Page 202 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Alora glimpsed the faint scar below the knuckle when Smokeshadows whorled around her thumb. The frigid cold of the metal encircled her as a tendril prevented it from slipping off.

“This ring will carry you to Elysian should you decide to leave without me.”

Alora pinched her brows. “Why would I?—”

“You thought you were absent when I was reformed of scars.” Something began burning in her veins, burned straight through them. “Alora.” Devastation stole his voice. A sound so fractured it was as if he’d been whipped and beaten. A sound like death.

Garrik said, “In my dungeon—the voice. By whatever gift the stars conjured … it was yours. Your voice crying, reading, talking … singing. Perhaps not to me, but you found me, and I listened. You cried when I was fucked. When I was bound and beaten, all I wanted was to listen and find you. I did not care what was happening to me so long as it was your voice over theirs.

“You kept me from breaking. Even when I did not know who you were. You kept me from tearing myself apart, reminding me to breathe.”

Listen. Breathe.What the voice in his nightmare had repeated. What he had said to her in camp the first time she and Jade sparred…Listen. Breathe.

Garrik fell quiet. “Thirty years in my dungeon, and on the last, you went silent. I never heard your voice again. I thought you died, or that I had finally gone mad. It was the worst torture to have known you and not know where or who you were. If you even existed anymore.”

Alora’s eyes flooded the same as his.

“After the Blood Years, when my magic or some token from the Celestials kept me from locating you, I remembered your voice.”

Telldaira… It hadn’t been breached in decades. Spared from the Savage Prince’s reign. Kaine had never worried about a siege. She’d thought it a result of his favor with Magnelis, how low his knees could sink.

Garrik went on, “I was terrified of never hearing it again. Of the possibility that you had died. Until one day, Magnelis summoned Zyllyryon’s lords to the castle… A lady, frail, in her lord’s shadow, pleaded to return to their bedchamber …

“And there was the voice.” His own awestruck, caught in a dream.

“Feet from me—there you were. Yet I could do nothing but stand in the threshold of the foyer, cloaked in shadow while he gripped your arm so fiercely it bruised.” Garrik’s fists tightened. “When you returned to Telldaira, I dawned to Kaine’s estate. Stood on the hills with an army of darkness inside the forest, prepared to lay waste to everything he treasured. All of Telldaira would suffer ruin for what you endured. For what theyknewwas happening and cared nothing about.

“But I saw you again,” Garrik’s voice cracked as his lips trembled. “Smiling at a male with blond hair. Riding in a green gown toward the forest—towardme—with a pack on your saddle and sword at your side. And somehow … I knew you were safe that day.”

She remembered. It had been one of the first days she and Rowlen sought security in Rhidian Forest. One of the first times she held a blade by Rowlen’s careful instruction. He wanted to take her to his home. His parents were in another city, clothing nobility in fine garments for a betrothal reception. Kaine had forbid her from leaving the grounds. And since the Fae-made forest to the west was his property, by all technicalities, she wasn’t disobeying him.

“Until I intervened.” There was deep-seated pain in her High Prince’s eyes. Regret.

“Kaine—I found him inside the manor while you slept in a glade beside Rowlen.” Garrik’s jaw feathered, gritting his teeth. “I was determined to usher him to Firekeeper. I almost did.”

She remembered that too—the servants screaming that a cloaked male shattered the front door. Saw the blood dripping down the staircase and speckling the hallway. The rotting stench of Kaine’s blood as disgusting as his heart as she had entered his study and tried to pull him from the floor. But he had backhanded her for displaying him as weak.

Three days. She did not wake for three days after he had given her that beating.

“I sat by your side while you slept. Knowing if I would not have laid my hands on him, you would not be suffering. I decided then that I could never return. I could never be the reason for one of his outbursts.Fuck, I was terrified of the retribution he would deliver on you for it.

“So, I made his suffering subtle enough that he remembered it as another’s offense. But even then, he would return andaccuse you as the reason for his misfortune. So, I began settling illusions in him. Of needing to travel for days on end, leaving you in peace. When his carriage departed, I collected him, forced him to my Dawnspace. Alongside Malik and Brennus and …” Garrik shook his head. “Kaine suffered. After his pitiful screams, I allowed him to lay in his blood and piss and vomit until he healed and returned him without a solitary memory of it.

“Thalon followed me one day, brought Aiden, Jade, and Eldacar the next. I had fallen so deeply inside her magic that I almost killed Kaine when Thalon secured me in bonds of portals around my wrists and ankles. The rest of them did their damnedest to protect him from my shadows until I returned to myself. They demanded I stop, but I couldn’t. Not for all Kaine had done. It was the only thing I could do, how I could repay you for what you did for me, for so long.”

Moonlight reflected off Garrik’s ring, which she stroked on her finger. A tendril of darkness danced there as if waiting for a command, but instead, with her simple thought, misted away.

“Thalon reminded me of my duty to Elysian. If I lost myself to serpent darkness … without me, Elysian, including you, would fall to Magnelis.” Regret—terrible, endless, dark regret—filled his eyes. “I stopped torturing Kaine. Vowing to inquire about your well-being periodically but never touch him. Months passed and not one damned day offered me peace.

“But Thalon was right. Among his many reprimands, he reminded me if I ever was too far gone to empty Kaine’s mind of the memories, he would likely kill you. I warred for so long with abandoning you while he reminded me you were not mine. You were Kaine’s wife, bonded to him. The way our politics works, a lady inherits not the lord’s position and estate. He would be dead and Galdheir would likely have blamed you. I could not risk Magnelis imprisoning you, or worse, so I distanced myself,killing my heart more than the decay of sustaining thousands of deaths.

“It was unbearable.” Garrik’s eyes darkened. “So, I ordered my darkness to protect you instead.”

As if they were called from every corner of the realm, Smokeshadows curled along the flowers near them. Gathering and coiling around her hands like a velvety kiss.

It occurred to her that all those nights she was alone—she never truly was. ‘Such beautiful shadows.’ Though some part of her after meeting Garrik thought maybe it was his power, his presence there, she’d never been brave enough to ask. Why would the High Prince of Elysian, after all, care about some orphaned High Fae who belonged to another male?

But she thought of that last day Kaine laid his hands on her. On the table. The candles flickering out. The smoke drifted between them. How a flame had crawled along the smoke and burned Kaine to release her from his hold.

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