Chapter 43
E zander waited for her by the castle gates. The dense sunlight was so thick beyond the doors and down the staircase that she could cut it with a blade.
Alora flattened her palms down her shimmering ice-blue gown laced with gemstones, smoothing out invisible wrinkles with aching fingertips as she closed the distance to the open doors. She squinted and glimpsed golden hair and a dark navy suit with golden filigrees adorning the princeling. He stood out that morning. Not because of who he was, but everywhere she browsed in that courtyard, a sea of crimson waited.
Decorated for the Festival of Cullings and in honor of the Hunt, blood-red banners hung from the white-marbled walls and hundreds of windows. Roaring gold bears waved on scarlet flags atop the endless amount of turrets and a crimson carpet draped down the steps of the castle. Twisted ribbons and glistening gems were inlaid within the lavish hedges, carved as Elysian creatures.
Tonight would be Ladomyr’s famous Red Ball.
A reminder of the blood spilled to earn the lands his ancestors passed to him.
If she was lucky, perhaps Alora could convince Ezander to tour the royal gem collection. Knowing what Blood looked like, knowing Erissa preferred?—
Alora screamed. The hand over her mouth prevented sound from escaping.
She didn’t know how her back flattened against the pillar at the other end of the foyer so quickly, but the shadows tendriling around the hand lifting from her mouth was a good inclination.
Garrik’s smirk was more wicked than she’d seen since arriving at Kadamar, then his finger met his lips, quieting her. He leaned close to her ear and snickered, “You are getting slow, clever girl. I think I may need to take over your training.”
An icy palm flattened beside her head. Alora didn’t shove him off her. She only straightened her neck to glower into those eyes full of mischief and lied, “I hate you.” The mighty bastard . She had thought he was Silas. A castle guardsman. The High King himself.
His answering chuckle made her blood go molten. “Your racing heartbeat proves otherwise.”
“ No ,” she snarled. “You simply scared me. What in Firekeeper-filled-hell are you doing?”
“Starting your training for the day. How to anticipate and resist an enemy.”
She was certain she could resist her enemy perfectly enough. Especially, at that moment, this one.
Bracing her hands on his chest, Alora glanced over her shoulder. She had to at least be seen walking to the door. Someone might come looking. “I’m going out with Ezander,” she informed him and turned to catch his eyes darkening. “And before you say anything, Thalon is coming with me.”
Garrik trailed his nose along her jaw to her ear, racking her in shivers. “Is that so?” His exploration didn’t stop there. Hands traveled to her waist, thumbs brushing her hip bones. “If Ezander touches you again, his life will be forfeit. Be sure to inform him for me.”
Alora rolled her eyes. “Someone’s jealous,” she muttered.
Her High Prince only hummed. “You have three hours,” he warned. Those thumbs didn’t stop tracing lazy circles. “Then I want you in leathers and prepared for riding.”
Darkness seeped from every shadow in the foyer, coiling around them and the pillar. Garrik unhurriedly reformed as dark clouds and mist, turning him into shadow. Before he was entirely consumed, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
A promise in the farewell.
Alora was still touching it long after he dawned away.
Three hours later, at the edge of a cliff and cloaked by Garrik’s shield, white flame and shadow whorled.
Alora’s aching muscles screamed as she flexed her back, carrying unfurled wings of starfire.
When Garrik had mentioned training, she hadn’t expected this .
One powerful flap of his wings of night and Garrik spurred into the air, so high he appeared as a grain of sand against the intense heat of sunlight. It was an effort to not feel envious. Those wings carried him gracefully across the skyline, curling when he spun through clouds and shot out the other side, splaying when he maneuvered into a smooth glide, tucking in tight as he dived.
It would probably be ages before she could do anything more than hover.
Alora frowned as he landed, flexing her back and flickering a flame along her shoulder.
“What is that look for, clever girl?”
She studied him, the way he unfastened his battle leathers and tossed the jacket onto a fallen tree. The wings flared tendrils into the sunlight like ink in water. His hair glistened in the breeze rushing from the forest behind.
Suddenly defeated, Alora was tempted to turn and sulk.
Garrik stepped forward, the shadows receding a bit, and admitted, “It took me months.” Frustration burned her eyes, so she angled her head away, but he lightly clasped her chin and drew her back. “You are hovering on your first day. I could not do that.”
He’s just saying that to make me feel better.
“I would,” he broke in. To make her feel better—he would. That softened her mood some. “But that was not a fabrication. Thalon was forced to pursue extreme measures for my powers to agree.”
Alora heavily sighed and rolled her shoulders, sinking her palm into the soft spot below her neck.
She should’ve stayed with Ezander—because finding Blood was more important than embarrassing herself on this cliffside. And after spending the morning floating down the river and stopping at every shop that mildly interested the princeling, it was evident Thalon and Aiden had no such luck finding the sister gemstone in the tunnels last night.
“What did Thalon have to do?” Alora rolled her eyes to the clouds and shook her head. “Maybe we can skip the months of training and go with that?”
Garrik huffed a laugh and trailed his eyes over the ledge. “I do not think you want me teaching you as Thalon did.” He pointed with his head over his shoulder, toward the trees, and added, “Come. Keep hovering.”
But she didn’t want that. “Do what Thalon did,” Alora insisted on it.
Folding his arms across his chest, Garrik scratched a palm down the perfect planes of his face, considering for a moment.
More than a moment.
It seemed as if he was weighing the next several years of his life before he speared her with a critical gaze, nodded, and spoke in that royal tongue she had yet to fully master. “ Exirtse maiez coerpus. ”
Smokeshadows burst from his body.
Alora recognized two of those words enough that she could guess the command. Leave my— she was certain of. But the last… Existence? Flesh? Body? She’d either ask Eldacar or search the book she’d borrowed.
In the very few times she’d seen Garrik without the darkness, she never noticed that emptiness that settled over his features. On the dais when Thalon was commanded to—a sickening feeling twisted her gut, remembering the watery slap of bloody leather fringes that tortured her High Prince’s back. Then, in the wintry barn … but, of course, she couldn’t fully see him then. It was too dark.
But now, it was as if half his heart was missing—dying. As if an ancient longing gripped him, left him unsteady. Incomplete.
Instead of wondering why he sent them away, Alora asked, “Are they coming back?” Hating how half-lifeless he looked. Knowing how warm his skin would feel if she brushed against it.
“Eventually.” He shrugged.
Alora bunched her brows. “What does that mean?”
A suggestive smirk twisted his lips. “It means … stop me .”
The way he said it …
The way his boot stepped backward, toward the ledge. He didn’t stop moving, just inched so so slowly until he teetered on the edge.
He wasn’t actually going to?—
“ Don’t ,” Alora sharply warned, instantly skipping a heartbeat when he peered over his shoulder to the valley below. “This can’t be what Thalon did.”
Calm. Such terrifying calm flickered back at her. “Don’t let me die, clever girl.”
She had this horrifying feeling of the entire world ripped from beneath her feet.
One blink. One starsdamned blink?—
Starfire flared behind her back in a mighty explosion of wings. They tucked in tight as she ran to the ledge he leapt from. She didn’t have time to think. He was falling fast— too fast —toward the ground. And without Smokeshadows to save him, to dawn him away …
Without reason, Alora leapt. Cursing the bastard for having damning faith in her and forcing her to take this leap. Then again, she’d insisted on it. He was only doing as she asked. The fool.
If they lived through this …
Those wings of starlight flared and fluttered as she fell and fell and fell. Drawing closer to Garrik who wore a confident smirk even as death drew closer to his spine.
Alora wasn’t entirely sure if she was screaming at him or at the plummet, but her throat burned as raw and hot as starfire the closer she inched toward him.
‘ Stop me ,’ his voice replayed in her head. How in Firekeeper-filled-hell was she supposed to do that when she couldn’t do anything more than hover?
“You can do it, clever girl,” Garrik called out before he threw a withering glance over his shoulder.
I hate you for doing this, wanting to scream it, but she focused on tucking her wings in tighter, diving faster.
“That’s it,” he called as the ground … as the ground full of stones and trees and every damning thing soared closer.
Air whipped her face like sand in a dust storm. She ignored it. Outstretching her hand, determined to grab hold and fly them away.
Another inch. Just one more inch. This had to work. It had to.
Those wings ready to snap wide, to catch an updraft. To fly.
So close. So close!
Garrik beamed as her focus skittered to the fine details of the grass feet from his head.
Alora stretched until her hand trembled. Reaching and reaching and?—
She smacked into him with a rippling pulse of energy and the taste of metal as time seemed to slow. Maybe it was that last flash of life, a gift from the Celestials before they entered the Stars Eternal.
But it wasn’t time slowing. It was them. Seconds before slamming to the ground.
Without that shield, there would have been carnage.
Broken bones and blood. Expected to see that first glimpse into the gates of Mount Caelum—the Star’s Eternal ethereal city. Not the bastard’s face that threw himself off a cliff.
You asked for it , her mind scolded. Shut up. Being reasonable was far beyond her as she panted, sprawled on top of his warm body, uncaring if he couldn’t breathe.
Squeezing his eyes closed, Garrik gasped, “ Fuck, ” and let out a long pain-filled groan. “I thought that would work.”
“You… Bastard .” Alora couldn’t do anything other than slam her flaming fist into his shoulder, singeing the fabric, but not enough to burn through. Stars , if it wasn’t for his shielding powers— “You should be dead !” snapping, daring him to say otherwise.
The bastard did. “I have fallen much further than this before. And I would not have done it if there was any chance you would be injured?—”
“Like that helps anything !” she interrupted. Even as she snarled the words, there was panic in her voice.
Warm hands cupped her cheeks before the tears started falling. She pressed her palms to his hard chest, feeling a normal heartbeat, wanting so terribly to grip and shake him, but instead shook her head inside his palms.
“I’m so mad at you right now.”
“That is alright.” He bent forward, anchoring himself on an elbow, and carefully brushed a hair behind her ear. Hissing at whatever ached in his neck before he admitted, “I am angry with myself, too. When Thalon threw me off a cliff… Perhaps his approach… When death is.” And paused, shaking his head. She’d never seen him so lost for words. So shaken. “Fuck. That was incredibly foolish.”
“On that , we can agree.” Alora shoved away, leaving his palms to fall into the grass. The terrible rage and fear inside her subsided enough that she extended a hand.
Garrik accepted it, and she admittedly found pleasure in his harrowing groan as he stood.
It would be even more pleasing if he still felt it tomorrow. Starsdamned High Fae blood.
Alora rolled her shoulders, relieving the pressure in her aching neck as she studied the cliffside that seemed abundantly more daunting from the top. Perhaps it wasn’t as far of a drop as she’d imagined. But she would still be mad at him. For now, it felt better than the embarrassment earlier.
“How are we going to get back up?” she asked, scanning the sharp edges of rocks. Refusing to climb.
Garrik stretched his arm across his chest, back facing her, and she gritted her teeth hard enough to distract her from tracing the defined muscles under his tunic. “ Retorm an maiez ,” his warm, deep voice carried to the forest surrounding them. To the darkness within.
Return to me. That she knew, too. Thanks, Eldacar.
Like inhaling the homely scent of metal and leather, Garrik breathed in slowly as Smokeshadows whorled. Life returned to his body, turning him as cold as the air surrounding a snow-capped mountain. He didn’t need to say a word because she was already walking to him. And when her hand perfectly molded to the ice of his, weightlessness caressed her, and they dawned up the cliff.