Page 11 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

A heavy stillness hung in the air as night broke over Galdheir’s streets; only the damp chill and the scent of woodsmoke lingered.

Not many preferred to be out of the false security of their homes when dusk settled.

Though unlikely, the High City lived under the impression that Magnelis’s greed and cruelty worsened when the sun fell.

Where one step onto the pristine streets could draw the High King’s attention and condemn an unlucky bastard to the castle for his barbarous entertainment—and only because the moon was out…

Little did they know he was just as sadistic when the sun warmed the skies.

Perhaps worse.

Admittedly, Garrik appreciated the quiet at this moment.

There he sat at Aiden’s bedside in the home he had gifted Ozrin—his healer—decades past. Perhaps one of the few safe places in the High City, with one of Garrik’s shields permanently in place to keep the treasonous eyes of Ravens or their loose mouths to themselves.

Light pools of sky-blue hid beneath Aiden’s eyelids, though Garrik imagined they would be muddy and dull now.

Each time Ozrin lifted a lid to examine his half-human brother, Garrik could barely slice his attention away from Aiden’s hardly moving chest. Only during those moments of examination had his eyes opened since the gamroara attack.

Garrik cupped Aiden’s sweat-slicked forehead, brushing his thumb over the blazing-hot skin before reclining in his chair. His eyes burned, bobbing as he held Aiden’s hand like an anchor in the silence.

But his mind was barely in that bedchamber.

Across the city, across the fields and rivers and meadows, over purple tents spread like parasites on the land and into a forest where the shards of crystal and bones of a downed beast lay, Garrik thought of Aiden.

How he felt the moment his brother stopped breathing.

The way his eyes rolled back. Jade’s panic.

The blood. The pain on Aiden’s face. Thalon’s horror.

And Alora…

All because of him.

If he had not left. If he had not failed so astoundingly at schooling Alora as to why she needed to remain in camp. If only he had a moment to truly speak to her in Telldaira instead of stealing her in the night.

This. This was his doing.

Aiden should not be the one lying there. It should be him. Him ?—

Warmth cupped his shoulder.

Garrik jolted, sitting upright as he whipped his head around the room to find the elder male’s eyes on him, on the sweat dripping from his hairline. The way his chest heaved, panting before he swallowed hard to calm himself.

“Apologies, Your Highness,” came that soothing voice as Ozrin whispered with a sad smile, outstretching a glass of clear liquid that Garrik respectfully declined. “Whatever you’re thinking…” He offered a knowing expression.

Of course, Ozrin knew Garrik’s mental tendencies.

He was the male who had kept him tethered to life for so long when all Garrik could do was lie on cold, bloody stones beneath the castle, begging for the stars to end his pathetic existence.

Ozrin had often heard his cries while he tended to him, his confessions, and knew Garrik like the son he never had.

Swiping a glance at Aiden, Garrik ran a hand down his face and deepened his breath. “I must go,” he said, leaned forward, and brushed ebony hair from Aiden’s forehead while squeezing his seemingly lifeless hand one more time.

Ozrin was a male of few words, but Garrik could feel them filling the quiet between them as he stood.

Requiring nothing more than a simple thought, Smokeshadows braided around his battle leather-clad body, transforming him into mist and darkness, entirely weightless as he nodded at Ozrin, catching the healer’s soft smile, before endless oblivion dawned him across the city.

Not seconds later, Garrik parted the whorls of his powers and stepped into a royal garden that seemed more of a graveyard than the place of affection and solace he once knew. Dried and decayed in endless rows of raised beds, six decades of dead pearlseas rested.

Like memories frozen in time, Garrik ran his finger along a dried stem, snapping it to dust the moment his finger moved away.

“She truly had the most beautiful gardens in all of Elysian.”

Garrik did not flinch at the fading voice in his mother’s gardens.

Turning, silver eyes pierced crimson ones as a cloaked male drifted from the castle wall into the moonlight. “The healer?” Garrik asked in way of greeting.

His spymaster adjusted his cloak hood over his pin-straight black hair with inked hands and pooled it on his shoulders.

Garrik continued, “He is safe?”

Those blood-colored eyes met his stare, and he inhaled the night’s decayed breeze as if he were smoking a mellowherb roll. “Safe,” he answered. Then added with a tilt of his head, “But as for the other matter, there are … complications.”

“Complications,” Garrik repeated. He had enough complications for one day; his mind reeled with them.

Starting with Jade’s temper inside the arena leading to Alora’s panic and injury, then that infuriating female jumping into the starsdamned competition where he almost ripped his own soldiers’ heads off.

But Garrik allowed nothing but calm, calculated grace to show on his face.

The spymaster merely studied the castle walls and up to a balcony with candlelight flickering in the text-keeper’s wing, and explained, “The swamplands. I should have answers soon.”

Garrik did not doubt that, crossing his arms over his chest. The movement drew the male’s attention in time to see his sharp nod. “I require further assistance.”

Smokeshadows whorled in his palm. They misted away just as fast, revealing rolled parchment, which was sealed with his Dragon insignia.

“There is no evidence she still exists, but Zayn is certain his shifter’s heart still beats.

” He swallowed, warring off a memory of a floating city …

and a bloody throne room as he handed the missive over.

“I am not so sure what he believes is truth.”

Unrolling the parchment, crimson scanned the ink. Those eyes widened and snapped to his High Prince.

Another nod was Garrik’s response.

“You think Magnelis fooled?—”

“I am not certain. When I was done with her … her head … I only remember my blade falling. The drugs coursing through my veins at the time … the magic-washing … I—” Garrik shook his head, gritting his teeth to the point of pain. “Find the truth, spymaster. Zayn’s next decision lies within it.”

“Yes, sire.” He twisted toward the darkness of the castle wall before Garrik could dismiss him. Not that it bothered him. The male always sensed when their meetings concluded, to which Garrik appreciated.

Fading into the darkness, his spymaster disappeared and left Garrik with nothing but memories surrounding him. They stabbed into his soul with every breath he suffered.

‘Please, no. Oh … stars. Your Majesty, please!’

Garrik pressed his eyes closed, grounding himself on a raised flower bed that had his knuckles whitening.

‘Don’t do this. I will kneel—I will kne— no . NO, please! Please —plea—NO!’

The watery squelch of blood and cracks like wood popping forced Garrik to a knee.

Clutching his chest, he retched in the dirt, barely able to keep himself from falling to his face at the memory. At the name Zayn repeated in blood-curdling screams when Garrik could not care at all, turning his back on the young king to find little amusement in their High King’s eyes.

Voices beyond the garden ripped Garrik from the soul-damning memory. From those chestnut eyes full of infernal wickedness and the onyx-spiked amethyst and ruby crown on the head he had imagined relieving from Magnelis’s body a hundred million times.

Those voices drew closer, accompanied by torchlight illuminating the silver armor and purple cloaks of High Guardsmen—Magnelis’s personal elite Ravens patrolling the night.

If Garrik did not move soon, he would be discovered.

And in this state, heaving on the ground, his exhausted body shaking while rejecting the past that still hovered on the borders of his mind, he could not be certain crossing blades with the guardsmen would go unnoticed.

Let alone if he would be successful in warring them off.

Garrik sank to both knees now as his fingers and palms curled in the soil. His senses stretched out as his mind attempted to recall the tranquility once alive in the gardens, fingers pushing deeper into the earth.

Nothing.

There was nothing left of the life that once grew there. Nothing to steady him. Or perhaps he wasn’t alive enough to feel it anymore. Just another wilted stem, filled with decay and loathing. Always on the edge of crumbling.

It was an effort to move, let alone think straight enough to give the command. But regardless of the pathetic attempt, darkness gathered around him and shadowed him to the only place that could calm his damned heart.

In a burst of Smokeshadows, he misted from his mother’s gardens and dawned into the quiet of her wing instead.

But even there … the screams from that day in Illmataria followed.

Throat taut and chest constricting, Garrik half-stumbled into the High Queen’s bedchamber, peppered with flawlessly preserved pearlseas, perfect as the day they were picked, in vases peppering almost every surface.

Garrik’s back hammered against the wall and slid down it, across from her favorite reading chair, before slumping on the hardwood.

He would stay there for only a moment, then return to camp.

A heaviness settled in his veins when his unsteady gaze stared at the sea-blue cushions across from him.

At the sketchbook and quill covered in decades of dust, waiting for their artist’s return.

For that tender, loving touch that he desperately wished he could feel.

Wishing he could hear his mother’s voice telling him that all the horrible things he had done were forgiven.

But it would never come.

Because even if she were alive … he was not worthy of it.

Demons merit no forgiveness.

They deserved to burn .

The crash of waves reminded him of wind breezing against the leaves outside camp. And sunlight, bursting rays through the balcony threshold, would have been a pleasant waking touch if not for the fact he was still against the wall, unable to move.

He had stared into the darkness all night. Frozen by the screams. By the recollections of the thousands of bloody hands he had slain, reaching to him, pulling at his armor and skin, damning him to the depths of Firekeeper’s pits.

And now … he needed a shower, badly . Not only to wash away their touch, but from the sweat slicking his skin all night.

Garrik kept his focus on his feet as if the simple flick of his eyes would have the ground deteriorating beneath him and stood.

There was a shower in his room. His quiet room. Not the one in his tent surrounded by camp tending to their morning duties and demanding his attention the moment he showed his face.

His steps were near-silent as he closed the doors to his mother’s wing, and in a daze, ambled across the stones of the hallway toward a staircase leading to his.

Sunlight poured through every window, casting his monstrous shadow along the walls as he glimpsed the sea and balconies strewn across the castle.

Avoiding one particular balcony that he had spent countless nights bleeding on, Garrik tore his attention from the windows when a darkened figure rounded the corner at the end of the hallway.

They both stopped cold as death.

Ice crept along the walls as scorching heat burned in those night-blue eyes.

Garrik’s hand fell to his sword as the High Fae male registered the movement.

He appeared distraught; his black tunic was ripped slightly on his upper arm and revealed glimpses of tattooed bones and scales.

Unbuttoned, the front half showcased a cityscape of ink across his chest, and some raised marks appeared as if dragons flew off his skin.

Over his heart, slicing through that city, one word was etched, and Garrik wondered if it was a name.

Usually kempt to perfection, his pants were wrinkled, and harsh lines formed between his brows.

That night-dark hair was disheveled too, as if he had run his hands through it a hundred times, with dark circles under his eyes.

Malik —Malik was here. In the castle. Which meant?—

The male schooled his face into calculated, deadly calm, but his eyes … they flickered uneasily behind Garrik.

Something whispered across the back of his neck. A slithering feeling. Cold, venom-like.

His teeth grew to sharpened points, clashing together when darkness slithered around his neck and traced down the hardened planes of his chest until it wrapped around his wrists to force his arms behind his back.

And he did not need to turn to know whose hand was snaking around his abdomen. They teased at the first snaps and ties of his pants.

Talons curved into his armor at his shoulder, threatening to tear it open.

“ Do not fucking touch me ,” Garrik growled, a desperate attempt to mask the tremble in his voice.

But his commands never worked on her. And it was as if his body knew not to fight her and refused his mind from doing so.

That his body was truly not his own—it had not been for decades.

And denying her? The pain she would inflict in retribution would be much worse.

In the end, he had no choice. So why fight?

He suppressed a shudder as an ombré-colored hand gripped his chin, turning him over his shoulder to pierce blackened abyss—the same abyss his were mirrored after.

A serpentine smile contorted her alluringly evil face. That haunting voice reigning in his nightmares singsonged, “What a delightful surprise,” before she snapped her fingers and the hallway stormed with her cronies, forcing him from her embrace and shoving him to his knees.

The needle was in his neck before he could choke out a breath, feeling his strength—his magic—slip away.

No. Please, no ? —

“I’ve missed you, pet.”