Page 76 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

And there was magic there. She felt it. An ancient magic—powerful fortification.

The same rippling power that flowed around Garrik was rootedthere. Unmoving, unrelenting, all-powerful. The very magic he had spoken of that kept his mind, perhaps his soul, safeall those years while they tortured him. It protected him now as it did then. That stronghold wasthere.

Garrik’s shadow stepped away. As if it waited to see what she’d do.

But what would she do? It had taken the serpent thirty years to break through. How could she doanything?

The only power she held was starfire, and what could that do to a fortress such as this? To darkness and despair like this?

Burning its dark gaze into her, the shadow lifted its head as if in answer.

Starfire. Starfire. Starfire.

Light. Perfect, gleaming light.

She would become the light in his darkness. The warmth in his despair.

It wasn’t the door she needed to break ... it was the serpent.

An ember lit in her palm. Alora’s mouth parted, eyes wide as she surveyed her hands, then up the endless pit. Up into the darkness where the serpent’s magic still lingered on every step, waiting to strike. Haunting every door and filling Garrik with screaming nightmares.

Embers ignited into stars and flames.

Slithering darknessflinched.

Doors slammed.

The noise—the screams—quieted.

Warm and life-giving and comforting sparks of starfire raged.

Alora steadied herself, one hand against the door, the other lifted high. White flames exploded. Tearing into every surface in an endless inferno. She brought light to Garrik’s darkened world.

And she watched as the serpent’s magic vanished above the surface, outside of the blistering heat and flames.

Alora turned to the door. Though it hadn’t opened, not a speck of ash laid upon it. Instead, it lay guarded by a wall of star-kissed flames as she stepped away and took the shadows’ hand.

But it was Alora who directed the way this time. Climbing the steps one by one. Watching every door. Listening to Garrik’s screams lessen as she outstretched her hands and burned wall after wall with impenetrable starflames.

Then she stood at the top of the pit and unleashed a fire so bold, so intense, it encircled the entire top in a fortress of flames.

And she decidedright there—at the top of those stairs—that even if she had to be pulled into his mind every night to reset the flames, she would.She would. After all he’d done for her, she would return every nightfor himand climb those stairs.

Shadows coiled around her, turning her as weightless as air.

In a blink, she returned to his tent. To his bed.

Garrik’s eyes were closed. His breathing slow, steady, and even.

“She’snevergoing to touch you again.” Alora’s promise was a poisonous curse, harsh and damning before the gentle glow of starfire in his hair also pulsed warmth and healing comfort into his abdomen. And it carried him into a peaceful, nightmareless sleep.

Alora closed her eyes and thanked the stars for his every breath. For not ending that beautiful, unusual heartbeat or allowing Death to steal him.

Those pieces of her heart, the ones she had carried into camp bruised and shattered and broken—the ones he helped fill with something new—they would have shattered all over again. Breaking to bloodstained shards and drifting into the unending, eternal darkness with him.

Becausestars be damned.

She wouldn’t want to live in a world where he didn’t exist anymore.

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