Page 58 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Alora pivoted her eyes around her tent. There. In the corner where her window sat. She almost blinked, for the thought dawned on her it might be a dream.

A figure stood. Only it wasn’t standing but hovering. Swirling in darkness.

Itwasdarkness.

With a quick rotation of her wrist, Alora ignited her palm to illuminate every surface. Starlight always calmed the night, but this … not this, not tonight.

That hovering form remained a whorling mass that even starfire couldn’t pierce.

And she found herself wondering,What does it want?This thing. This familiar form of night could only come from one being. But he wasn’t there; he wasn’t commanding them.

Tendrils ominously coiled from the mass, calling to her.

Yet she wasn’t afraid. Sheknewthis darkness. Had never run from it before.

She wouldn’t now.

Smokeshadows steadily descended until they braided across the rugs. Inching until they found her, enthralled with uneasy anticipation atop her thin emerald sheets. Brushing against her like velvet while it climbed her bare legs, her blue nightgown, and at last rested in her palm.

Like a calloused hand, the darkness pulled. And she didn’t question how something that could be parted like air felt solid. Before she convinced herself otherwise, she followed its ask. Followed it until the wisps faded into mist across her window that, to this point, she hadn’t been ready to ask anything of.

Alora focused on the onyx wood. The carved swirls of dancing smoke and black, crashing sea-like waves, felt cold on her fingertips where she traced.

And then they were there again. The darkness. His Smokeshadows. She often wondered if they were a piece of him. Carved out from whatever painful past he still carried.

Whorling around the glass, around her outstretched hand that gently traced the curves of the blackened wooden frame. Enticing her to approach. Enticing her to call them to reveal what they unsettlingly wished her to see. Freezing to the touch, her fiery skin still ached for the cold of it like it was a missing puzzle piece.

Something didn’t feel right.

An urgency in the shadows raised her chin higher as she peered into the glass, glimpsing the firesite beyond cast in amethyst moonlight. Frost cracked across the glass with the swirl of a Smokeshadow, then another swirl.

Alora stared into the reflection, a mix of the firesite and her eyes peered back as she said, “Show me.”

Deep abyss formed in the glass like ink polluting water. An endless pit of empty black horror.

Then. Pain—someone was screaming.

Alora pressed her hands to the glass. How was it possible she felt it? Felt the agony in her body from the infernal screams.

It wasthedream.Yet she was sucked into it with eyes wide open.

Only this time, the voice was no mystery. She knew that voice.

The voice that comforted her nightmares.

Garrik.

Garrik was screaming.

The walls of darkness began opening, offering her the source. His bloodied hand flew through the unending darkness, reaching for her. Then she saw him, laying in a pool of his blood. Hands bloody, desperately pressed against gushing deep wounds across his abdomen.

A darkened figure prowled in a corner of the darkness. Its eyes serpent-like. Cold.

Alora’s fingertips glowed with white-hot intensity, baring her teeth with a snarl.

It washer.The female that haunted him.

The darkness retreated as Alora pressed mercilessly into the glass; the edges groaned inside the frame, threatening to crack.

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