Page 200 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Garrik deepened a healing breath, admitting, “It was … before my magic-washing was nulled and I returned to myself. From the Blood Years.” And winced as if the words were a sword through his eternal soul. “A village I desecrated. Not a soul survived.”

The pain there… So much it split her heart in two.

Alora’s glowing hand cupped the back of his neck, pulsing warmth as he made a low humming sound. Taking in his hollow eyes, the small hint of liquid collecting in them. With a simple thought, Alora brought the night sky around them.

Star-like sparks twinkled. Thousands of them hovering like idle snowflakes in a serene winter storm.

And he must have remembered the last time she’d offered him this sense of peace. Because Garrik closed his eyes and breathed in, eliciting a slow escape of shadow from his shoulders curling around her stars.

Alora spoke softly, “That wasn’t you.” Not the real Garrik. A flutter of star-kissed flames flickered into the night, meeting a tendril of shadow, intertwining until they faded into the sky. “This is you. The male who would see himself ruined in exchange for Elysian’s freedom. Who is fighting to bring Magnelis to his end.Thatis you.”

Garrik considered, surveying a glinting star flaring at her words, and murmured, “I know—or at least learning to accept that.” His eyes softened. An earthy breeze whorled around them, disturbing his hair. “Can I take you somewhere?” Voice raw and open as he smiled. That smile he rarely, until recently, let the world see. Let his friends—hisfamily—see.

Alora couldn’t stop herself from smiling, too. “Yes. Take me there—anywhere,” she said. It didn’t matter where or how long. As long as it was with him.

Garrik didn’t hesitate.

Silver never wandered from her sapphires, as those powerful arms cradled her close. In a calm storm of shadow and pearlsea petals swirling in the wind, they left behind the flickering lanterns and willows.

Alora couldn’t move.Could barely breathe.

Of all the wonders she dreamed about,nothingcompared to this.

A mountain made of glassy ice soaked everything in sun-kissed light. Shadows gathered in front of their eyes, preventing a sharp sting as sunlight reflected off every inch of crystal and polished snow.

It should’ve been utterly freezing. But the air… It felt like what she imagined Kennazar’s wall of flames to feel like.

And there was a presence there …

She couldn’t see it. But whateveritwas, was nothing short of magnificent. Perhaps omnipresent.

“Allseeah…” Garrik tenderly spoke. Like a youngling speaking with adoration and respect for a familial bond. “I met him here.” From their high peak, he gestured a nod to the middle of the lake that, at such a high distance, looked more like an ocean.

Clothed in white robes, a …presencewalked the glass. That presence angled its head to the peak, disturbing its glowing hair.

Alora hitched a breath as it gracefully bowed its chin.

In a flash, as swift and magnificent as lightning, it vanished. Rippling a prism of auroras across the lake and mountain, beneath her feet, casting her white gown in sputtering colors. Even Garrik’s trickled with it.

A murmur of great power and unconditional affection had them both closing their eyes, breathing it in. As if it were an invitation. Perhaps a blessing. Alora settled into the solid chest of ice behind her, and Garrik pulled her close.

“There is so much more I wish to show you,” he whispered in her ear, causing her skin to pebble as Smokeshadows inched from his shoulders and down the silver swirls of her dress. Up from his boots like a fog, turning them to shadow.

When darkness cleared, the first thing she noticed was not the crystal-clear glass dome above them or the square room of shelves and glass with sea creatures swimming beyond. It was the smell. The aged vanillian wood of tomes and histories bound in leather. The stories waiting inside.

Surrounded by the flaring lights of the teal water and the shadows of swimming creatures, Garrik hugged her tightly as he had in Allseeah’s lands. A flutter of his breath was enough to stir her to turn over her shoulder as he said, “Here, in this world, is where my love for reading began. My mother would sit at those couches”—gesturing to the dark brown leather with buttons indenting the cushions—“and sketch on parchments of the next world she would create. I listened to the scratch of her quill while losing myself in her favorite stories. Fighting dragons, killing monsters… Princes falling in love.”

Alora sighed against him, imagining this essential piece of Garrik’s past. Imagining him as a faeling here and blond curls spilling over the monarch to Mist and Sea.

His sigh was wholly content as their gaze roamed the shelves and waters, simply standing there, just … being. Existing in asmall, small world of books and his mother’s ocean. Her scent lingering in a room that held peace and dreams.

After some time, darkness crawled, and she felt weightless again.

This time, when the darkness cleared, a crescent glowed in a sky filled with clouds so close she could reach out and drift through one. Inside a cloister with high architraves hewn in the side of a blue-gray mountain, no doors, no windows to escape inside, she and Garrik starred down the rolling peaks of evergreens with hidden escapes of lakes between.

“Here is where Thalon taught me to fly.”

Alora frowned, curling her fingers over the solid stone balustrade. Suppressing her nausea as she looked down, down, down the endless expanse of rock and forests. “You mean where he pushed you.”

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