Page 198 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

The shadow squeezed her hand in answer.

“Because of me?” That pain—Garrik’s pain—in her heart stabbed sharper.

Smokeshadows danced on the stone. Twirling and twisting through the droplets, forming the words,Never you.

Had her heart not felt cleaved in two, maybe she would’ve smiled.

Another gleam of metal had her pushing away. Alora gathered the white fabric of her skirt and stared down hundreds of steps leading to the gardens—to her High Prince.

There was no question as Alora took that first step. And in the darkness, though she could barely see what came next, she wasn’t afraid.

“Thalon?”Alora slid to a stop on the pebbles when she saw him.

Her Guardian reclined on a bench along the paths near the maze. Thalon’s Earned glinted in the transitioning moonlight, casting the gardens in silver and white.

Growls of exertion and strength seeped through the shrubbery, but Thalon didn’t seem phased by it. He merely turned his head toward her with a faint smile, golden eyes glassy as her white dress snared his attention, and gestured for her to sit.

“You weren’t at the masquerade,” she noted and sat.

“Business in the northeast,” was all he said. Collecting and carrying missives from their hidden allies. Those brave enough to stand against the High King. He registered the look on her face. Owning another gentle smile before adding, “Magnelis could be the reason for a magical realm but instead fills it with corpses.” Tears welled in his eyes. He clutched his chest, the mark inked there. Thumb mindlessly rubbing over the three braids, woven into a circlet and golden bead, with a sword cut straight down the middle. “I want to be his end for what he did to Garrik.”

Another battle cry ruptured behind them. Alora shuddered.

Thalon continued, “Want to conjure a thousand portals just to cut him into pieces when they seal and dispose of his remains across every land.”

She’d never heard him so violent, though she supposed someone as wicked as Magnelis rooted that inside anyone who witnessed his barbarity. It certainly did in her.

They sat in silence for what seemed like ages before Thalon took the palm resting in her lap and squeezed. Alora turned to find tears streaming down those beautiful dark cheeks and onto the reike marked on his neck.

“You brought him back to us, Alora.”

Pressure built in her nose, forcing warm tears to spill over her lashes.

“For over fifty years, he hadn’t smiled, not a real one. Though we never relented in trying for it, Garrik was gone.”

She didn’t dare say a word, just eyed him delicately. Letting her brother speak as if he needed to for far longer than he knew.

“We returned months after they imprisoned him.” His voice silent, grim. “Jade and Aiden overcame the guards while Everlyn and I searched the dungeons. The only way we knew where to find him was the smell of his blood, so overwhelming, like a lake pooled there, wafting up the staircase from the depths of Magnelis’s pit. And when we found him…” Thalon released a sound of pain, choking from his core. “I didn’t think we could move him. They’d beaten him so terribly, there wasn’t an inch of untouched flesh.

“Garrik commanded us to leave because ofme.Because of Everlyn.”

She stared into golden eyes teeming with hurt and pain and shame and squeezed his hand.

“Magnelis was our duty. To go against the Keep’s orders would excommunicate us. Garrik wouldn’t allow us to be corrupted, not for him. Even if it were by Jade and Aiden’s hand,if we knew and did nothing to stop it, to harbor a traitor, then we would be shamed from history,damned. And though we didn’t give a shit—condemn us to Firekeeper—we didn’t care. Garrik still wouldn’t allow it. We had to leave him there. Fordecades.While I stood beside Magnelis. Commanded to drag him into rooms to be at the pleasure of sick bastards and weapons. And couldn’t do a starsdamned thing.”

Thalon was vibrating. Branches of lightning shocked along his fingers, cupping his face.

She’d never heard him curse like that before.

“The Blood Years,” he growled, lifting his head to the night sky. “I had to watch him do things the most vile and damned in Elysian’s history had never accomplished. Knowing he was gone and there was nothing I could do.

“But one day, he walked into my tent and fell to his knees.” Thalon’s voice fell near silent. “And I saw some speck of life return.”

She didn’t bother wiping the tears from her face.

“Ever since, he has lived with the demons of his past to the point I was so desperately afraid he’d end his suffering.” He paused. “But then a white-haired female came into camp. What a pain in the ass she was.”

Alora chuckled, smiling down at the grass glistening in the moonlight, and realized the sounds around them had gone quiet. She could’ve sworn Garrik laughed too.

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