Page 137 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Faeries screamed. Others cursed, lost their footing, and fell from the ropes and beams.

By the look on Ezander’s face—on every soldier’s face—this wasn’t normal.

Aiden was running toward her now. That look of terror and worry …

“This isn’t from the storm.” There was nothing but cold warning in Ezander’s eyes.

Something murmured across that silver tether, and she knew…

No. No, it wasn’t.

Through the tether, Alora ran, despite that steely darkness clouding it. Despite the screaming warning—the pain, anger, the rage—she didn’t stop following it. Down those mountain paths and through the castle to the place she knew she would find him.

I’m coming,Alora shouted, but Garrik didn’t respond. The castle only shuddered and groaned.

Wood cracked—split and fractured.

Servants screamed, fleeing the halls. She barely saw their faces. Barely saw anything but that silver. Barely felt anything but him there until she ran across that bridge to the raven doors and found worry dulling Thalon’s eyes.

“How is he?” she panicked, lungs burning.

Thalon leaned against the doors, arms crossed. An unbreakable pillar of a male that couldn’t be moved. There was no warmth—no sunlight—when he carefully warned, “It’s bad.”

Something spine-splitting exploded behind the doors, pressing into Thalon’s back and shadow, knocking him off balance.

A wave of unease crossed his features, and he slammed that muscular back into them with a wince. “Hermagic,” he gritted out when another explosion beveled the doors. “It has fully consumed him. He barely made it back before…” Thalon shook his head. “We can’t reach his mind when he’s like this.”

She’d never seen Garrik fully succumb to what the magic-washing left inside. Only ever hovering that thin line, never quite falling over the edge.

Urgency burned through Alora as she marched forward, embers igniting in her eyes, determined to open that door no matter what lay behind it. “I can help him.”

He shook his head and fiercely said, “No, Alora?—”

“He’s done it for me.” She suffered a breath and repeated in more of a plea than anything, “He’s done it for me.” Tears welled in her eyes.

“He’ll never forgive himself if he hurts you.”

“I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t go in there.”

The floor trembled, knocking dust and stones from above. Branches of lightning surged around Thalon’s arms, and she knew he was prepared to portal them away if that ceiling of stone crashed down on them.

Thalon dug his boots into the ground, gnashing his teeth as the doors behind him threatened to burst. Pressing into his back, into that incredible shadow that expanded and clung to the door like it, too, secured it from rupturing. A frost began to crackle and spread under the threshold. Their swords-master slipped on it and called on his impressive storm of powers, settling a portal beneath his feet of solid dirt, anchoring him there.

If one as strong and powerful as her Guardian could barely hold that door …

How did she believe she could survive whatever was on the other side of it?

Still, she desperately cried, unafraid, “He needs me.” It didn’t matter the danger. Garrik had been there at her worst. When she’d burned him with starfire, he’d still run to her. “He. Needs. Me.” She fisted her hands by her side and anchored her boots. Either on that bridge or inside that foyer, she would not surrender. Would not yield.

Unmistakable turmoil tightened his features. Thalon brushed those incredible, tattooed hands down his face, and she didn’t have to question it—he didn’t know what to do. Stuck between protecting her and the very real fact that their friend was lost behind that door, gold met the stones above them like he pleaded to Maker of the Skies for an answer.

The air around them shifted.

The threat of winter spreading across the bridge reversed, misting through the doorway, thawing frost in its wake. And that constant rumble, the trembling and groaning of the entire castle, died until nothing but piles of dirt and pebbles remained.

Alora met Thalon’s gaze with a silent question.

He barely had time to move before she thrust open one of the doors?—

---