Chapter 17
“ W ake up !” Bracing herself on Garrik’s shoulder, Alora rose on her knees as starfire ripped through the air. Blazing a furious inferno around her fist, she slammed it once, twice, three times— hard into Garrik’s chest.
The nightmare—memory—he had sucked her into had gone dark.
It had spiraled her out moments ago, only to find his lips blue and skin corpse-like, heart as dangerously slow as before.
Managing to lay him on the floor, his head on a pillow, she did the only thing she could do.
Alora lifted her fist and pounded into the hard planes of his chest. “Wake up, please! I don’t know what to do!” she cried out, hoping the warmth of her fire would spark something .
But nothing. Not one breath.
A vicious bellow ripped from her throat. Alora’s skin ignited as she slammed her palms into him, digging her fingertips into the flesh over his heart where black veins branched out so terribly that she thought his entire body would turn black.
Burning tears poured from her eyes, she desperately wailed, “ Ga ? — ”
Garrik’s lungs stretched, and he choked in an excruciating breath. Convulsing in waves of agony, his eyes clamped down. His teeth gritted in a force that could shatter them.
“ Oh stars, ” she sobbed. “Can you hear me?” Alora cradled his head and threaded her hands through his sweat-soaked hair.
Silver peeked through the slits of his eyelids, fighting to fully open.
Alora brushed hair from his forehead and sighed with profound relief. “There you are.”
But Garrik’s eyes widened in horror—with terror. His lips quivered, and he pleaded, “Don’t, please don’t.”
Her heart felt like a horse had kicked it. He didn’t recognize her. Perhaps from delirium or falling from the nightmare-induced adrenaline still inside his system.
Alora brushed her hand to his cheek and said, “You’re safe. It’s me, Alora.” Rubbing warmth into his chilled skin. “You’re safe.”
That seemed to settle him. At last, his attention shifted. Garrik’s body relaxed and nestled against her palm as his eyes fluttered closed and sunk into the pillow.
Darkness swirled in those enchanting eyes when they opened. His gaze was tormented—hollow—slow-moving as if it took all his strength for that simple stare at the ceiling.
He loosened a breath. “I never wanted anyone to see what I did.” Garrik’s eyes slid to her. “Forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” she said softly.
Somehow, Alora felt the pain behind his words. Sinking deep into her soul as she studied the torment in his eyes. And she realized the cruel truth. How the night sky cracked open with storms of great power. How the moonlight basked in amethyst every time she woke up with the dream. The same as tonight. The same that woke her. As if the sky wept in pain, too.
Alora shuddered, and wondered, “This is what happens every time you sleep?”
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 his hands brushing down his abdomen and followed the raised rigid scars peeking through the shredded fabric of his tunic.
They were a furious shade 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’m not leaving 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 terrible terrible hate that she’d never known burned in her chest.
“I could not fight…”
The entire tent— camp was 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 as agony 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.”
As Alora’s heart cleaved wholly through, she leaned down and cupped her High Prince’s face. “Can I help you?”
“Trying to see me naked, clever girl?” The corner of his mouth twitched.
There he is. A small stitch repaired a sliver of her wrecked heart and forced a shaken smile. Her warm lips brushed against his sweat-covered forehead, gently kissing him. “Not tonight. Let’s clean you up, okay?”
He nodded.
Alora helped Garrik stand. His body so weak, she steadied an arm around his back and planted her palm on his chest.
At a pace that allowed him to remain steady, Alora ushered him to the shower door.
Garrik’s clothing was soaked with sweat. Shirt mostly torn to shreds, his fingers fumbled over the buttons—what was left of them.
Shirt off, he struggled to grip his belt, strength not fully returned and fingers still numbed with receding black veins.
Garrik’s fingers shook frantically.
But Alora touched his wrist, and he stopped as she tenderly said, “Let me help.”
And she wondered if it took all of his strength to nod before he leaned against the stones.
Smokeshadows whipped across her hands in warning. Protecting him now because they couldn’t protect him against the female who abused him. But as the smoke rings danced around her fingers, their velvety bite turned to a mere tickle, then misted away, allowing her to continue.
Alora made quick work of unbuckling him, avoiding looking anywhere but the metal as she pulled the leather from the prong.
Glimpsing Garrik’s face, he had turned away. The black veins in his arms and fingers had returned with a death grip against the stones behind him. His body wound viciously tight. And she knew, underneath the lids pressed tightly closed, she’d see blackened abyss if he opened them.
When her fingers began to pull the belt through the loops of his pants, Garrik’s palm glided down her forearm. Holding—not stopping her. “Speak to me. Please,” he pleaded.
I need to know it is not her.
“I know this is likely a bad time, but have you ever considered wearing anything other than black?” She grinned as her hands pulled the belt through the last loop.
Garrik finally smiled—a strained smirk—but a smile, nonetheless. “What would you like to see me in? I will indulge your curiosity.”
“How about something gold?”
His muscles loosened, and something like a breathy chuckle repaired another broken piece of her heart as he promised, “I will wear gold for you one day. But I warn you, I will look utterly ridiculous.”
“I doubt that.” Finding the snaps and ties of his pants, Alora loosened them until his pants could easily fall. She hesitated, wondering if she should help him remove them when his dull orbs met hers. “Do you need help with these?” she asked.
“I can manage the rest.” Perhaps that was better. “Thank you, Alora.” Garrik turned, then hesitated.
In the reflection of the crystal door, his hollow eyes studied the mirrored image.
Alora watched as murky silver stared into the ones reflected in the door. How his face loosened in such a way, that it mirrored every ounce of disgrace and disgust he felt toward himself.
She wondered if he knew how his hand trembled at his side. How it reached to his waist and traveled along the V of muscles and across the open wounds on his abdomen. How his nails dug into his skin.
For a moment, all she saw in the reflection was disdain. Until a Smokeshadow curled across the reflection, blocking it entirely, and he dropped his head, gripped the metal handle of the door, and stepped inside.
“Do you have clean bedsheets? I’ll change them for you,” she called, but he didn’t respond.
Tendrils of darkness gathered around his bed instead, engulfing it entirely before whorling away to leave the bed perfectly clean and made.
Alora sighed at his use of power. As weak as he was, he shouldn’t be using any more strength than what remained.
“Can I get you anything?”
Silence.
She peered over her shoulder, knowing the crystal would be steamed enough that if he faced her, she wouldn’t see him bare. What she didn’t expect was a reduced, shrunken mass sitting on the shower floor.
Alora rushed to the glass, placed her hand on the door, and hissed.
Hot —scalding hot. A match to her starfire on her worst day.
Through the fog and steam, she determined he was in the middle.
Water pelted his back and arms, which were draped over his bent knees. His forearms rested over them, hands limp out front. Garrik’s neck was arched, bowing his head low, chin to chest, and drenched darkened gray hair stuck to his face.
A fallen warrior.
Smokeshadows crept under the door, finding her hand hovering near the steamed crystal. They pulled at her, as they had inside her tent. Guiding her hand to the door handle.
She couldn’t invade his privacy.
But they only urged her harder until a tendril appeared and danced over the steam coating the door. Velvety smooth shadows, like silk brushing against freshly cleaned skin, curled over the glass, tracing smooth lines in the fog until they formed words on the surface.
He is giving up.
Alora blinked. Incredulous, she imagined living shadows writing to her.
The screams are too loud tonight, they wrote.
Panic rippled across Alora’s body. It was real.
He needs you. We cannot help him. The shadows around her hand wrapped around the door handle, pulling the crystal open.
Garrik’s skin, his scars, blazed in a furious scarlet hue. Sporadic burned flesh, straight cuts, and tally marks from years of cruel weapons brutally laid on his back and shoulders, steamed in wrathful tendrils of smoke-like vapor. The merciless burn of the water streamed in liquid pathways across his mutilated death mark.
He is almost lost to us, the shadows warned on the crystal.
Her quiet, concerned whisper broke between the water pelting the stones, “If you can hear me, I’m stepping inside.”
But Garrik didn’t move. Didn’t so much as twitch as she did so.
The scalding water peppered her shoulders.
Alora hissed and moved over Garrik to shield him from the torture. She extended her arm and adjusted the temperature, wondering how he withstood such an extreme heat only to realize he suffered the water being so hot because the last one who touched him was frigidly cold.
Garrik’s voice echoed in her mind, almost feeling him pressing her palm to his chest as he had a short time ago. ‘ I can hardly stand the air that touches me. But your touch … hers is … so cold. ’
He still hadn’t moved as she dropped to her knees behind him, allowing the rain to soak her, too. She was so close, hands hovering near his shoulders, but didn’t dare to touch as she asked, “Can—can I touch you?”
Silence.
The shadows drew her attention. Hurry. He is almost lost.
Such urgency moved her to action. “It’s me. Alora.” The warmth of her arms wrapped around his strong shoulders. Alora pulled him against her with such gentleness he couldn’t mistake who was touching him.
It was effortless. Like every bone in his body had liquefied. He failed to resist as she drew him close. The hardened dips and swells of his muscles rested on her chest as her back drifted to the stones behind them. Garrik’s head remained bowed, eyes closed.
The High Prince of Elysian—a mere shell. Uncaring. Neglectful. Dismissive. Wholly submitting to the actions inflicted upon him. Exposed and vulnerable, surrendering to anything and anyone, allowing his life to be handled however they saw fit.
A puppet bending to the will of a master.
She’d never seen him like this. Utterly broken. Forsaking complete control.
It terrified her.
Soothingly, Alora placed her warm fingertips on his icy forehead, freezing even under the hot water. She rested his head between her neck and shoulder, allowing the water to fall and drench the front of him.
Still, his expression hadn’t changed.
Through shaking fingers, Alora pulled a vial from a shelf of stone and poured citrus-scented shampoo into her hand.
Tenderly, she washed his hair. Stroking his silken locks, massaging carefully into his scalp. Alora lathered the shampoo through soft massages, smiling—hoping—pleading he’d find comfort in this touch.
And as the water washed the suds from his strands, by some miracle from Maker of the Skies, finally his breathing deepened where before she’d barely felt it.
Garrik’s head fell limp into the crook of her neck with a slow pivot. His nose brushed against her skin.
“You’re okay,” she whispered, fighting back tears. “Breathe, my … prince. You’re safe now.”
Garrik trembled.
A washcloth and bar of cream-colored soap sat on the ledge beside them. The scent and aromas wafting from the heat of the shower were mostly meant for exhaustion, anxiety, and depression. Lemon, hints of rose, lavender, and a pinch of peppermint. Likely a concoction from Calla.
Alora recognized the scents. Recognized the first time she had smelled them.
The first annulus.
The night she saw his silhouette toweling off before she followed him into the forest. How these same smells carried in the breeze, along with the warm bite of vanilla and oak. He’d been drinking—taken a shower. Then he went to the forest to spar with shadowed faeries.
A female shadow.
Vomit burned her throat at the realization.
The same thing that had happened to him tonight had happened then.
In the dungeon cell, the day before his birthday … Garrik had been raped—was still being raped, all these months when he traveled alone.
And he never whispered a word of it.
Starfire threatened to explode as she leaned forward, careful to keep him upright, and lathered the washcloth. Alora delicately pressed the cloth to his neck and glided it in slow strokes across his bleak skin. It’s all she could think to do.
With every stroke, Garrik relaxed, and his face fell more into her neck.
Crawling the cloth across his shoulders, white mounds of bursting bubbles trailed behind until she brushed over the mountains of his biceps and his mutilated death mark.
Had anyone ever touched him this way? So carefully. So gentle. Where he had suffered by the world’s cruelest hands his entire life, hers were warm. Tender and comforting and kind.
Alora wiped the swell and dips of his chest and ribcage. Across the raised ridged scars of his abdomen and sides. Carefully gliding over bruises.
It was extremely unlike him. Where he’d normally retract away, not one twitch.
The cloth traveled to his thighs. Sapphires glanced down his scarred legs and rested on his ankles mangled with shackle scars. Again, her stomach twisted when she surveyed his feet.
Burn scars.
How could anyone do these horrifyingly evil acts to such a breathtaking soul?
She gripped him tighter, veins bursting—screaming—to protect him.
Below his abdomen, she hadn’t considered what to do. The female, what she’d done to him… That feeling and her essence still remained, haunting his memory. But to cleanse him where he was used for another’s sadistic pleasure… She couldn’t know if it would cause him more pain.
So, she squeezed the cloth, ringing out the soap to pool in his lap, hoping it would be enough.
Garrik’s face twisted the moment the streams of soap fell, clenching his eyes. His forearms violently slid back, elbows falling to the bend at his waist before his white-knuckled fingers curled over his knees.
Alora glimpsed his wrists then.
Where smooth skin had always been …
More brutal shackle scars.
She didn’t have to question it. Garrik was a master of illusions. Why would his wrists be different? He hid the rest of his pain, never speaking of it, keeping his scars unseen by the world. It made perfect sense that he’d hide this, too.
And then, Alora felt it.
How his incredible back muscles contracted in rapid jolts. How his breaths became sporadic and ragged. She saw his face tighten, forcing back the icy liquid beginning to collect in the corners of his eyes.
His silent sobs shook his entire body, bubbling in overwhelming grief. A million choking, gasping pieces began to break.
And she desperately pulled him tight, bending into him to shield him from the pain, forgetting about the cloth in her hand, trying to hold him together as he shattered in her arms.
“Why?” he sobbed as Alora squeezed him tighter. “Why?”
“It’s not your fault.” Tears poured down her face. “You did nothing wrong. You didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
He was breaking.
Her High Prince.
The one who’d been there for everyone else. The selfless male who put Elysian souls first in all things while he was tormented and tortured and raped. For them. For her. For every-starsdamned-one of them.
He was breaking.
“I know it hurts,” Alora whispered as she smashed her cheek into his soaked hair, cradling him. “I know you’re tired of fighting. You’ve made it through your darkest days. You will make it through this day.” She broke with him. “I promise.”
Wrapping her other hand around his, she pulled it over his unusual heartbeat. “Feel that? It’s still beating. And as long as it’s still beating, you’re still fighting. And that air in your lungs means you’re still breathing. You survived. And you can make it one more day and another after that. Until the day the jagged edges are healed, I am here. Fighting with you.”
That silver glow, that tether pulling at her heart, was wound so tight she couldn’t possibly help herself from embracing him. And as she stroked his beautiful hair, washing whatever remained on his body, her eyes lifted to the ceiling. Picturing the glimmering stars beyond.
Alora closed her eyes … calling to them … wishing. Pleading.
They stayed like that, a bond of silence whispering around them. Stayed until his convulsions and sobs died. And even then, they stayed. Embracing each other as the water trickled over them, washing the last remnants of Brennus’s camp away.