Page 19 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

“Not when you’ve been deciding on meeting Maker of the Skies or not.”

He leveled a glare, but she crossed her arms.

“It’s decided,” she said. It wasn’t. None of them were delusional enough to believe they could shackle boundaries on their High Prince. But the look on his face was worth it.

Garrik smirked like he knew that too, but for now, he entertained their short-lived victory and sunk deeper into the pillow.

Alora shifted in Garrik’s chair. Her battle leathers remained caked in his dried blood. All these hours, she hadn’t once thought to trade them for anything else for fear the moment her eyes would turn from him, he’d seek the Stars Eternal.

But now …

The smell of iron was heavy as she dipped her hand in cold water inside the basin on his bedside table.

He tracked her movement and scanned over those leathers, eyes bouncing across each darkened spot of his blood. When she wrung out the frigid cloth and began washing the blood lining her fingernails, his evaluation dropped to her waist.

On the obsidian dagger sheathed there.

Cold unease blanched his face. “There is something you must know.”

Garrik spoke, but her body had forced her to stop listening long ago. Alora gripped her obsidian dagger so tight she believed it would turn molten.

Chairs shuffled across the wooden floorboards inside Eldacar’s tent. Desks were adorned with open books, while boots hurriedly ascended the swirling wooden stairs and scuffed across bookshelf-cluttered mezzanines.

It was hard to describe the feeling. The feeling that who she had thought she was her entire life had been picked up by the neck, smashed into every hard spine-splitting surface, and viciously hurled across the length of the realm. The feeling of the ground being pulled from underneath her feet and plummeting into an endless pit.

She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.Stars. Was it always this hot in here?

Someone touched her shoulder. The sheer chill of it soaked into the bones under her dusty rose tunic, half exposing her collarbone and death mark. Someone’s soothing, deep voice caressed her ear.

Garrik.

Garrik was there, with both hands on her shoulders, crouching down, looking into her teary eyes.The ice of his hand cupped one of her blazing-hot cheeks, and his thumb brushed the boiling tear that swiftly fell.

She never felt its movement. Hardly felt anything.

His mouth moved again.

She didn’t know that language. Didn’t he understand she didn’t know that language? Couldn’t he speak to her in the common tongue?

Only, he was, and she couldn’t process any of it as she watched his lips move. Bits and pieces made sense. Her name, going, alright.

Breathe.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.She tried—had been trying—but struggled. It almost felt as if her fire was pulling the air from the tiny space she occupied atop a rickety wooden chair beside Eldacar’s disheveled bed full of texts and tomes.

The space around her closed in. She was hot—so incredibly hot. A spark—no. Not a spark… Astarlit in her other palm,blaring heat against her black pants. A tuft of smoke tendriled from it. A minor burn ate away the fabric.

But she didn’t feel it.

That familiar tingle caressed her mind, and he could easily slip in. Not a flicker of flame erected that fiery wall right now. Instead, it was all fit to burst from her skin as she barely choked a breath down.

Garrik’s stare pierced hers as his hand cupped her cheek tighter. The other lowered, enveloping her smoldering hand to snuff out the embers and press his cold to her burning skin.

Alora. You need to breathe before the library catches fire. Come on, darling, look at me.

She gasped. The breath was as sharp as glass and seemed to knock away whatever clouded her hearing and vision.

Sapphires narrowed out of the haze. Colors brightened. The lettering on books sharpened, and every layer of the library became clearer, more defined.

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