Chapter 42
T hinking of Garrik made sleep impossible. The moment her eyes closed, all she pictured was Garrik’s face. On the balcony. How he had been all day in the city. Every flinch and tug of his tunic.
She didn’t know how many hours had passed. The amethyst moon had shifted enough in the skylight to know it had been some time since she’d returned to her rooms.
Sleep, she decided as she watched raindrops patter the glass, was pointless.
An ember ignited in her palm?—
Alora jolted upright, almost knocking down the candle she intended to light on her bedside table.
Something dark waited on the floor by her door.
His knees were bent, boots flat on the rug. Corded forearms rested on them as his head slumped back against the wall, tilted toward the ceiling. Garrik’s eyes were closed, face ghastly white. Sweat slicked his brow and beaded on his chest. It peeked through the half-open jacket he’d worn all day.
“Forgive me,” Garrik rasped, dazed, and adjusted his head on the wall, pointing his desolate expression at her.
Alora sat up further on her bed, relieved at the mere sight of him as her throat knotted. “For what?”
He spoke like the words would have a whip laid into his back. “For … intruding.”
The caved-in feeling that had cracked her chest all day returned as she said, “You can always come to me.” And added, “Are you okay?”
The moon. The rain. How he looked sunken and depraved. She knew what this was. Knew exactly what had happened to him tonight.
Garrik ghosted a smile. He pivoted his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and spoke roughly, “I … had a nightmare. You were in it. I needed to see that you were safe.”
“Is that what upset you on the balcony?” Had he returned from the ball and tried to sleep without her starfire? Why hadn’t he come to her?
A muscle feathered in his cheek. She wondered if he’d speak again when, at last, his mouth quivered. “No.” And said nothing more. He only closed his eyes, shuddering.
Alora pulled back the blankets beside her. “Come here?”
His jaw clenched before the movement of his hands rubbing down his thighs caught her attention. They drifted up to his knees, and he murmured, “I should go.”
“I’ll just follow you.” It wasn’t an empty threat.
“Even if I command you not to?”
Alora softly scoffed. “Has that ever worked before?”
Garrik breathed a chuckle, angling his chin to his chest, and shook his head. “No. And I would not expect anything different.”
The blankets tore away. She didn’t give him a moment to protest before she ignited the candle with a spark at the tip of her finger and moved along the whitestone and rugs.
Garrik watched her approach. That dazed expression from coming out of a nightmare made the circles under his eyes appear more daunting.
He didn’t argue as she offered her hand to him. And when his weakened palm clasped hers, she helped him stand and guided him to her bedside with his back facing the bed.
Hardly breathing, he watched her.
But she kept her eyes on her fingers, gently tracing up his chest. Finding every button of his jacket as she felt the sweat that’d soaked through. After wanting to touch him all day, to feel the cold touch of his skin, if he asked her to stop now, she was certain the caved-in feeling would completely crumble her into dust.
”Take this off?” she asked, whispering cautiously, tugging at his jacket sleeve.
Without a word, Garrik obeyed, tossing the jacket to the floor. His eyes half-lidded, lazy and heavy, his gaze unmoving from her face as her fingertips brushed over his tunic.
She noticed every wrinkle in the sleeves he had rolled to his elbows. The fine silver threads lining the fabric. The matte swirls like Smokeshadows over his chest and the shine of the black sapphire buttons.
Alora traced those buttons. Drawing her hands along the fabric clinging to his skin. Not because it was tailored perfectly to display the impressive swells and dips of his muscles but because he was soaked entirely through.
One by one, he allowed her to pop the buttons and pull the fabric from under his belt and pants. Garrik rolled his shoulders slowly as if sore and threw the tunic on the jacket.
He didn’t say anything, only stared at her when her fingertips traced the star-shaped burn scar on his chest. Her every thought narrowed on it—and on the way his heartbeat felt. So, so unusual. So slow even when it raced.
“I would let you ruin me, Alora,” he said thickly, brushing his palms up her forearms as he trembled. “Do whatever you want to me. Burn me. Make me bleed. Even break my heart if you must.”
Alora flattened her palm over his heart, steadying a breath. Burn me? She regretted the very last time she had.
And maybe because it was pain in her eyes, but if only for the sake of her, Garrik placed his hand on hers. Not pulling it away but guiding her, pressing it harder into him as if to acknowledge what had happened there.
Garrik didn’t retreat, didn’t balk, his hold was unwavering as she gazed into the enchanting, polished steel of his eyes and managed through her quivering breath to say, “Lay down and wait for me.”
A brief moment of confusion rippled across his features, but he nodded.
She barely heard him move. The exquisite mattress never made a sound, but she knew the moment he sunk into the pillow from his sigh. And stars, did she love that sound. Him safe in her bed. Waiting for her on his back as she went into the bathroom, found what she needed, and returned to his side.
Alora knelt beside him and poured a vial of oil into her hand. The glassy thump of it drew his attention when she settled it beside the lit candle on her bedside table. Where not long before terror filled his eyes when a hand came too close, only content anticipation waited.
“Why do you want me to hurt you?” Alora ignored the ache in her chest and massaged her oiled, warm hands on his shoulders.
Garrik’s gaze flickered away. He spoke to the stars glistening through the rain. “Pain is all I know.” His eyes fell on her. Tormented, raw. “But when you touch me… I feel a little less … broken. Even when it hurts.”
Tightening her quivering lips together, she swirled her thumbs and pressed with her fingers into the considerable muscles of his shoulders. Alora willed embers to warm her palms. Pulsing heat into his skin.
She couldn’t help but smile when he groaned and relaxed.
Unimaginable pain and torture, force , may have been what he knew, but she would show him something different.
Slowly, Alora massaged her hands over every inch of bare skin. Pouring oil into her palms when she needed more before her fingers soothingly traveled across the endless planes of muscles. Across the raised patterns of brutal scars.
He didn’t stiffen. Didn’t tighten his abdomen or pull away. Yielding solely to her. To whatever she wished to do.
And she couldn’t stop the thought.
Perfect. Tracing marks like taloned fingernails. How could every inch of him be so perfect?
After a while of giving his front attention, Alora made a spinning motion with her finger and said, “Turn over.” But Garrik’s face fell bleak. A muscle flexed in his cheek when a swirl of ink clouded his eyes.
She hadn’t realized what was wrong until Smokeshadows covered his trembling hands, which rested over his abdomen, and the reminder struck her like a damning blow; when Garrik slept beside her, not once had he laid on his stomach.
Aware of her smallest movement, Garrik studied her as she leaned down and molded her palms to his cheeks. He opened his mouth to speak, but something like a startled whimper left him when she placed a warm kiss into his hair and whispered, “You’re safe with me, mighty prince.”
Garrik shuddered. More than shuddered. He practically convulsed and loosened a breath. “I know.”
Such calm toweled around them, enhanced by the white glow of starfire.
Filling with color, Garrik twisted in the sheets—so, so slowly. The very motion, foreign and terrifying, seemed to cause him a great deal of pain, and he hovered there, kneeling, staring at the pillow as if preparing for war.
Then Garrik did one of the bravest things she had witnessed him ever doing.
Pressing into the bed, into the pillow, Garrik offered his back.
Shortly after Garrik began falling asleep, Alora descended into the depths of his consciousness and released a magic so bold, it covered every memory, every screaming door, step, and the stronghold keeping his mind secure.
When shadows carried her back into her bedchamber, Garrik looked like nothing more than a sack of grain pooled on the sheets. Entirely lifeless and relaxed.
His incredible back muscles gleamed with oil, his neck, mountainous arms, and death mark did too. She had half the mind to ask him if he wanted to remove his pants—to massage his legs. But he looked too peaceful with his cheek pressed into her pillow to ask him to move.
Alora studied the rigid scars on his back. Scanned each layer etched over years and years of brutality. The thickened bumpy flesh in some areas, the tight and discolored places of others where fire had scorched him.
“Do they hurt?” she whispered when a muscle trembled under her touch of one particular long scar. Refusing to imagine any horrible weapon to have caused it.
A sleep-heavy voice breathed across the pillow, wrist scars on full display after she had massaged them too. “All the time.” Slurring the words a bit. “Showers help. Warmth. This.” Garrik hummed when she placed her palms at the center of his neck and kneaded.
He groaned.
It was one of the most beautiful sounds she’d ever heard. And it was never enough. Touching him, soothing the lingering pain, and offering the warmth of a gentle touch. She had emptied three vials, vowing to comfort his body until he fell asleep, and long after.
Alora massaged down to the tally marks along the expanse of his shoulders and below his neck. There were … so many. Too many to count. A considerable amount of them were buried under layers and layers after decades in those dungeons.
That possessive, murderous inclination she had in the High City surged through her veins until she leaned over his back and pressed her lips to one between his shoulder blades. Her lips quivered, feeling the overwhelming evil caged there. Like her lips could be salvation, over and over, she pressed kisses along the slashes, noticing warm liquid spread until she realized it wasn’t oil.
It was her tears.
Garrik’s eyes were so wide the whites glowed when she sat up. He forced a swallow, voice cracking as he asked, “Why?”
“Because I care about you. Every part. Even those you’re ashamed of.” So, she kissed him again and whispered against his skin, “I don’t know what caused them.” The tallies. “I know you didn’t do anything to deserve them. But you do deserve this.” She kissed another.
Like one’s childhood home burning to the ground, the devastation in his voice was the same. “I was used as entertainment for sport.” The words were so raw and quiet that it was as if he never intended to speak.
Every part of her filled with rage and hate, but her body wanted to collapse over him, shield him from the memory permanently laid into his back and touching her lips.
“Malik and Brennus…” He stopped as if the words were too painful. So instead, the room feathered into darkness. That gentle caress she’d forevermore allow in covered her mind as Garrik pulled her into his memories.
His head dangled low. A terrible, coarse pressure gripped and scratched his bleeding wrists and ankles, forcing his body into an X.
The only way he knew they were bleeding was from the chill that covered him when the northern breeze blew, disturbing his sweat-soaked hair.
A winter’s breeze . He was still outside.
Which meant he had survived another night. And would be forced to face another morning.
Footsteps crushed stones.
Garrik’s eyes fluttered, only to fall closed. He could barely hold them open, let alone hold himself upright. But the short glimpse proved dawn was rising, and the frost that coated his shivering body would melt soon. Maybe he would be able to feel his fingers today. His frostbitten ear tips were another story.
“Put him in chains,” someone chuffed. “You imbeciles know ropes won’t hold him.”
Malik—fuck. Not the shackles. His wrists could not handle them anymore.
And with dawn rising, Garrik trembled, knowing Brennus was not far behind.
A firm grip fisted his hair, jerking his head to meet blazing night-blue eyes. “You look a little cold. Shall I remedy that for you?” Malik lifted his hand. Finger by finger, blue flames ignited the tips until his entire palm blazed and laid it on Garrik’s back.
His screams stopped long after, but bubbled flesh remained.
Malik picked the ash of charred flesh from his jacket with twisted lips of disgust. “Cursed Flames, look what you’ve done. And after I so generously warmed you, too.” He raised his hand as if to strike, but a snicker stole his attention first.
“How’s the whore this morning?” a menacing voice from behind Malik taunted.
Brennus . His height shorter than blocking out the rising sun. Garrik used to enjoy taunting the male about it. Now, he craved to watch his legs snap. To be the one causing it.
Garrik’s eyes fought to open enough that he glimpsed the towering walls of Castle Galdheir. He had a clear view to the window Magnelis watched the torture of his son— an heir—from every morning.
His focus heightened enough that he followed the guard’s hands working shackles around his raw wrists. Shackles connected to two wooden poles erected in the center of the citadel to either side of him.
Something sharp bit into the center of his upper back, directly between his scalded shoulder blades. Carving down at an angle, over four equal cuts. In a slow, agonizing drawl, Brennus pulled a dagger over his skin, splitting him open.
He gnashed his teeth—refused to give them the satisfaction of screams.
“Night fifteen.” The dagger clanged to the ground, the sound as piercing as the sharp edge. Brennus strolled around the pole to Garrik’s right. “I wonder how many more I will carve?” His long red hair brushed behind his shoulder, asking the guards, “Any bets?”
“Fifty-four,” Garrik breathed inside Alora’s bedchamber. “A fever took hold days before. My worthless body could only lay on the stones, shivering as frost covered me every night. Fighting to cling to my pathetic life as I clenched my right hand that had been … relieved of three fingers days before.”
Alora watched as Garrik pulled his hand from under the pillow and rotated it. Smokeshadows curled around the rings, whorling like a velvety kiss as they slipped the rings free. And under those rings, concealed and hidden from the world like every tormented part of him, three crisp lines were etched directly below the knuckles.
“I’m—” Alora’s lips trembled, tears spilling over her lashes. Not knowing what to say, she cupped her mouth, and sobs would soon follow.
But Garrik tiredly smiled, as if he knew the words playing in her mind: I’m so sorry .
Smokeshadows returned his rings before his hand sank beneath the pillow once more.
“You have nothing to offer remorse for, clever girl. It is not your apology I seek. But if you wish to deliver comfort to the memory, I selfishly admit … I would not deny your hands. They feel.” He paused, and she released a knowing, warm breath.
“Really nice?”
Garrik’s mouth twisted with amusement. “Really nice,” he repeated with a breathy chuckle.
Alora brushed her hands over his impressive shoulders, gently squeezing before she placed a kiss on his neck. Garrik smiled at that, too. “There’s nothing selfish about desiring comfort,” she whispered near his ear, massaging her fingers on his tense shoulders that seemed to have instantly melted by her touch. “And I couldn’t be there to help you then, but I’m here now.”
Garrik’s mouth opened as if to speak. Then met her eyes before he closed his lips and shuddered.
Alora squeezed the hard muscle at the base of his neck, leaning forward, and asked, “What?”
He deepened a breath and forged a smile. “Nothing.”
“Why don’t I believe you?”
Another breathy chuckle, and then he closed his eyes, saying nothing more.
“I will get the answer from you one day, mighty prince. I will know all your secrets.” She massaged down to his shoulder blades, feeling the tension roll from them in waves as he writhed into the blankets.
“One day,” he murmured between a groan and a sleepy, elated smile.
Waving sunlight was the first sign of morning. As if she were underwater, the light behind her eyelids stirred in an unnatural movement until her curiosity wasn’t easily ignored.
Greeted by Smokeshadows, they gathered and coiled in front of the white curtains swaying in the breeze of an open window. Blocking enough of the sunlight, she assumed, so she and Garrik could remain sleeping.
Alora smiled at those beautiful shadows and mouthed, Thank you . Her cheeks swelled to her eyes the moment a tendril brushed one. Its own kind of answer.
She looked at Garrik. His hair was a mess, skin glowing with every slow and even breath. Perfectly calm on his stomach as he slept, as if he hadn’t moved at all in the night. Sheets pooled around his waist where she’d left them.
Her hands hadn’t left his body until long after he had drifted into a deep sleep. And she was perfectly content to bring him comfort until her eyes were too heavy that she fell into a pillow and drifted away.
A sharp gasp had her jolting to a sitting position.
Miwa stood there, eyes wide and mouth gaping. Amber eyes darted from the pile of clothing on the floor to the empty vials of oils on the bedside table.
To Garrik’s scars.
The shadows gathered around him as Alora moved with imperceivable speed. Rounding the bed to her maidservant before she swiftly collected the sheets at his waist and covered him. He didn’t stir, no sign he knew she’d left the bed.
Miwa’s eyes widened when Alora gripped her wrist and pulled her to the balcony doors.
But before they could step outside, she whisper-blurted, “There is a naked High Prince in your bed.”
Alora’s cheeks heated. “He’s not naked.” Mouth dry as she fought the urge to tighten her thighs at the thought. “We’re just friends.”
Arching a brow, Miwa’s gaze flickered to the mound of blankets and shadows covering Garrik. “Does he know that? Because in my experience, friends don’t sleep in the same bed.”
“Well, we do— did .” Alora shook her head and drew out a long sigh before looking at him. How could she begin to explain her relationship with him when she couldn’t barely understand it herself?
The blankets slowly rose and fell with sleeping breaths. And for a moment, her eyes softened, watching him sleep… Knowing he was at peace.
Her gaze found Miwa, who surveyed her with a calculating stare. “Please. Don’t tell anyone,” Alora whispered.
A palm gripped hers. “Knowing you will keep my secrets.” Miwa’s gaze warmed as she squeezed Alora’s palm. “I promise to keep yours.”
Alora’s voice faltered as she said to the white-stoned floor, “It’s not only my secret.”
It was Miwa’s turn to draw in a long breath. A revelation settled in her eyes before her smile mischievously grew. “Oh, girl.” That feline smile twisted higher, swelling Miwa’s cheeks. “You love him.”
The air rushed from Alora’s lungs as her chest tightened. “I don’t deserve him.” Not denying it, but deflecting the accusation was much less dangerous.
“I’m sure he says that about himself, too.”
“It doesn’t matter if I did.” Love him. “He’s the High Prince. I’m just?—”
“ You .” Miwa threw her a pointed glare, then fixated on Garrik and the massaging oils on the bedside, as if she could see what they had done last night. As if she could hear their comforting words. Their laughs. As if she could hear the pain in his voice as Alora massaged and kissed his scars.
“Do you honestly think his title matters to him? Matters to who you are to him?”
Alora swallowed hard, tears threatening to burn her eyes. “The Savage Prince cares little about?—”
Miwa threw her grip on Alora’s arm and pulled her onto the balcony before she could finish. The door closed behind them and within a breath, Miwa’s voice rose, “ Don’t give me that bullshit .” She crossed her arms and cocked her hip, flaring those wings. “He looks no less than a ferocious rabbit right now. None of you are fooling me behind these doors. And I’ve only known you for three days. And I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” she admitted, then brushed a loose hair behind Alora’s ear, voice softening. “I see the same in your eyes, right now.”
Alora said nothing. Could say nothing.
“I will leave you to your morning.” Miwa paused and glanced through the doors. At Garrik. “Remember, he’s in your bed. Not anyone else’s.”