Page 4 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

“No.” Garrik’s heart raced, and he forced himself not to tremble. Not to see her face. Not to feel what her hands?—

He refused the urge to tear into his armor as his abdomen tensed with searing agony.

“The one who stole your worth. Her name. Say it.”

The walls of the crypt seemed to crawl closer, drawing themselves in. Unable to stop the trembling, Smokeshadows pulled Garrik’s hands. His face, arms, and torso became clouded by them, desperately working to calm him. But his rage onlygrew—grew towardher. The serpent with daggers for nails and eyes that haunted his every nightmare.

“Her name.” With an echoing snap of his finger, Kerimkhar side-eyed a dark corner of the crypt.

Dust and rock shards fell from the ceiling as scales and claws and bone-crushing teeth escaped the shadows. The glowing crimson eyes of a fiery beast blinked, and a rumble that shook the walls thrummed from the darkness as a dragon emerged, lowered its head, and chuffed a blazing heat as scorching as Alora’s powers.

“Or I will send my dragon to claim the peasant now.” Kerimkhar outstretched his decaying hand and patted the beast on its head.

Knuckles white in furiously balled fists, a muscle ticked in Garrik’s cheek. He could not speak.

Not that name. Never again.

“Her name—give it to me!” Kerimkhar snarled.

His dragon blasted a breath of intense heat.

Garrik’s thunderous roar cracked the stone foundation, splitting through symbols of the hidden language from wall to wall like branches of lightning. His eyes, wholly consumed by blackened abyss, promised death as he mournfully growled.

For the first time since he woke as himself on that starsdamned icy mountain, he cursed the one whoruinedhim.

The serpent’s foul name almost shattered his soul. If he still had one.

His body felt numb and loose and …vileas his mind brushed over each letter and vowel. As her name alone sent phantom hands rubbing down his body.

Garrik shuddered, whipping his head to Kerimkhar, who stood with a lust-filled haze in his eyes, as if he had stumbled upon a banquet dinner fit for a starving king.

Ten thousand voices whispered with a revolting grin, “Say it again.”

“One name was asked.” His voice shook with wrath. “One was given. The bargain is satisfied.” Garrik gritted his teeth and willed every spent nerve in his body to relax as he turned and moved to leave.

But the merciless presence hissed again. “Oh … you are like him.”

Shards of ice tore through Garrik’s veins as he stalked to the stairway.I amnothinglike Magnelis.

“My. How you even lookperfectlylike him, your father. Doesn’t he, pet?” The echoes of decaying fingers scratching along scales were like talons down his spine. “A mirrored image. Darkness lives inside you, yet you know nothing of this power. Caged and waiting to be unleashed.

“Tell me, would you like to know what Allseeah told me? Magnelis’s future … I know something you don’t know,” his voices goaded in a teasing melody.

Taunts and trickery. That was all this was. Once the face of Mercy, he now gorged himself on pain, sinking his claws deep to find each wound that festered. Words that meant not-a-starsdamned-thing to Garrik. Magnelis’s future would end in the depths of Firekeeper’s realm—thathe was certain of. Everything else? He did not care.

Garrik felt tempted to roll his eyes but would not exert himself further for the sake of the High King. He barely desired hearing about him from his mother when she, even in her desolation, spoke compassion for the male Magnelis supposedly once was.

He had obtained what he came for. The release of the grandmother’s afterlife for the fucking serpent’s name. He would not entertain another word of this scheme. But as his boots met the threshold, every muscle in his body went taut.

The stairwell glowed.

Translucent entities flaring in green light hovered down the stairs, dripping putrid water and smelling like the swamp.

Souls.

He had been against far worse odds before.

But how in Firekeeper-filled-hell do you kill something that is already dead?

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