Chapter 56
T hey dawned to Elysian two weeks later to find the sun barely peaking over the Blackstone Mountains. Garrik hadn’t exaggerated the timeline difference. Though it was an adjustment. Only a few hours before, in their world, she’d seen Thalon.
Alora braced the leathered armrest with one hand. The other splayed in Garrik’s hair as she threw her head back in pleasure. His hands gripped her hips as she rocked, and a low deep curse rumbled from his throat. Garrik angled his head enough it tilted away from her, baring his quickened pulse through the scar on his neck.
One look at Garrik’s ruined bedchamber in Kadamar had been all it took for her to lead him to the chair.
Though their time in Airatheldra had mainly been spent training Alora to fly, dawn—and doing this very thing, which now seemed like a cleansing. Fucking her on the kitchen island after making breakfast together, splayed out amidst milled flour and spilled eggs, licking batter from each other’s skin. All but attacking him as he chopped firewood. Making love in the night sky on Smokeshadow wings.
Though the pain and memories had still haunted him there, none of that felt like this now. Compared to a world solely for protection and safety, the reminders and echoes of his past were tenfold in Elysian.
Alora’s finger tickled the sensitive tip of Garrik’s ear. His cock twitched inside her.
Her male. Hers . No one else’s.
Following the linear path down his ear to the sensitive nerves behind, Alora eased her hips and stroked that spot, knowing and having witnessed many times recently what it did to a male.
“Alora,” he moaned, certain of who rode him. Flexing his hips, rolling them to her rhythm, on the verge of unraveling. “ Starsdamn , clever girl”—he moaned; she quickened her pace, the stroking—“hold on to something.”
She didn’t have a moment to object—not that she would have.
Another teasing stroke, and he took control. Garrik squeezed her hips and slammed into her, the position much deeper, hitting that spot that had her reeling. Striking lightning through her blood, Alora couldn’t hold the armrest any longer. Reaching for anything—his shoulder, the back of the chair, the table beside them—Alora slammed her hand down as she cried out, her climax crashing over her.
Garrik followed close behind. Eyes wild, thrusting deep every last drop of his release as an explosion of golden dust clouded around them and a metal clang skittered across the floor.
In the darkness and moonlight, a shower of flaxen flecks rained down.
The paint dust, she realized.
The dragon scales from the masquerade he’d brushed on himself to match his jacket. Her hand had collided with the bowl, covering them in a dusting of it.
Garrik’s hips slowed when she burst out laughing. He hauled that laugh to his smile, and she opened for him. Taking every sweep of his tongue and feeling his smile brighter than sunlight, with a hungry sound of need.
Alora giggled against his lips and pulled back to survey him. The gold peppered his hair and outlined his scars, and she knew she looked no different as he licked over the dusting on her nipple. Then the other. “You promised to wear gold for me one day, mighty prince,” she reminded him.
Garrik let out a laugh that pulsed his abs, shimmering the flecks of dust, so lovely it thrummed through her entire being. “And what do you think, wife? Is it as ridiculous as I imagined?” And laughed again.
By the stars, she loved it— him .
Alora brandished a feline smirk and traced her finger down rigid flesh, drawing a line in the glistening dust until she met where they were joined. “So very ridiculous,” she teased and traced to his star-shaped scar, the coloring a little darker in this moonlight, and outlined it in gold when an idea surfaced.
Starflames ignited on her back, gilding the room in an aura of flickering white. Reflecting off the golden specks dancing in the air before Smokeshadows erupted from him, veiling them in a night sky of their power.
Fuck, clever girl. Garrik shook his head, awestruck. Speechless.
You already did that—many times and with great imagination. She smirked, and he huffed a laugh.
She knew the feeling—awestruck, speechless. Eying his incredible body, his enchanting silver gaze, which she once had no desire to see again. The male she had hated and run from. The male she had craved to starve the last breath of.
Alora commanded those starflames to grow brighter. Kissing the unbreachable wall of shadows as if they were always destined to become one. And every bit of pain lingering in that room disappeared until it was only him and her. Their powers and the beauty they created whispered to the world that a dangerous storm had birthed. One that no one could ever bend or break.
A knock at the door had Garrik jolting upright.
Shards of sunlight cast dusty beams from the windows onto the mezzanine, fogging into his bedchamber as Alora slept soundly nudged against him.
Have you returned?
Thalon.
Garrik greedily stole one slow scan of Alora; the blankets pooled at the small of her back revealed the beautiful curve of her spine, and the … bite marks fading up her shoulder and neck. With a purely male smile, he leaned down and kissed up her back, pulling a whimper from her throat when he reached her neck.
Alora snuggled into the pillow, still asleep, before he slipped from the bed and dressed in night pants. Swallowed in shadows, Garrik dawned below when another knock rasped on the door before he opened it.
Thalon’s waiting grin was roguish.
“Shut up,” Garrik growled low.
His brother wiped a tattooed hand down his swelled cheeks, shoulders bouncing as he loosely contained his enjoyment. “I said nothing .” And then dared, actually dared to speak again. “You’re practically glowing. Alora wear you out over … what was it? One day? Grandsire .”
Two weeks, Garrik thought to himself. Two glorious weeks.
Garrik punched his shoulder like they were faelings. Thalon rubbed the spot, still chuckling, as Garrik ushered him into the hallway and closed the door behind.
“Ladomyr sent his general across the bridge. Kyrell requests you join Ladomyr for breakfast.”
A low growl rumbled from his chest. “I have a meeting.” Thalon raised a brow and crossed his arms, so Garrik continued, “Blood was encased in Erissa’s necklace at the masquerade. Efforts were successful last night to obtain it.”
Thalon leaned against the wall, smiling as he surveyed Garrik rubbing a sore spot on his neck blooming in navy and violet.
He opened his mouth, but it was Garrik’s voice that bounced off the walls. “Say another word,” he dared. Only if he were honest, he did not mind his brother’s taunts. “Pay attention.”
Thalon smirked as the mask of the High Prince donned Garrik’s face.
He paced to a window and browsed the skyline. “Send the Wingborne home. Alert Draven that the Nightfall’s next shift is unnecessary. We leave within the hour.”
“And Ladomyr?” Thalon asked.
“What of him?” The weaselly ilk could wait a thousand years for all he cared.
Something harrowing crossed Thalon’s face. “Might be cause to alert Galdheir if we move out without a word. Perhaps you should meet with him. Have your meeting with…” Thalon paused and knew better than to ask. Not all of Garrik’s surveillants were named. “Call on me when finished, and I will accompany you to Ladomyr.”
Garrik sighed but nodded. “Aiden?”
Thalon shrugged. “Doing what he always does?”
Deciding not to invite those images into his mind, Garrik turned to his bedchamber, to his wife who he intended to spend another few moments with before attending to his duties, and said, “Change of plans. Have Jade collect Aiden and my wife”—Thalon’s face was nothing short of buttery sunlight—“and meet us in camp. We will get Ladomyr fucking over with, then take Blood home.”
In the short time that passed, Garrik’s shoulders had grown solidly tense. Tightened to the point of pain as he cracked his neck, releasing the pressure on his spine while he followed four High Guardsmen and Ladomyr’s general—Kyrell—through the halls with Thalon at his side.
Garrik had to ball his fists to contain the ache of every step separating him and Alora. The primal need to turn around and sink into her until that need subsided. In his side glance, Thalon stiffened. He noticed the way Thalon’s chin lifted toward him, nostrils flaring as he deepened a breath when his eyes fell on Garrik’s chest.
And something … there was something in his eyes.
Garrik could not place it. What?
Thalon’s mouth twisted, eyes narrowed. Have you been using Alora’s soap?
He scoffed in answer while his Guardian swept his gaze out a window, toward the High King’s mountain, toward that balcony looking more like a darkened spot jutting from it and the white hair flowing in the morning light.
Garrik was tempted to close his eyes and feel her there. Instead, he turned another corner.
Silas’s face was grim, critical as his head swayed in Garrik’s direction, and he pushed from the wall. The spymaster’s pin-straight hair spilled over his shoulder like ink, outlining the runes marked down his neck while the left side of his shaved scalp displayed his brutal scar.
With every step, the male’s face tightened, flashing warning in his eyes as he slowly cocked his head at the guardsmen in his way.
The men were stationed in front of Ladomyr’s personal dining room doors. And scanning each one, Garrik regarded the stone-stiff faces. Not one foolish enough to meet his abyss in fear of becoming his next form of entertainment.
Silas’s careful gaze swept between them, stalking behind the barrier, stopped by the wall of guardsmen as one dared to turn Garrik’s way.
Your Highn ? —
A guardsman brushed against the skin of Garrik’s forearm as he neared and jumped back, brushing against Thalon, cutting off the male’s voice as terror radiated from his, “P-please… My d-deepest apologies, Your Highness.”
Thalon gripped the male by his armor and snarled in his face before Garrik could, “ You dare to touch our High Prince ?” Throwing him into the crowd of soldiers before the door to the dining room swung open. “I should take your head for the insult.”
“Your Highness,” Ladomyr said in way of greeting, ignoring the Guardian seething as he strolled through the door and gained Garrik’s attention. “I do hope your morning was most enjoyable.”
Garrik threw him a malicious smirk, deadly, as he forced away the touch lingering on his flesh and replaced it with the thought of Alora’s hands and mouth on him. “It would have remained so should you not have fucking interrupted.”
Ladomyr had the good sense to look nervous. “Apologies, High Prince.” Though no remorse trickled there by little surprise. Ladomyr turned, passed Kyrell, who was stationed at the door, and strolled inside, offering his back like expecting a subject to follow.
Deciding on a morsel of mercy, Garrik said to Thalon before he stepped inside, “Remain here.”
Thalon nodded, cratered the golden sword from his back on the floorboards, and stood as immovable as the mountain the castle was hewn from.
Rounding a table littered with a feast, Ladomyr flirted with death and pulled out his chair, seating himself before Garrik, and announced, “I saw fit to apologize, Your Highness. That perhaps word of your visit will remain in Kadamar and not find the High King?” The groveling may have added another ten minutes to the king’s life. “And I wanted to, of course, offer you the first selection in the Cullings this evening. As is your right and honor.”
Garrik reclined in his chair. “You take me as someone akin to mothering. I could not give a shit about what you desire, Ladomyr. No matter the poor display of remorse. My intentions to inform our High King of your behavior is pending judgment.”
Ladomyr made a gesture of submission and picked at a wooden sliver on his armrest. “Of course, Your Highness.” And nodded to the maidservants waiting on the borders of the room with decanters.
All shackled and bound, Garrik noted.
He was tempted to bare his teeth. To rip into the king for it. But Garrik schooled his face into venomous calm and waited for a female to walk by his side.
The dismissal was clear as Garrik flicked his hand at the female whose hands trembled, sloshing the contents inside the decanter. His gaze, analytical and piercing, locked onto Ladomyr's eyes as they shifted, the king resorting once more to the drug that nullified Garrik’s powers of persuasion.
Smokeshadows gathered around Garrik’s shoulders. Whispering down his biceps and around the rolled sleeves of his tunic until they flowed like a fog across the table.
Sweat seeped from Ladomyr’s plump neck. He gripped the armrests of his chair tighter as darkness coiled around his chalice.
With an animalistic cock of his head, Garrik willed Smokeshadows to swallow the cup and displayed his empty palm beside him. Shadows whorled, producing the chalice a moment later. “Something wrong, Ladomyr?” Garrik asked.
Ladomyr moved to answer, but Garrik snapped his fingers at the female, at his empty cup on the table, and waited. She filled the cup meant for him and stepped away when shadows dawned it in front of the king.
“Drink,” Garrik growled, trembling the room.
He didn’t move.
Garrik only needed one arch of his brow in warning before Ladomyr threw it against his lips, swallowing it whole. They waited in the unsettling silence, but when nothing happened, Ladomyr nervously broke Garrik’s stony stare.
“Will the High King be joining us for the Hunt?”
Garrik sighed, unamused. He had hoped Ladomyr would be gurgling from his mouth by now. With nothing but a quick thought, shadows whorled inside the cup meant for Ladomyr, misting away from the bourbon they provided before Garrik indulged in it and replied, “The High King cares not for his own traditions. Why would he bother with yours?”
A serpentine smile crossed Ladomyr’s face.
Something rotten like corpses in the heat of summer wavered across Garrik’s senses, drowning out the king’s pointless rambling. The familiarity of it was unsettling…
Garrik blinked, thoughts narrowing slightly to … nothing. For a moment he scanned the room, noticing the way Ladomyr waited as if he expected Garrik to respond.
Marked One , Ladomyr had said—or at least thought so as he refocused. “Marked One? Do tell me you would not be foolish enough to admit that you failed to”—Garrik shook his head, grasping words that seemed to not be there—“failed to.” He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, deepening a breath as nausea crept up his throat.
That smell. Garrik recognized it, but where?
“Failed to?” Ladomyr repeated, tilting his head.
Not by his command, a shadow wisped from his hand, dancing around his face, slow and lethargic, before it died away.
“High Prince?”
Flashes of a darkened room …
The rolling of a glass bottle across a dusty shelf. An emerald hue shimmering inside as sadistic inked eyes?—
Garrik stood, pushing his chair back with such force it broke into pieces against the wall. But the room rotated; the floor shifted.
He stumbled backward. His sword—he went to grab it, but the movement refused his will.
Grabbing the table edge, Garrik attempted to steady himself when a boot collided with his chest, slamming him to the floor before another rammed his face.
Blood splattered the floorboards. Garrik braced himself with one arm, only to be kicked again. Numbness he had not experienced in decades washed over him. Surging through his nerves as his limbs fell limp.
Garrik’s vision spun. Every breath. Every sound. All sensations hit him like a damning blow until it all became too much. Overstimulating his senses like it did in that damned bedchamber and dungeon cell.
The shields.
He tried— tried to move his fingers. To twist that black ring.
But Garrik could not move— could not speak . Only his conscience remained as he willed his mind to clear.
Gold-crested heels clacked across the floor, stopping inches from Garrik’s breath, which fogged the polished wood. White fabric rustled as the toe of a jeweled slipper pushed Garrik’s shoulder, flattening him on his back to look into the vengeful eyes of Kadamar’s beloved princess.
“I thought my future betrothed wouldn’t be so stupid,” Erissa crooned. “To harbor a Marked One, keeping her from our High King. Why would the Savage Prince do such a thing against our sovereign’s command unless he was no longer loyal?”
Alora. Garrik choked on blood spilling down his throat, struggling against the poison he had no hope to overcome as Erissa sunk the sharp rod of her heel through his forearm, anchoring him to the floor. Garrik grunted a sound of pain as she leaned her weight into it.
“But then, I followed her to the garden.” Erissa smirked and crouched, adjusting her skirt to prevent Garrik’s blood from staining it. The sickening warmth of her hand clasped his chin, digging crescents. “How did you say it? It was a year before my magic-washing was nulled. ” Erissa hummed so maliciously that he hallucinated her as a viper. “I wasn’t quite certain what that meant until I asked my father. And you know what else I heard?”
Garrik released an agonized grunt, unable to move—to fight—when she jerked his head forward.
“ The male who is fighting to bring Magnelis to his end. ” She huffed a dark laugh. “How noble.”
“Foolish,” Ladomyr corrected. “To have underestimated us in my kingdom. You may be the young Lord of Minds, but you haven’t lived nearly as long as I have, boy. You thought I was some simpering half-wit?” Ladomyr chuckled and towered over Garrik, casting a long shadow from the sunlight through the windows. “I am Magnelis’s closest ally. Did you not think I remembered how to manipulate and subdue you?”
He could not breathe, could barely think beyond the roaring in his ears. The sound of his blood rushing through his veins, the simplest breath from across the castle, or every flying creature in the sky.
“That little look of confusion in your eyes … you appear decades younger, and I love it just as much as then. You see, boy . It was the guard’s touch that seeped the drug into your blood.” Ladomyr grinned, then lowered himself to brush a sensual thumb over Garrik’s forearm, then lips. “Paired with my chalice to steal your every movement and something new, your voice . How predictable of you. I’m surprised you didn’t foresee it.” He snickered.
Garrik blinked, narrowing and refocusing his eyes, but the effort proved futile.
Ladomyr straightened and clapped his hands together with mirth, and shouted, “ Kyrell !”
The dining room doors burst open, and utterly helpless, Garrik felt every last part of his world crash down as the female he called wife and his brother were forced to their knees.
Garrik! Alora screamed down their tether, empty and void.
Thalon’s growl was muffled, but she sensed the brimstoned fury erupting behind the gag as a High Guardsman sheathed his golden sword to his side. Unintelligible threats and curses seeped through the cloth as she writhed in shackles around her wrists, and he was forced to his chest by the knees of three High Guardsmen.
She called to her starfire. Nothing answered.
Because all the heat had rushed from her body the moment they’d stabbed her with a needle. After Garrik had returned, after he told her about Blood and returning to camp. After he and Thalon left, by her own carelessness, she’d crossed the shield. Deceived by a maidservant who had collected her in a fit of worry over her distressed faeling.
Ladomyr prowled forward with feral excitement glazing his eyes. Alora tried to shuffle away, but he fisted her hair, wrenching her head back so violently she thought her neck would snap. Those hazel eyes whipped to Garrik, speaking to him. “Isn’t she a beauty?”
Garrik didn’t move, he only blinked, lips quivering like he was trying to speak.
What have they done to him? He looked like he was dying—because he was.
Without his Smokeshadows … his heart …
Garrik!
Thalon roared behind his gag, but the king ignored him and drawled, “Such a shame she won’t be after the Hunt.”
Alora thrashed, forcing Ladomyr to clamp his palm around her neck and squeeze.
She wouldn’t let him have her—have them .
With a swift motion, Alora kicked Ladomyr’s shin, causing him to release his hold on her.
On swift steps, Erissa closed the distance. “Fire-wielding bitch ,” she snapped, and raised her palm, slapping it so violently across Alora’s cheek that the gag unraveled.
Alora hissed, tightening her jaw when a glare as scorching as starflames leveled at the princess. Flashing her canines, Alora snarled, “That’s High Fire-wielding Bitch,” and wiped the trickling blood from the corner of her mouth onto her silk robe. Then a voice like a lioness, as deadly and damning as her High Prince’s, promised, “And I swear by every Celestial and the Almighty Maker of the Skies, I will slaughter you for this.”
From the floor, Garrik choked on a smile. Those dazed eyes rolled back.
The princess’s answering kick to Alora’s gut had her coughing. Disturbing her robe when she fell to her side. Disturbing the fabric covering her chest?—
Alora’s eyes widened. Garrik and Thalon’s too.
Erissa halted.
“What’s this?” Ladomyr hissed and stormed forward, turning to Erissa, who’d gone so so pale—then blood red.
A flash of metal?—
Garrik grunted in agony as a blade sunk into his shoulder—just above his chest.
In a swift jerk, Erissa ripped the fabric of his sweat-soaked tunic, parting it at his heart.
Where the star-shaped scar should have been… Alora’s scar. The burn that belonged to her. It wasn’t there. Not the way it used to be.
Garrik’s focus wavered as his eyes narrowed on the blood spilling from his wound around the knife and pooling over dark ink. Narrowed at the twin to Alora’s mark that hadn’t been over her heart that morning.
At the flaming star encased in swirls of shadow.
Erissa let out a sound of hate. Of jealous, burning hate . And before Alora wrapped her mind around anything other than their markings, Ladomyr slammed his boot into Garrik’s jaw with one word on his lips.
Mates.
Garrik … he wasn’t moving.
She barely registered guardsmen storming inside. Barely heard Thalon’s screams.
Mates— mates .
Uncontrollable rage boiled across her flesh. Her soul. Alora’s head filled with roaring as her power rumbled beneath the poisons keeping them at bay. Her scream was deafening. Searing a wave of promised destruction across the mountain.
Mate.
My mate.
It was the last thing she thought as High Guardsmen dragged Garrik’s unconscious body through a pool of his blood. Signing their death missives as the High Fire-wielding Bitch of Elysian vowed to burn them all to ash.