Page 12 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

H e stared forward.

Almost like looking straight through her ghost; as if his body was there, but his soul was floating somewhere else.

He must have killed every starsdamned one of them a hundred times.

A thousand.

Obliterated them. Cast their souls to Firekeeper.

If only it were that easy.

But tonight … the only soul that had one foot in those burning pits and the other there, where nightmares reigned not only in his mind but outside, was him.

The urge to spill pitch-black blood had been his constant obsession since he stepped into that annulus hours before.

From the first tendril of shadow forming the body of the female and male’s he fantasized about killing ten thousand times, the desire pulsed through the open wounds and scars of his abdomen, the bruised flesh of his waist and ribs, and the vile taste that defiled his mouth.

He should have gone to the Dawnspace. Not this annulus.

Should have dawned to his dungeon flooded with his blood. Conjured their true selves so he could watch their faces wrinkle and writhe in agony as he ripped them apart over and over and over , just as they had done to him.

Yet he found himself there. Surrounded by flames as if mere warmth could be his salvation.

Could keep her away.

He ripped his tunic off sometime ago, unable to stand the touch of the fabric where her hands had been.

And no matter what retribution he carried out with sharpened steel, he could not purge the memories or the sickly, sour feeling churning his insides.

The only thing that could come close was the slow deaths of the shadow figures he conjured—and cutting down Smokeshadow likenesses of those who were to blame for his torment and suffering.

Knowing nothing, caring for nothing, but the way his blade felt in his grip and the screams he imagined them making.

Yesterday … if only he could have gone back to yesterday.

To have stayed in camp after seeing Alora safe to her tent. To have sat around the fire with Thalon and pretended that he deserved to be there. Threw daggers with Jade or sat in the solemnness of Eldacar’s library and listened to the scratch of his quill.

A guttural howl erupted around the annulus before Garrik, in one thorough swing, relieved the heads of five shadows moving in a circle around him. His lips curled back from his teeth, eyes swirling with hints of oblivion surveying them.

Starsdamnit. It was. Not. Enough.

It was never enough.

Another shadow formed directly beside the last misting away. His feet ate the short distance.

Garrik’s damning blade swung again before it even had a chance to lift its hand.

Then another.

To its left. Only, that one didn’t fully form before it dissipated into the chilling night air around them like dust in a windstorm.

Over.

And. Over.

And-fucking- over Garrik’s severed soul cried out in ruination as that thing in his chest threatened to cease beating.

As his sword … the sword he wished was turned on himself…

As that damned, useless sword sliced and cut and heaved until he could not feel anything but the ache in his arms and the strain in his bone-white grip.

He would not stop— couldn’t.

The very moment he did, the voices— her voice— would creep in.

Leather groaned in his hand. Some part of his heart …

some part he thought was long lost and buried so deep he could never touch it again, ached.

He did not allow it to stir. To allow self-hatred and pity to consume him.

There was no point in mourning for the male he once was.

That part of him would never return. That Garrik was gone.

Butchered and obliterated and ruined.

Ruined.

The word chased his sword as his legs nearly buckled and pummeled into him as he missed the throat of a pillar of shadow that formed Malik.

Snarling, Garrik jammed his hand forward, eliciting a weaponized air wave, mystifying the male.

And by a harsh curse, he relished the feel of his thrumming veins as he envisioned Malik’s eyes widening—just as they had in Galdheir that morning.

Relished that violent delight before Malik’s life in that annulus was nothing more than a memory.

If only, for tonight, he could simply eviscerate today’s memory … then their voices would stop. Everything would be back to … normal?

He could have laughed— did.

What was normal ?

The way he suffered in silence around the firesite while his family laughed, plagued by the screaming in his mind, locked deep in the spiraling walls and staircase of his adulterated prison of pain?

Was it normal when he illusioned his wrists and ankles, concealing the shackle marks marring his flesh even when he was alone because he could not stomach the sight of his own skin?

Normal like hiding the handprints on his neck, the bruises on his ribs, the open wounds on his abdomen and inner thighs when he returned from Galdheir, precisely as he did in that annulus because the mere thought of looking down would have him scouting out the nearest cliff to throw himself over?

Garrik sucked in a ragged breath through his teeth as he drove his blade through the short form of Smokeshadows depicting Brennus. Normal wasn’t his to reach for anymore.

The darkness that knew him to his core dissipated in whorls until they disintegrated into the dirt, but he barely registered this death.

Because it was not Brennus’s death he was ravenous for.

No. Not his.

As those hidden bruises and open wounds thrummed to the rhythm of his dying heartbeat, another shadow crept behind him like a beast stalking its prey.

Something like a lover’s caress whispered across the front of his neck. He swallowed against it.

Then, it tightened. Pressing phantom fingertips into the arteries and constricting his airway until the borders of his mind blurred. He forced his gaze over his shoulder to find?—

Nothing.

There was no mistaking it, though. That possessive, cold presence was there. He would never err that touch. Never lived a day without feeling it haunting his steps. Hungry for his attention. Preventing him from tearing his eyes away. Claiming him as she had mere hours before.

Garrik slammed his eyes shut and ordered his shadows to form. If he could not force the invisible hands away, he would create them. Then, devour them whole.

Twisting in the darkness’ grip, Garrik swung his blade, but the figure was quick on his scheme. Staring into those eyes made of shadows, devoid of any light, maybe he imagined it, but a mixture of desire and hunger swirled. She grinned in the same way she did in her bedchamber.

He did not flinch. Did not quiver or balk as silver rings glistened in the moonlight when he sought security from his sword by crushing it in his grip.

For a moment, he did not breathe. Garrik clenched his jaw so tight he thought it might seal into place. But he was not moving. Was not fighting. Allowing the demons of his mind to slither in?—

I’ve missed you, p ? —

Steel whistled as it sliced the midnight air.

Like Firekeeper-filled- hell would he yield to her again tonight.

If his skin was not a perfect mirror of the icy depths of an eternal winter, then perhaps the metal of his blade would gleam an angry crimson hue, but it remained frigid.

His movements were a relentless rhythm that echoed through the annulus into the surrounding trees.

Each strike exacting deliberate, controlled chaos that she perfectly evaded.

Kill her. Fucking kill her. Make his pain go away. Anything— anything.

Garrik’s eyes—his infernal, abyss-like eyes—darkened, masking the annulus in a grayscale. Teeth cut like shattered glass formed in his mouth, and the skin of his face sharpened as his veins branched into tracks of black ink.

His Smokeshadows must have felt it. That unconquerable animalistic rage. Noticed his slipping of control as if he truly could not decipher if those tendrils were real or not.

An enemy to be annihilated. In one moment, his serpent was taunting him, dodging every attempt at running her through, and the next … his sword plunged deep, deep, deeper into her skull—spine and heart—clear to the entrails before he ripped it out through the entire length of her body.

With that final strike, he stared at the way darkness curled in the torchlight.

The whorls dissipated across the grass as Garrik imagined the gut-wrecking pops were bones snapping.

Imagined the squelch of blood beneath his boots as he walked to her lifeless two halves on the ground.

In those eyes made of shadows, he pictured them entirely inanimate as he would, if given the chance, tower over her corpse and rip out her heart before she hit the ground.

But instead, it was only shadow. Swirling their final remains into the night sky until they were nothing but a memory.

If only she were a memory.

He was not certain how he was still standing, still conscious. Every limb and muscle had turned sluggish, utterly exhausted and aching, but Garrik managed to sheath his swords.

Part of him was not there as he scooped up his tunic from a fallen tree.

Perhaps the part of him that never returned after he left her starsdamned bedchamber.

Perhaps the part that pulled himself out of his unwanted releases and blood staining her sheets before he dawned from those chains that enslaved him to her bed when his magic returned.

And now, as his hand fell to his thigh and he tilted his face to the stars searching for an answer they would deny, all he could think was he deserved … this. Every part of it. For everything he had done.

Make me forget, Garrik closed his burning eyes and silently pleaded. For one fleeting moment. Make me forget, please.

The stars did not answer.