Page 251 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Scorching breath stood the hair on the back of Alora’s neck on end. Garrik angled his head to her and went wide-eyed.

Behind her …

The wolf … from the Cullings, the Hunt … standing as tall and lethal as those lions, prowled forward.

“Tell your pup to stand down and surrender your weapons,” the leader, she presumed, called across the snow. Her lion’s rumbling growl echoed along with it.

Outnumbered. They wereveryoutnumbered.

“Ezander,” Garrik warned.

The wolf—Ezander—lowered his head, teeth fully bared as fur fluttered off him like leaves in a gentle wind. Golden hair and flaxen-flecked eyes of a High Fae male stared back at them. And Alora decided, when given the chance, she’d question the princeling about this hidden power that now returned him to his born form, wearing the battle leathers that Miwa had provided outside the tunnels.

Ezander inclined his head at Garrik, who turned to the lions, the female, and the riders.

“Your weapons.”

Alora was the first to drop hers but concealed Soulstryker inside her jacket. Reluctantly followed by the rest.

The leader made some sort of signal.

Garrik ground his teeth, his eyes swirled with oblivion as they stomped forward, pulsing the earth. Spears pointed, but with the lions, their weapons were superfluous. Even so, they nudged the sharpened ends near their throats and gestured forward to the hills.

“Where are you taking us?” Garrik demanded, taking Alora’s hand, not sheltering her. Standing as an equal force. Both strong and powerful by each other’s side.

Wintry armor glistened, accentuating the roaring lion at the center of the leader’s chest as she answered with a smirk, “To Their Majesties, the king and queen.”

They secured Garrik in chains.

She couldn’t blame them. With the way her mate released an endless growl, sharper than those of the lions, he was the true threat.

Alora’s back felt like needles stabbed her muscles from sleeping in the cave, but she managed to shove that iron rod in her spine, chin lifted like Garrik’s, as Dellisaerin’s soldiers led them over melting snow and hills to a castle half-carved of whitestone and clear quartz.

In the sky, dancing prisms burst as the morning sunlight reflected off the castle. Something Alora imagined the lower city of round-logged buildings and townhouses certainly enjoyed at the first taste of dawn.

Alora wanted to gape at it all, the sheer splendor mystifying her, its beauty and the scents of pines, the sounds of Dellisaerin’s faeries laughing. But as they crossed a whitestone bridge over a glistening river so blue it shone like the gemstones of her eyes, Alora couldn’t. Not when those ancient tremendous crystal doors opened and they were led into another prison to await the monarchs that no one had seen in half a millennium.

Up, up, up, high within the polished pale stones carved like crumpled parchment, they climbed. Over staircases flanked by white lion sculptures and vases of sage, northlight, coleus, and small evergreens. Beams of sunlight from windows painted thestones in an icy-blue hue as the air became crisper, lighter, and the subtle scent of minerals, purity, and peace stood as a stark contrast to any winter Alora had ever suffered through.

Her hands didn’t shake when they stood at the top of the final staircase, looking inside a vast throne room upheld by monstrous white pillars and basking in the tranquility of infinity pools leading out over open-walled balconies touching rotundus clouds. Noting the ripples in the waters from lion cubs lapping and the reflection of glimmering chandeliers of diamonds and sapphires, Alora studied the silver and blue rugs lining the path to the long end of the room.

She brushed her hand along the shackle covering Garrik’s scars before taking his hand. Garrik offered her a strong nod before stepping down into the throne room together with their Shadow Order behind them.

You do not bow. You do not yield. You do not break.No matter what they faced. Alora forced her chin higher as if an obsidian-spiked crown sat upon her head and stared at the twin shimmering crystal thrones on a dais.

Excellent idea.

Alora whirled to Garrik. Where that gentle caress, that voice inside her mind, came from.

Through his locks, his obsidian crown rose. It was only then she noticed a disturbance on her head. A heaviness. Her eyesight narrowed when shadows tendriled in her mind. By Garrik’s gift, seeing not the room in front of her, but her face—her glowing white hair with a feminine likeness of Garrik’s crown raised on her head.

Sometime since the wall, her mate’s power had returned. His heart was safe.

With their family behind them and soldiers by their sides, Alora and Garrik settled at the base of the empty dais. Embers burning in her eyes, darkness gathered down her back, formingthe same daunting cape as Garrik’s, and she realized what this meant. Why he draped her in shadows and not starfire.

Why he was the only one in shackles.

The Savage Prince—the powers he held. What he could do with his bare hands without his magic.

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