Chapter 52
T he male would not stop screaming. Although Garrik had just cut off his wings and snapped most of the bones in his limbs after slaughtering his family. But even so. Did the gutless ilk not possess a shred of dignity before he died?
“Pathetic,” Garrik snarled, kicking the male off his sword to bleed out.
Membranous wings squelched underneath his boots as he left bloody bootprints across the carnage. When Magnelis had sent Nevilier that morning, Garrik expected to be summoned to the castle. Not entertaining himself in a piss-poor village of traitors.
Though he did relish the sound of their begging. The screams called his heart to beat.
Garrik scanned the town dusted in ruin. The stones he had shattered moments before with one burst of his weaponized shield. Then Smokeshadows stole anyone who remained breathing from the rubble. Hovering them above the ground while they clawed at their worthless necks.
He should have left more breathing to play with. Pity.
But Brennus had kept him awake for the last five days and his patience wore thin.
Gazing in the shattered glass of a hovel, though he was completely transformed into a mess of blood and bone dust staining his skin and hair crimson, he still glimpsed the dark circles under his eyes in his reflection.
“No survivors,” Garrik commanded his Ravens, meeting two Guardian’s eyes.
Thalon. Everlyn.
The male generally carried fiery judgment. It was only a shame that Garrik could not kill the bastard or his wife. But even Magnelis knew how foolish that was when Tarrent-Garren warriors were blessed or some shit. Though rumors held no ground, killing a Guardian was as damning as killing unicorns. It could not be done—not on purpose.
“You going to fucking stand there all day, Guardians, or do your damned duty?” Garrik growled, attempting to wipe the blood from his face, but his hands were stained so terribly it made it worse.
With the curl of his lip and something unreadable in those golden eyes, Thalon gestured to his female and weaved through the rubble.
Garrik did not care to watch them, and instead, dawned in a rush of shadow and dark clouds. He barely stepped from the darkness when footsteps crunched the stones scattered around the sea of purple canvas.
“Brennus requires you in his tent,” one of the sentries informed him with an air of terror.
That was … timelessly appealing.
Garrik growled. “Brennus can fucking wait.”
He had not found the Marked One in the village. And not one faerie had memory of her. So, the village had paid—he laughed. They would have paid regardless.
Blood dripped down his face, his neck. Soaking deep inside his leathers and coating his sword. That could not wait.
The Raven retreated as if Garrik would snap his neck for merely standing there. Normally, Garrik pleasured in sending Firekeeper a new body for torment, but he could barely hold the sword in his hand.
Exhausted, Garrik threw open the purple flap to his tent, stepping inside the darkness when five males drifted from the sides, blocking the doorway behind.
His cot…
A shadow moved.
A candle ignited.
Long black hair spilled over her shoulders, draping over her breasts as she swung her legs gracefully over the side. The serpent stood, his blanket pooled around her, exposing naked flesh.
Those black eyes glistened with heat. A serpentine smile twisted. Daggered nails bit into his chin and forced him to look into her abyss for eyes, and snickered, “Welcome home, pet.”
The invisible bonds snapped, releasing him from the nightmare.
Darkness trembled the room, but it kept him from falling and refused to let him slip back to her.
Someone was screaming louder than the thunderstorm peaking outside. An empty pit of agony wailing—echoing—off the walls, bookshelves, and windows. Only when Garrik managed to open his eyes, throat raw and bloody, did the screams cease.
The room, the bedsheets—ruined. Shredded apart with the blackened claws now misting to cloud and ash. But he would rather they remain and stab deep into his veins to serve as penance for what he had done in that village and all the others.
And the torture after?
It did not suffice. His suffering was never enough, no matter if it was at the end of a whip or being forced under a body.
Clutching his burning abdomen, Garrik attempted to sit up. Swallowed in tendrils, his breaths came out choked as sweat slicked down his neck and chest. Wild as a burst of thunderstorms, darkness in the room whorled, stopping him from buckling over as another wave of those faeries’ faces threatened to end him.
Then it was his master’s face.
Garrik retched between his legs as phantom hands brushed along his body. Smokeshadows whorled, cleaning it up before gathering around him and guiding him back on the pillows. He lifted his hands to wipe the sweat from his face but stopped.
Blood. There was so much blood. Dripping, pouring down his arms.
Only when he dared to wipe it away, it continued flowing as if his hands and wrists were gauged open. This blood, he knew it was not real because like every nightmare of when he was the monster he was Made to be, this blood covered him. Forever staining him, never to be washed clean.
Garrik’s hands ruthlessly trembled, but he could not focus on them. Seeing three—four—five bouncing around his vision as he stood.
The floor seemed to cease existing. Unstable, Garrik slammed to the hardwood with a pained grunt. Smokeshadows gathered around him, lifting him from the floor, but his legs did not carry the strength to stand.
Because when his screaming had stopped, others followed.
The screams of the many. The young. Old. Mothers ripped from their younglings. Husbands from wives. Mates from mates. Princelings. Kings. The thousands— millions— laid to waste by his hand.
Those painful screams of the dying and damned scratched down his body. Heavy and condemning, they pulled and pulled until black-veined fingers delved into the wooden floorboards, prying himself across the floor and mezzanine, and onto the balcony where he slumped against the spindles of the balustrade, laying his head against the stone as cold as his skin.
Pebbles of the cresting thunderstorm seeped into his tunic and pants as his palms slid through liquid trails on the stones, then lifted and trailed down his face.
Driven by the numbness, Garrik mustered enough strength to pull himself from the floor.
Overlooking the empty gardens and sleeping High City far below, there was only one thing to keep him from another nightmare. And as the amethyst moon slipped from behind the clouds, darkness tendriled by his side, producing his sword. Garrik did not turn back to his bedchamber, knowing it lay in ruin. Entirely uncaring if it remained that way.
He climbed onto the railing. With one settling breath, darkness flared and dawned him to the gardens below.
Garrik’s bedchamber was in ruin.
The velvety couches overturned. Spines of the books on his shelves were split. And his bedsheets—hardly a scrap remained.
Alora breezed through his open balcony doors, but no shadow sat on the balustrade. No darkness stirred.So, she went to that ledge and brushed her fingers where he sat most nights. Where she looked up from her balcony and found him waiting for her.
She felt him as if he stood beside her. Felt … Pain.
Alora gripped her chest. Feeling his pain calling for salvation. For forgiveness. Freedom.Closing her eyes, she pictured that silver tether, that beautiful, unusual heartbeat, and called to him.
Shadows answered. And like a current pulling her to sea, Alora followed to the gardens below.To the gray head of hair deep inside and the flash of metal against amethyst moonlight.
“He had a nightmare,” she breathed, brushing her fingers through raindrops on the marble, watching him surrounded by uncountable shadowed forms waiting to meet his blade.
The shadow squeezed her hand in answer.
“Because of me?” That pain—Garrik’s pain—in her heart stabbed sharper.
Smokeshadows danced on the stone. Twirling and twisting through the droplets, forming the words, Never you.
Had her heart not felt cleaved in two, maybe she would’ve smiled.
Another gleam of metal had her pushing away. Alora gathered the white fabric of her skirt and stared down hundreds of steps leading to the gardens—to her High Prince.
There was no question as Alora took that first step. And in the darkness, though she could barely see what came next, she wasn’t afraid.
“Thalon?” Alora slid to a stop on the pebbles when she saw him.
Her Guardian reclined on a bench along the paths near the maze. Thalon’s Earned glinted in the transitioning moonlight, casting the gardens in silver and white.
Growls of exertion and strength seeped through the shrubbery, but Thalon didn’t seem phased by it. He merely turned his head toward her with a faint smile, golden eyes glassy as her white dress snared his attention, and gestured for her to sit.
“You weren’t at the masquerade,” she noted and sat.
“Business in the northeast,” was all he said. Collecting and carrying missives from their hidden allies. Those brave enough to stand against the High King. He registered the look on her face. Owning another gentle smile before adding, “Magnelis could be the reason for a magical realm but instead fills it with corpses.” Tears welled in his eyes. He clutched his chest, the mark inked there. Thumb mindlessly rubbing over the three braids, woven into a circlet and golden bead, with a sword cut straight down the middle. “I want to be his end for what he did to Garrik.”
Another battle cry ruptured behind them. Alora shuddered.
Thalon continued, “Want to conjure a thousand portals just to cut him into pieces when they seal and dispose of his remains across every land.”
She’d never heard him so violent, though she supposed someone as wicked as Magnelis rooted that inside anyone who witnessed his barbarity. It certainly did in her.
They sat in silence for what seemed like ages before Thalon took the palm resting in her lap and squeezed. Alora turned to find tears streaming down those beautiful dark cheeks and onto the reike marked on his neck.
“You brought him back to us, Alora.”
Pressure built in her nose, forcing warm tears to spill over her lashes.
“For over fifty years, he hadn’t smiled, not a real one. Though we never relented in trying for it, Garrik was gone.”
She didn’t dare say a word, just eyed him delicately. Letting her brother speak as if he needed to for far longer than he knew.
“We returned months after they imprisoned him.” His voice silent, grim. “Jade and Aiden overcame the guards while Everlyn and I searched the dungeons. The only way we knew where to find him was the smell of his blood, so overwhelming, like a lake pooled there, wafting up the staircase from the depths of Magnelis’s pit. And when we found him…” Thalon released a sound of pain, choking from his core. “I didn’t think we could move him. They’d beaten him so terribly, there wasn’t an inch of untouched flesh.
“Garrik commanded us to leave because of me. Because of Everlyn.”
She stared into golden eyes teeming with hurt and pain and shame and squeezed his hand.
“Magnelis was our duty. To go against the Keep’s orders would excommunicate us. Garrik wouldn’t allow us to be corrupted, not for him. Even if it were by Jade and Aiden’s hand, if we knew and did nothing to stop it, to harbor a traitor, then we would be shamed from history, damned . And though we didn’t give a shit—condemn us to Firekeeper—we didn’t care. Garrik still wouldn’t allow it. We had to leave him there. For decades. While I stood beside Magnelis. Commanded to drag him into rooms to be at the pleasure of sick bastards and weapons. And couldn’t do a starsdamned thing.”
Thalon was vibrating. Branches of lightning shocked along his fingers, cupping his face.
She’d never heard him curse like that before.
“ The Blood Years ,” he growled, lifting his head to the night sky. “I had to watch him do things the most vile and damned in Elysian’s history had never accomplished. Knowing he was gone and there was nothing I could do.
“But one day, he walked into my tent and fell to his knees.” Thalon’s voice fell near silent. “And I saw some speck of life return.”
She didn’t bother wiping the tears from her face.
“Ever since, he has lived with the demons of his past to the point I was so desperately afraid he’d end his suffering.” He paused. “But then a white-haired female came into camp. What a pain in the ass she was.”
Alora chuckled, smiling down at the grass glistening in the moonlight, and realized the sounds around them had gone quiet. She could’ve sworn Garrik laughed too.
“And then one day, I saw him smiling like we were elder faelings again. You did that, Alora. You brought him back to me, and now I can breathe again. I can laugh with him again. He doesn’t flinch when I offer my hand on his shoulder. My brother has returned, and I don’t know how to thank you, starfire,” he rambled, choking back sobs and tears. “I missed him like I miss Everlyn.
“And he told me tonight,” Thalon sobbed. “He told me things he hasn’t been able to say. Things I witnessed but never wanted to torment him with. Things he confessed on drunken nights and forgot in the morning. You, Alora. You’re showing him he doesn’t need to do it all alone.”
She didn’t stop herself. Alora fell to her knees in front of him and pulled his head to her neck, hugging him so tightly she wasn’t sure he could breathe.
But Thalon choked out, “ Thank you .” Repeating it, “Thank you for returning my brother to me.”
Over and over until she felt it and let it seep into those once broken pieces now mended, knowing she would do so much more for them in a heartbeat.
“When I met you all, I didn’t realize how much you would mean to me. You all are my home, Thalon,” Alora admitted. “And now I need to go find him and tell him that, too.”
“Unleash Michael—finally.” He chuckled.
She pulled back. “ Finally ?”
A beautiful smile widened on his face. “ Yes , finally. Though I have a sacred duty to my High Prince, don’t think I haven’t noticed you two the last few months. It’s bad enough I have to keep Aiden from trouble, but you two are going to give me gray hairs before I’m three thundered twenty.”
“Grandsire,” Alora snickered, and Thalon shook his head.
Her Guardian stood and pulled her from her knees before straightening her crown. A wild smile crossed his face as he looked to the maze. Thalon beamed with something akin to fatherly pride and said, “Go get your male, starfire.” That was pride. “He’s been waiting a long time for you.”