Page 196 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Meeting her maidservant’s tender stare, Alora admitted, “I didn’t say his name at first because I didn’t want to see him as someone I could know and trust.” Garrik’s smile. His beautiful and lovely, perfect smile flashed in her mind. She couldn’t stop the one growing on hers because of it. “Then, I couldn’t say it because I was afraid I’d fall in love with the way it sounded on my lips.”

“And now?”

Alora glanced into the darkness cloaking the mountain. At the star-gilded shadows dancing in the night sky. “And now I want to find him.” Her eyes drifted to Miwa. “And tell him…”

She could only think one thing as she stood, adjusted her crown, and opened the door.

The words she could never say.

I love him. I love him. I love him.

And spoke to the beautiful darkness that captured her soul,I love you, Garrik.

The male would not stop screaming. Although Garrik had just cut off his wings and snapped most of the bones in his limbs after slaughtering his family. But even so. Did the gutless ilk not possess a shred of dignity before he died?

“Pathetic,” Garrik snarled, kicking the male off his sword to bleed out.

Membranous wings squelched underneath his boots as he left bloody bootprints across the carnage. When Magnelis had sent Nevilier that morning, Garrik expected to be summoned to the castle. Not entertaining himself in a piss-poor village of traitors.

Though he did relish the sound of their begging. The screams called his heart to beat.

Garrik scanned the town dusted in ruin. The stones he had shattered moments before with one burst of his weaponized shield. Then Smokeshadows stole anyone who remained breathing from the rubble. Hovering them above the ground while they clawed at their worthless necks.

He should have left more breathing to play with.Pity.

But Brennus had kept him awake for the last five days and his patience wore thin.

Gazing in the shattered glass of a hovel, though he was completely transformed into a mess of blood and bone dust staining his skin and hair crimson, he still glimpsed the dark circles under his eyes in his reflection.

“No survivors,” Garrik commanded his Ravens, meeting two Guardian’s eyes.

Thalon. Everlyn.

The male generally carried fiery judgment. It was only a shame that Garrik could not kill the bastard or his wife. But even Magnelis knew how foolish that was when Tarrent-Garren warriors were blessed or some shit. Though rumors held no ground, killing a Guardian was as damning as killing unicorns. It could not be done—not on purpose.

“You going to fucking stand there all day, Guardians, or do your damned duty?” Garrik growled, attempting to wipe the blood from his face, but his hands were stained so terribly it made it worse.

With the curl of his lip and something unreadable in those golden eyes, Thalon gestured to his female and weaved through the rubble.

Garrik did not care to watch them, and instead, dawned in a rush of shadow and dark clouds. He barely stepped from the darkness when footsteps crunched the stones scattered around the sea of purple canvas.

“Brennus requires you in his tent,” one of the sentries informed him with an air of terror.

That was … timelessly appealing.

Garrik growled. “Brennus can fucking wait.”

He had not found the Marked One in the village. And not one faerie had memory of her. So, the village had paid—he laughed. They would have paid regardless.

Blood dripped down his face, his neck. Soaking deep inside his leathers and coating his sword. That could not wait.

The Raven retreated as if Garrik would snap his neck for merely standing there. Normally, Garrik pleasured in sending Firekeeper a new body for torment, but he could barely hold the sword in his hand.

Exhausted, Garrik threw open the purple flap to his tent, stepping inside the darkness when five males drifted from the sides, blocking the doorway behind.

His cot…

A shadow moved.

---