Chapter 66
W atery sunlight poured through the crystal windows, but not a hint of it touched Alora. Smokeshadows, dancing over them like Garrik’s wings of darkness, veiled the waving light, far too warm but still inviting.
They barely made it through a bath that morning before their eyes had closed. Certainly no energy to look at much of her mother’s rooms—yet. Deciding on a guest chamber, he had carried her from the bath, half-asleep himself, and neither of them had cared to take in the luxury of it all.
It was only when a snowflake outside the window fluttered by did Alora gawk.
The room’s cinquefoil windows, decorated by elegant, curving struts, turned the cathedral-like windows into more of intricate frames for the landscape than simple architectural additions. Each pane set within the lattices was of polished, white-stained timber. The designs curling like filigrees and waves were much like her Smokeshadow window. And when the morning sunlight filtered through, the construction gilded the room in exquisite patterns of design, casting elaborate shadows on the furs they laid under.
She didn’t get a much better look at the room other than those windows.
Because icy lips delicately brushed below her ear.
Alora may have whimpered at it. May have bowed a little, pressing herself into something hard.
She wondered if she’d imagined it. Drowsy from the first real sleep in days. Not fighting to keep her mind alert as she rested, where one insignificant scratch of a branch or whisper of wind roused her. Not waking just to fight and run.
There was no mistaking the strong legs entangled with hers or the freezing hand tracing over her death mark. The intoxicating lips kissing her smooth skin.
Sinking into the pillow, Alora stretched her neck, greedily offering him more.
A low hum tickled across her flesh, pebbling it with cold breath. She wanted to open her eyes, but the touch was too close to a Stars Eternal dream. All she managed was a whimper.
“Groan like that again, and I may reconsider my plans for today.” Garrik’s deep, honeyed voice vibrated into her. It wasn’t sleep-roughened; he’d been awake for some time. And given the icy chill of her neck, this wasn’t the first kiss he had laid there. Only the first she woke to.
She groaned, arching into him.
Garrik cursed, tensing behind her. Flexing his hips so she felt him hard as steel against her, and rasped, “Are you trying to unravel me?”
“Yes,” came that breathy voice, more than she meant it to be. “What of your plans today?” she wondered. “Did you get enough sleep?”
That exploring hand slipped down the column of her neck. Tracing his fingertips, with expert attention, lightly between her breasts. “I can think of far better things than sleeping right now.” Garrik swirled a finger around her peaked nipple, his other hand palmed her thigh between the bed.
Heat pulsed between her legs. Alora ground into him, widening her legs ever-so-slightly, aching for the palm on her leg to travel higher.
Garrik tauntingly hummed, hovering over her neck. Wholly satisfied by what his touch was doing, but not giving in.
The mighty bastard.
He chuckled. The sound only threatened her sanity more. She managed to curl her fist into her pillow, cradling it to her head as the other intended an exploration of its own. Trailing down her stomach to her navel, then brushing along the scars on his wrist.
When he didn’t move, she clasped his hand, sifting her fingers between his knuckles and those powerful rings. Smiling as she did so. Smiling when he allowed her to graze the juncture at her thigh with his hand.
“Mmm,” Garrik groaned. “Greedy.”
She didn’t deny it. Her answering moan when his fingers traced a tantalizing stroke down her center was proof enough.
His breath chilled the shell of her ear. “What will it be, my wife?” A finger slipped inside her. Garrik rumbled at the pleasure of the wetness waiting for him—and she may have gasped at that too. “My fingers.” A teasing stroke. “Or my mouth?”
Both. Alora arched her against him, angling her head over her shoulder to take his lips. And she didn’t need words for him to understand. She shouted it across their tether before his thumb brushed her bundle of nerves, setting her blood molten.
Garrik met the rhythm of his strokes with his lips. Parting hers, sinking his tongue inside as a finger did as well. Curling, meeting that spot that had her chasing oblivion. She bucked her hips against him, helpless moans echoed into his mouth as he stroked and stroked her beyond words. Beyond the kingdom they were sheltered in. Beyond the Wall, and the realm, and any lingering terror and pain from the last few days.
He rushed for nothing. As if he felt those very things, too.
Stroked and kissed her until she shattered and floated amongst the stars he always sent her to.
Garrik laid her on her back, taking his time to kiss every inch of her skin. Up her thighs, her hipbones, her abdomen. Drawing out every panted breath and sound that belonged to him before he suckled and rolled her nipple between his lips. Until his intoxicating touch delicately placed a kiss on her mate mark.
He didn’t need to ask, but she knew why he did. Why he settled himself between her legs, not daring to sink into her before he knew what had happened in Ladomyr’s bedchamber wouldn’t cause her pain now.
Alora slipped her hand between them, stroked his cock, and marveled when it twitched. At the sound he made. And smiled when his eyes fluttered closed, whispering, “I’m okay.” She meant it. She needed him to know it. “I’m okay, Garrik.”
I need my mate. She sent across the tether binding their hearts.
Garrik made no move for urgency. He carefully lowered his hips as if it was their first joining, feeling him sink inch by glorious inch inside her until he was fully seated. Until she was breathless against him, toes curling in the furs.
“I never want to forget this. How you feel…” Garrik rasped, easing his hips in slow, drawn-out waves. “Stars, Alora. I cannot stop thinking about you like this. In every breath I breathe. When I catch a glimpse of morning light. You are everything , Alora. Every-starsdamned-thing.”
And mine. My perfect, strong mate, he thought, and she imagined she might ignite into flames and shadows at what tore through her. At the feeling of having him in her arms again. Healed. Unbroken. Moving together without a thought of threat or illusioning themselves to be anything more than just … this .
No titles. No pasts. Just them. Nothing but their names.
He pulled out and thrust back in, hips becoming quicker, more urgent.
The sound of his groan ignited her starflames, roaring around the room as he unleashed his shadows. Ignited the sparks that rippled down her spine with every stroke, with every piece of her that she let go, that she had held in for those days without him—watching him dying—in Kadamar.
“Come with me,” he rasped, the sound unlike him. A mated male enraptured, captivated, and so deeply in love he could barely speak.
And together, they resealed their tether, as they had so many times before. Garrik shuddered as he roared her name, and she cried his so the stars knew he was hers, that she would never let him go.
Aiden stood on the other side of the door when Garrik stopped his incessant knocking.
The gray of his eyes appeared blue in the icy-crystal light, making him look unlike himself as he twisted that scaled ring on his finger. Aiden shifted uneasily, leaning his shoulder into the threshold, and said in way of greeting, “Slight problem.”
Alora frustratingly groaned and threw the blankets over her head. Just one day. One starsdamned day.
“Did you cause it?” Garrik asked, his sex-roughened voice muffled because of the blankets. Alora brandished a smile at the sound. Wanting to know just how hoarse she could make him.
She could hear Aiden’s smile. Could picture the way his palm flattened on his chest in a display of dramatics. “What, me ?” he elongated the vowel in a singsong tone. When silence hovered, Aiden cleared his throat and explained, “Not all Dragons were in camp last night. Out scouting. Some hunting.” Alora caught Aiden’s shrug when her head emerged from the blankets.
Garrik’s critical expression lightened. He nodded, then turned to a neatly folded pile of clothing on a dresser, gathered a tunic and slipped it on. “When is Thalon returning to camp?”
Aiden crossed his arms, displaying his impressive mermaid tattoo on his forearm. “He isn’t. That’s the problem.” And scratched the back of his neck. Then added, “He used too much power last night to hold the bloody door open. Thought he might pass out before they all could pass through.”
Parchment rumpled when he sank into his pants pocket, and Aiden produced a missive sealed in red wax and a Dragon emblem. “Names of those missing,” he advised and dropped it in Garrik’s hand.
Nodding, Garrik narrowed his eyes, falling distant as if he searched a thousand minds only to find the one. When he blinked back into their room, Garrik said, “I will meet with Thalon momentarily.” Then turned to Alora and added with a lazy grin, “The king wishes to speak with you before we leave.”
The king waited for her inside Nadeliene’s receiving room.
Though , receiving room wasn’t quite what she’d describe it as. Alora, adorned in night-dark leathers, stepped inside an overhanging room that was more like a wintry garden. A river lazed around cushioned lounges brimming with lush furs and a tranquility pool expanding beyond the open walls postured with pillars. It ran all the way to a whitestoned terrace, which was filled with snowy evergreens.
His golden hair had been washed of blood and the Dragon’s leathers he borrowed were exchanged for court attire. Leaning his elbows on the railing of a bridge over the river, the king’s russet irises watched billowing smoke in the distance, over the Wall. Watching the crimson swirls drifting up to the clouds.
“They lit Father’s pyre. Didn’t take Erissa long.”
Alora rubbed her hand along the dark railing, boots creaking the wooden boards as she stopped beside him. Indeed, Kadamar mourned over the Wall, no doubt pleading to the stars that Ladomyr’s spirit would be carried by smoke and welcomed to the Stars Eternal. However, Alora didn’t harbor such hope. He didn’t deserve the pyre.
Despite it, she carefully asked, “You okay, Your Majesty?” Uncertain of his answer. Noticing his hollow eyes, the way his mouth frowned.
The eldest male heir—the king —of Kadamar mournfully turned to her. A small smile captured Ezander’s face. “How could I not be when you live?” That smile faded to distress. “Alora, I am … deeply sorry for what my father did. That I couldn’t stop him.”
“You tried. Almost got yourself killed for it, twice .” Alora smiled, then knocked her shoulder against his, and scolded, “Self-sacrificing fools , all of you.”
Ezander scoffed a laugh, nudging her shoulder back. “You’re one to speak, my lady .”
Alora rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you heard?” And scrambled away from the railing, bowing at the waist as expressive as Aiden as she said, “It’s Her Highness now.”
“Yes, I did hear about that,” Ezander mused, then twisted on the railing, leaned against it, and regarded the glow of her face, that stupid smirk. “It seems Garrik has given us both new titles. How kind of him.” That wasn’t disdain, that … that was gratitude.
A cold wind through the pillars disturbed his half-cut hair, and she tucked behind her ear the strand tickling her face before settling against the opposite railing, facing him. “How do you know the kingdom accepted you as king?” Not only the faeries, but the land, too. After all, when Airathel died, Garrik never received Zyllyryon’s powers.
Some emotion stole his eyes. A hint of shame. Wonder. “I felt it the moment Garrik killed him. And then at the Wall. Something inside me … when I saw those lions. I just…” Ezander shook his head, lost for words. “I remembered the Hunt. How I tried to protect you as the wolf Father Made me. And then … there I was. The wolf again.”
It was Alora’s turn for wonder. “I never saw Ladomyr shift. I didn’t know he could.”
“He couldn’t.” Pure male arrogance beamed in that one quick wink. Ezander lifted his hand in front of him, and before her eyes, claws extended. “Not every monarch receives the same gifts. My great-grandsire was the last who could become a beast. Father only manipulated land and faerie’s forms, not his own. Stars, to see his face when he finds out…” His throat worked as anguish surfaced.
Alora didn’t care a grains-worth of sand for Ladomyr, but Ezander …
Ezander said, “He was a terrible father. A terrible ruler. And now my sister sits on his throne, and she is worse than he was.”
From the hallway, male voices carried. Alora could’ve kissed them for the distraction. Ezander certainly needed it.
Garrik’s voice echoed around the door. Then she saw that silken gray hair and the enchanting eyes of her High Prince as he said, “When I return, we will speak with Nikolouse. It is time to call on Elysian’s armies. Magnelis’s time is at its end.”
Ezander folded his arms over his chest and called across the room, “Not all of my father’s soldiers were loyal. We will have support from deserters in Kadamar when the call arises. My sister may be falsely ruling, but they will know who the kingdom chose as its sovereign.”
“Try not to boast too much, old friend ,” Garrik taunted as he and Thalon crossed the floor and stood at the bottom of the bridge. Ezander only smirked as Garrik offered his hand to Alora. Smokeshadows coiled around it, and with a smile as bright as starlight, asked, “Ready, my love?”
With a quick nod, creeping darkness tendriled from his shoulders—from hers too. That ring on her finger danced wildly inside the crystal, and she felt Garrik’s powers ebb a little. Engulfed in whorling shadows and misting ash, Alora managed with a little help from her mate to turn them into nothingness inside the Dawnspace and dawn to camp.