Page 225 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

“Wake up, clever girl.”

The cold chill of an icy finger brushed hair from her face. Garrik’s lips coaxed her back to Airatheldra’s hillside, back to the blanket stretched beneath them and the stars glittering above.

He placed a kiss on her forehead. Perfect and gentle and everything the rest of their lives were meant to be. “Open your eyes, my love. We should return to the house if you wish to sleep,” he murmured, squeezing her against his solid body.

And she arched into the greedy, long stroke along her spine.

“But I’m not done stargazing,” she answered, yawning. Nestling further into his chest.

Garrik softly laughed, and she didn’t have to open her eyes to see his smile. “Hard to do so when sleeping.”

Alora grinned at that. Slapping him on his bare chest and pulling an amused grunt from his throat. The pads of her fingertips lingered. Brushing along the defined muscles to the beginning of the scars marring his abdomen.

Garrik contently sighed into her touch.

She could lay there forever in his arms. In his safety. Under the stars. Telling tales of their faelinghoods while imagining stars clustered as unicorns, dragons, butterflies. This perfect peace they had created. How nothing in the world ever felt like his touch. How nothing ever felt so safe.

“Wake up, clever girl,” he said it again, a harsh bite in his tone. She turned to face him, but he was looking off in the distance. Face hardened, critical. “Alora! Wake u?—”

Alora struggled to breathe.

The pressure around her neck wasn’t the collar draining the last breath from her lungs.

Choking.

Alora opened her eyes and came face-to-face with a half-breed feline face, her fist clenched around Alora’s throat so terribly it would bruise. It was an effort to stay awake, to war off the darkness bordering her vision as the female with scarlet stripes and bone-white skin lifted her until her boots dangled. Alora could hardly kick her feet, each thump echoing off the gray-blue stones of the tower she’d slept in overnight as she was pressed into the wall.

Alora, barely able to see over the woman’s shoulder, watched as her assailant extended her hand to the three others behind her. And even with Alora clinging to her forearm and scratching over the scarlet markings, she managed to curl her fingers around a glass syringe.

No—no!

She hadn’t thought about her magic. Hadn’t harbored hope for its return until now—this moment—with that needle sinking into her death mark. Only now it occurred to her that if she had woken seconds before … maybe she could’ve run and hid until the poison burned off.

An open palm slapped her face when she drew blood, throwing her to the floor, and releasing the unused needle. Alora choked, slipping to her hands and knees as darkness tried to claim her.

It wouldn’t get the chance.

A green faerie with waves of brown braids spilling over her shoulders and tattoos stepped forward. Slamming a boot into Alora’s ribs.

She heard the fine crack, the resounding snap, and fell flat to the floor with a shriek.

The faerie fisted her hair, pulling on Alora’s braids, and moved her inches from her foul breath, snickering, “She looks better off than the other Dragon. Bitch was practically dead this morning.”

Jade.Her stomach turned.

Alora didn’t care about the sharp pain in her side. She shot forward, running for the door?—

Warm hands clamped around her ankle, dropping her hard on her knee. Then another, strong and unrelenting, grabbed her before they pulled her back.

Alora dug her nails into the sun-soaked aged wood that splintered so easily it was more like dirt. Scratching claw marks the further they pulled her back.

Pure panic and rage rippled through her the moment the females reeled, twisting enough that Alora slid through broken glass from the window and slammed her shoulder into the stones of the tower wall.

Cloaked in dark purple fabric and teal skin, another faerie walked forward, scuffing through dirt and leaves and glass before she crouched low, offering her knee to Alora’s face. “Let’s get this over with.”

Feline-facelifted the needle, pressing the plunger until the same inky black liquid that stole her powers the day before dripped out. “Ladomyr sends his regards,” she drawled before her companions grabbed Alora by the shoulders, holding her down as the needle plunged through Alora’s leathers, straight through her death mark.

Alora thrashed—so terribly she thrashed against them. Against the searing thrum of poison that left her body feeling colder than before. Enough that Feline-face lost her hold.

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