Page 69 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

His eyes lingered, heavy-set as if they were replaying the nightmares. Beyond nightmares—he had lived through Firekeeper-filled-hell, and she had witnessed it.

“Yes. Every time,” he answered through quivering lips, barely breathing the words.

The last few months finally made sense. She saw, often, the terror in his eyes when someone’s hands came too close. Saw the flinches and his abdomen retracting from her touch. Saw him avoiding any contact that wasn’t his own.

His body trembled, but he didn’t possess the strength to calm it. He had to endure it—the lingering pain and phantom hands, the memories.Pale, he relaxed from this wave enough that the black veins retreated, and his heart found its unusual beat.

Alora hesitated to scan him. Afraid that if she stopped watching his face his lips would turn blue and his breathing would mist away. But she dared to follow the movement of hishands brushing down his abdomen and followed the raised rigid scars peeking through the shredded fabric of his tunic.

They were afuriousshade of red. As if he’d been tearing himself open with his nails.

She wanted to reach for them, to soothe them, but stopped when his eyes widened. Instead, that aching feeling in her chest forced her to cradle his head as she insisted, “I’m not leaving you tonight.”

Garrik moved to shake his head but failed. Her warrior High Prince, weakened, beaten lifeless by a nightmare, intoned, “I am used to this. You do not need to stay.”

Her very bones cried out at the thought of walking through that door. Alora shook her head, rubbing her thumb in circles on his forehead. “I’mnotleaving you like this,” she said with enough bite that he merely nodded.

He laid there in silence for some time while Alora stroked his temple. Until his eyes followed her gaze across his body, resting on the dried blood across his abdomen. Calloused, ringed fingers brushed over them before shame filled his features. “I had hoped this was only a nightmare.”

Alora’s heart dropped as she murmured, “What happened?”

From the fresh coating of icy sweat beading his hairline, Alora knew whatever had happened was nothing short of the nightmares she had witnessed.

Those icy hands shook and brushed across the marks and old scars. He jammed his eyes closed, inhaling a strangled breath.

And she didn’t think he’d say anything more as his lips quivered for some time, as if he fought to form the words. But as he shuddered, he whispered so quietly she almost didn’t hear him, “She left my hatred of her when she magic-washed me. It is her … favorite game.”

Alora’s brows pinched.

“After I left camp today…” Tears lined his muddy-gray eyes, glistening like water in a lake. “I … did not anticipate a scheme. They never miss their dosage that protects their minds from my intrusions. I can never steal into their minds to know their plans.” Wholly distant, those eyes stared at the ceiling and the stars beyond.

“Are you still mine—she asked me before Brennus struck a needle into my neck. My powers were nulled. Before delirium took hold, I twisted my ring, securing the shield around camp.”

He said, “I thought it a ploy to test my magic-washing. But when she took in my scent … Her jealousy …” Garrik clenched his eyes shut, speaking low like he didn’t want her to hear. “There were so many hands.” He swallowed hard, shaking his head. “My vision was unclear, but they dragged me somewhere. My leathers scraped dirt, past crowds of laughter. A fist slammed into my head and darkness settled. When I woke … I was bound.”

A tear streaked down the beautiful plane of his face, and a terribleterriblehate that she’d never known burned in her chest.

“I could not fight…”

The entire tent—campwas going to burst into flames.

Liquid gleamed in his eyes. Bleak. Haunted. He blinked it away. “Until after she finished reminding me I am forever a whore.”

Part of her wasn’t there anymore, perhaps the same part as Garrik. Only, she imagined Ravens on a burned battlefield with the serpent’s head on a pike. She didn’t have time to plan it, how she would find the camp, how she would round them all up, or how hot her starfire would burn because Garrik’s voice?—

Never better,he’d said. Said while stumbling into camp. Pale and cold and haunted.

Alora brushed tears from his face before gently weaving through his hair. She couldn’t find the words. Couldn’t speak asagony ripped through her. She wanted to make them pay, make them hurt just as much. And if she couldn’t do that, she wanted to see them burned from existence, never again able to share his air.

Garrik continued trembling as his hands desperately clung to his pants and rubbed across his abdomen, closing himself off in his most vulnerable areas. She watched as his head rotated on the pillow. Muddy-gray stared over to where his table usually waited. Only in its place, earthly-colored stones stood, and the crystal door to his shower was open.

She hadn’t noticed until now that it was there.

Her heart dropped.

The only other time she’d seen the shower was weeks passed. The day before his birthday… After the days he’d spent in Galdheir when they’d had no inkling if he was unwell. When he had returned broken and bruised. Not only with the bruises on his skin but deep in his heart and mind too.

A humiliated crack broke Garrik’s voice. “I have not washed… I feel…” Garrik kept staring at the ceiling as he said, “Vile.”

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