Page 249 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

“I asked first,” she retorted, massaging circles on his scalp. When he did not answer, she pressed, “Tell me?”

Eyes fluttering open, Garrik relaxed his shoulders that had been taut all night. He had not realized how badly he needed to hear those words and shivered, speaking honestly, “I am tired, clever girl. Tired of all of this. All this fighting. Pretending. Watching my family, my mate, suffer. Just … tired.” Then softly laughed. “And fucking cold. Never thought I would say that.” Wholly chilled to his bones, he shivered. A feeling unlike his Smokeshadows. It was becoming unbearable.

Through his leathers, Garrik felt her skin heat, saw the glow of starfire ripple across her shoulders to her hands. Before long, his entire body was engulfed. He placed his forehead on her shoulder, indulging in the delicacy of her hands in his hair, pulsing warmth into his neck.

“I have you, mighty prince. You don’t have to be strong right now. You can rest.”

“Once we are in Tarrent-Garren.”Once you are all safe.

Alora pulled back and lifted his face. “You’ve given enough, Garrik. You don’t need to be High Prince right now. Just Garrik.” She brushed his cheek with her thumb. “Who is exhausted. Whose body was tortured and hasn’t slept in days. Rest.”

The heaviness of his eyes, his depleting strength, pleaded for him to listen. He did not realize how much he needed to hear those words, either.

And for the first time in days, Garrik allowed his mind to fall silent with her—because of her—and listened to the ethereal hum of her voice, that calming melody, as his face returned to her shoulder. Narrowing on every brush of her fingers in his hair making him forget who he was supposed to be.

Her hands brushed over his scars, the old and new, the physical and those plaguing his mind. The memories he had fought all night, remembering his mother, what happened to his mate. Remembering Ladomyr’s face … what Magnelis allowed the king to do … so often.

Garrik was not ashamed when that tear slipped out—he was terrified.

If any of them woke. If any of them saw… For so long, he had held it all in. The entire time in Kadamar, he had lived as if being near the king meant nothing. When in his rooms at night, darkness could not convince him to sleep, even with Alora’s starfire.

His body went cold. Numb.

Not a cold created by the air but by the memory of what he had done to the king. Of Ladomyr’s blood still soaking his body. His hands around his mate.

Against his will, Garrik started trembling. He could not stop his hands—his blood-soaked hands?—

“Garrik,” Alora breathed. It steadied him. Cupping the back of his head as if she knew—because, of course, she did. That mate mark on his chest. He did not know how, but he felt her as he did formonths. “Garrik, come with me.” She pulled his tear-soaked cheeks from her shoulder and wiped them with her thumbs.

It took every ounce of his strength not to collapse as he followed her outside, inches from the ice wall, with Tarrent-Garren to their backs. Alora stopped at a fallen tree and lightly backed him to it, pressing his shoulders to make him sit.

He wordlessly obeyed, dropping back against the tree. Garrik dropped his head, chin to chest. Allowed his shoulders to lower and stared at the blood on his hands. Ladomyr’s stolen life may be what coated them, but Garrik remembered them all. Felt them all there as if he had only just slain the thousands. His hands would never be clean.

Alora collected frost off ferns and broad leaves, melting it with embers in her hands and cupping it until it steamed. She knelt before him, unflinching, as she tenderly took his trembling hand and poured water over it. Releasing long streams of crimson down to the dirt and moss.

Garrik’s mind barely registered the movement of her fingers as they scraped along his nails, between his bruised knuckles, along every callous and line on his palm. “I killed him. I … wanted to feel it—feel the moment he knew everything he had done… To you,” his breathing shook, “and to me…”

“I was going to kill him, too. Brutally. Kill them all—I still want to,” Alora cut in. “Does slaughtering a monster make me one?” Alora leaned beside them and gathered more frost. When her palm began steaming, she started on his other hand.

“No, clever girl. You are not a monster.”

“Then why are you?”

Garrik blinked, returning his focus to the hand she washed clean. Admittedly, he did not hold the answer. Though, he tried to reason with the truth she spoke as she lifted warm water to his head and gestured to tip it back. And as that water washed over his brow and she wiped away his own crusted blood and flakes of Ladomyr’s, he could not help but sigh at the feeling of it.

Thinking that maybe …maybeshe was right.

“When did you ask the stars to be my mate?” she whispered and brushed a thumb tenderly across his neck scar.

Cupping her hand, his eyes warmed, remembering doing something like this to her so long ago. “When you first sparred with Jade. I carried you to my tent and washed your face.” He would never forget his terror when her face had paled. When he had heard blood dripping from her leg as she had collapsed in his arms.

‘Easy… It is only cloth. I?—'

“I am not asking you to marry me,” Alora repeated and shook her head.

He did not stifle the swelling smile. “Indeed.” Did not stifle the ridiculous chuckle, either.

Alora was still shaking her head, smiling brighter with every pass, when he collected frost from beside them and dropped it in her hand. When it melted and began to steam, Garrik dipped his fingers in it and began washing the blood speckled on her face.

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