in his palm as he tightened it. Holding it in front, he stepped over them like piles of filth, and commanded, “Keep alert.”

His brothers nodded.

The silver sword in Thalon’s palm appeared out of place, having lost his familial sword days ago. And Aiden struggled beside him to hold Zander upright, one arm banded around his waist while the other held the princeling’s arm around his neck.

Garrik halted them when quiet footsteps echoed around a corner. Barely noticeable, like a wolf slowly prowling the stones. The sound was broken. As if it were stumbling along, wounded. Garrik did not doubt it was some soldier suffering down thehallway. Did not doubt whoever it was could be felled so easily he would not need any effort to do so.

They rounded that corner?—

“Bloody hells,” Aiden cursed and shoved Zander to Thalon. He shot forward, bounding over the bodies to a soldier.

A Dragon. Standing in the wake of destruction, proud and breathless in a shredded gown, like the fucking empress she was.

A sword clanged to the antique stones faster than she did. But she did not have a chance to fall.

Aiden’s arms cradled Jade, pulling her into his lap to rest her head on his chest.

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