Page 204 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

That fast, Garrik pulled away from her. Leaving her warm and empty.

But Alora decided she’d weather the distance for as long as her heart could withstand and surveyed the landscape anew. Noticing the way the lake calmly rippled along a melody of creeping things bedding down. Brushing over the smooth stones of the shore. Listening to water trickling and rustling leaves.

Garrik watched the water too. Maybe that was easier to face than her. The war inside him shouted down the tether so loudly it roared in her ears. She dared to imagine if Firekeeper’s realm opened to the pits, he would be more comfortable there than in this moment.

“What is this place?” Alora broke the silence, his roaring inside.

He didn’t turn, only gestured a nod to another house on the far side of the lake, designed in the same stones and dark wooden beams. “Home,” Garrik rasped and slowly gestured to another tucked between two forests. Then pointed to each as hespoke. “One for Thalon. Jade. Aiden. Eldacar.” His teeth gritted slightly. “Ezander… Mother wished us to have somewhere to forever call home. Existing outside time. Somewhere irrevocably safe.”

Alora gaped. The wonder in her eyes might’ve scanned the dreamscape longer had a small square hedge-bordered iron gate not stood stark against the fading evening. In the center, rectangular rounded stones sunk into the grass. Pearlseas and ivy wrapped the graystone elegantly, as if locked in time before fully maturing, and rested flawlessly preserved to display etching on the faces.

A graveyard.

She narrowed on a particular headstone when Garrik caught her exploration and explained, “A memorial for Aiden’s father lies there. The marker for his burial by sea. Everlyn’s ashes, too, proceeding the pyre that carried her to the Stars Eternal.” A muscle flexed in his jaw. “My mother’s tombstone.”

Empty, she heard his heart murmur. Not even a dusting of ash for her memory.

“Another, waiting for me.”

That headstone she narrowed on, etched with the letterG.

Alora walked toward him. Feeling his heartbeat quicken as barren hope fluttered there. And when she stood before him, her heart as wildly thrumming as his, Alora didn’t take his hand. Instead, her warm arms encircled his neck.

Garrik startled at the contact. Even when the ice of his arms instinctively enveloped her waist. Rigid and stiff as she laced her hand through his hair. “You should hate me for what I did not do to protect you from him,” his voice cracked.

She intended to mend it.

Taking in his leather and metal scent, the smell of home, Alora said, “I’ve told you many times that I do.”

He breathed a laugh, dropping his chin to his chest, and she pulled her face away to stroke warmth on the back of his neck. Even now, he thought himself the monster. After everything he’d endured. What he had done to protect what he loved. How far he had gone. By how much he had suffered.

Alora couldn’t bear that look in his eyes. The one where he was one step in Firekeeper’s realm and the other, there, pleading to be worthy enough to simply breathe.

How could he think it wasn’t enough? That what he gave… His body. His mind. His soul…

For Elysian.

For her.

She couldn’t hold it in any longer. Refusing for months to know what her heart would think of that one simple word.That name she couldn’t speak.

“Garrik.” It was like something exploded in her soul. At the taste of his name on her lips. Like a final piece had fallen into place.

So, she said it again as his chin lifted from his chest to meet her watery eyes, “Garrik.”

His hands were on her cheeks, stroking away the tears as his began to fall.

“I thought I would never hear you say that.” With rapture, Garrik kept staring at her as he shook his head. “Of every name I have been famed… I thoughtmighty princewould forever be my favorite. Butthat, clever girl…” His eyes, beautifully glassy and silver, beamed. Outshining the moonlight and lanterns from his home. “Say it again.”

Rubbing her hand through his hair as the other cupped his cheek, she happily obliged him, only this time… “I love you, Garrik.”

The ground beneath them shuddered. Trembling in waves from his body as its origin.

So, she said it again. “I love you, Garrik. I’ve loved you for a while. But my heart was terrified to give it to another. So scared to believe someone like you truly existed and didn’t want a thing from me other than to see me healed and protected.

“Your body is scarred from the cruel things they did to you, yet your hands are gentler than a calm wind. And that scares me. Because for longer than I can remember, I couldn’t trust anyone but myself. I had my sword raised for so long that any kindness you offered was foreign, and I fought it off, thinking it was another way to manipulate me. I didn’t know what true kindness and love were. Yet you showed me in every little thing you did, despite how awful I was to you. From letting me discover who I was to showing me something as simple as a flower wasbeautiful. That I could be more, could love all the things I lost.”

He didn’t tear down her walls. Didn’t beg her to drop them and meet him on the ground. No. He climbed them to show her she was worth falling for. Worth breaking for. Worth trying a hundred million times until he reached her, no matter the cost to his life.

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