Page 197 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

A candle ignited.

Long black hair spilled over her shoulders, draping over her breasts as she swung her legs gracefully over the side. The serpent stood, his blanket pooled around her, exposing naked flesh.

Those black eyes glistened with heat. A serpentine smile twisted. Daggered nails bit into his chin and forced him to look into her abyss for eyes, and snickered, “Welcome home, pet.”

The invisible bonds snapped, releasing him from the nightmare.

Darkness trembled the room, but it kept him from falling and refused to let him slip back to her.

Someone was screaming louder than the thunderstorm peaking outside. An empty pit of agony wailing—echoing—off the walls, bookshelves, and windows. Only when Garrik managed to open his eyes, throat raw and bloody, did the screams cease.

The room, the bedsheets—ruined. Shredded apart with the blackened claws now misting to cloud and ash. But he would rather they remain and stab deep into his veins to serve as penance for what he had done in that village and all the others.

And the torture after?

It did not suffice. His suffering was never enough, no matter if it was at the end of a whip or being forced under a body.

Clutching his burning abdomen, Garrik attempted to sit up. Swallowed in tendrils, his breaths came out choked as sweat slicked down his neck and chest. Wild as a burst of thunderstorms, darkness in the room whorled, stopping him from buckling over as another wave of those faeries’ faces threatened to end him.

Then it was his master’s face.

Garrik retched between his legs as phantom hands brushed along his body. Smokeshadows whorled, cleaning it up before gathering around him and guiding him back on the pillows. He lifted his hands to wipe the sweat from his face but stopped.

Blood. There wasso muchblood. Dripping, pouring down his arms.

Only when he dared to wipe it away, it continued flowing as if his hands and wrists were gauged open. This blood, he knew it was not real because like every nightmare of when he was themonster he was Made to be, this blood covered him. Forever staining him, never to be washed clean.

Garrik’s hands ruthlessly trembled, but he could not focus on them. Seeing three—four—five bouncing around his vision as he stood.

The floor seemed to cease existing. Unstable, Garrik slammed to the hardwood with a pained grunt. Smokeshadows gathered around him, lifting him from the floor, but his legs did not carry the strength to stand.

Because when his screaming had stopped, others followed.

The screams of the many. The young. Old. Mothers ripped from their younglings. Husbands from wives. Mates from mates. Princelings. Kings. The thousands—millions—laid to waste by his hand.

Those painful screams of the dying and damned scratched down his body. Heavy and condemning, they pulled and pulled until black-veined fingers delved into the wooden floorboards, prying himself across the floor and mezzanine, and onto the balcony where he slumped against the spindles of the balustrade, laying his head against the stone as cold as his skin.

Pebbles of the cresting thunderstorm seeped into his tunic and pants as his palms slid through liquid trails on the stones, then lifted and trailed down his face.

Driven by the numbness, Garrik mustered enough strength to pull himself from the floor.

Overlooking the empty gardens and sleeping High City far below, there was only one thing to keep him from another nightmare. And as the amethyst moon slipped from behind the clouds, darkness tendriled by his side, producing his sword. Garrik did not turn back to his bedchamber, knowing it lay in ruin. Entirely uncaring if it remained that way.

He climbed onto the railing. With one settling breath, darkness flared and dawned him to the gardens below.

Garrik’s bedchamberwas in ruin.

The velvety couches overturned. Spines of the books on his shelves were split. And his bedsheets—hardly a scrap remained.

Alora breezed through his open balcony doors, but no shadow sat on the balustrade. No darkness stirred.So, she went to that ledge and brushed her fingers where he sat most nights. Where she looked up from her balcony and found him waiting for her.

She felt him as if he stood beside her. Felt … Pain.

Alora gripped her chest. Feeling his pain calling for salvation. For forgiveness. Freedom.Closing her eyes, she pictured that silver tether, that beautiful, unusual heartbeat, and called to him.

Shadows answered. And like a current pulling her to sea, Alora followed to the gardens below.To the gray head of hair deep inside and the flash of metal against amethyst moonlight.

“He had a nightmare,” she breathed, brushing her fingers through raindrops on the marble, watching him surrounded by uncountable shadowed forms waiting to meet his blade.

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