Page 108 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

This, like all else, would be a performance.

And it certainly made their act easier knowing who Ladomyr was—and who he allied with.

Alora’s nerves burst with unusual excitement.That was new.

Sunlight reflected off the whitestone as if in invitation, but the mountain stole its warmth. It created a chilling ambiance as the Shadow Order, along with Draven, leader of the Nightfall wolf shifters, and his twenty Dragons, stood as one ominous unit, at ease inside whirling Smokeshadows.

Aiden brushed her shoulder with his and nodded to the castle, snickering. “I’ve seen bigger.” He winked.

Alora contained her chuckle because their presence had lingered only mere seconds before the alarmed voices of Kadamarian High Guard tore from the main gate behind them.

Rushing from the courtyard walls and cloisters, a herd of footsteps descended the winding stairs until autumn-colored armor etched with Ladomyr’s royal crest—two warring bears of vicious claws, teeth, and swords—rushed around them.

She wasn’t remotely afraid.

Garrik’s eyes blazed with potent fury, threatening to swallow souls in the wake of his menacing darkness. Tendrils fell from his scaled armor and turned the air to blackened fog at their boots. Chaos brimmed. His skin rippled, pulling tight across his cheeks and jawline, taking the shape of Elysian’s most feared beast.

Sharpened teeth glistened under his curled lips. Wicked black eyes half-lidded in murderous delight. Black veins marbled up his thick neck and branched across his hands until they reached curling fingertips. And like smoke on the wind, a glassy obsidian-spiked crown molded atop that lush gray hair, gleaming in the sunlight that was soon snuffed out by darkened clouds developing high above the castle.

With a crooked grin, the Savage Prince slowly twisted his hand into a fist.

From every corner of the courtyard, darkness crept.

At once, High Guardsmen collapsed to their knees. Panic wracked their eyes, clutching—clawing—ripping at their necks, which were constricted by shadow squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. The only sound: their strangled screams, before their bodies fell lifeless, scattering the grounds, grass, and granite with ashen skin and death settled on their gaping lips.

Garrik remained silent as he strolled carelessly over the bodies. Cold-hearted as if they were puddles of muck, too disgusting to scrape against his boots.

And she couldn’t help but smile as she watched how those powerful legs moved. Or how his head surveyed the carnage while those blackened orbs scanned across the few whose chests rose and fell. Her stomach tightened, watching his muscles flex under his leathers.

He stalked up to one male twitching on the granite steps and crouched until the sharp bones of his face moved within an inch of the male’s.

Black veined fingers gripped the male’s throat.

Garrik’s voice was a thing of endless nightmares, and the entire courtyard trembled in its wake when he snarled,“Where. Is. Ladomyr?”

Garrik’s rampage hadn’t ended in the grasses below the castle steps. With every echo of their boots, the crimson-rugged hallways flooded with new victims.

Those deserving of his wrath were left ashen and unmoving. Others clung to life by pleasing chokes of breath.

The pitiless force of Garrik’s pace spurred them through inner cloisters lighted by faelight chandeliers, casting the Dragon’s haunting shadows along the walls.

High arch architraves to their right opened to a wall of blackstone and grand waterfalls roaring deep inside the mountain. And though the sound of crashing waters would normally echo as they fell into the pitted depths, they expelled little noise. Like its absence, the stones of the walkway remained dry. The mist and spray of the waters were unable to penetrate an invisible barrier outside the well-sculpted windows, only allowing the earthy aroma of water and the chilling breeze to pass beyond their ledges.

A ripple of Garrik’s power pulsed around them, stroking talons made of darkness against every surface as the Dragon-storm approached a double door adorned with Kadamar’s crest. Laden with glistening rubies and shimmering gold-accented trees, branches webbed across the dark red oak with leaves of emeralds so dark they appeared black in the dim light.

It was beautiful.

Until it was nothing at all.

The doors shattered.

Splinters and golden dust swirled within clouds of ash and smoke. A wave of weaponized air—Garrik’s shield—tore across the ceiling of a grand ballroom, shattering chandeliers and raining sparks onto the polished granite floor.

Within ten effortless strides, Garrik stood atop a balcony with two staircases adorned in crimson rugs flanking each side. There, he overlooked the crowds of cowering nobility as their trembling hands gripped wineglasses and dinner plates.

High Fae faces froze in petrified screams and strangled silence as Dragons flooded down the stairs and surrounded the room.

The Savage Prince cracked the golden railing beneath his grip, and footsteps echoed as the steps of the Shadow Order graced the ballroom floor.

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