Page 13 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

He was a fool to hope they would. Monsters did not deserve mercy.

Certainly not him. Not with the endless bloodstained faces that haunted him every time his eyes closed.

Those sins he could never pay for. His fate was sealed for endless torment by the voices of ten thousand upon ten thousand demanding justice through the hands of a viper.

Please. A tear swept down his face. Make me forget her, if only for a second.

Again, they did not answer.

Garrik’s hands curled into fists at his sides. He would have trembled if his body were not wound so tight.

The only thing that would answer his shame and misery slithered through the trees.

Oh, pet, sounding kingdoms away, that cruel, infernal voice snickered. Mingling with the ringing in his ears and slicing like talons down his spine. You can never forget me and what we share. I own you.

An icy chill cloaked his body, deep into the depths of his soul. Immense pain spread through his abdomen like daggered hands were clawing into him. It spread through his freezing body like a wildfire. A constant burn that never warmed him and would turn his lungs to ash the moment he screamed.

Let me help you, pet. Come to me, I will take your pain away.

A quiet, fractured sound escaped him. His breath turned ragged. Chest constricting.

What was mere seconds since he tilted his head to the sky seemed like an eternity as Garrik’s eyes fluttered open against his will. His vision blurred as those towering pines morphed into the stone walls of her bedchamber.

That vile creature contorted, beckoning him to fall to his knees and submit until all he could see were those black, ravenous eyes, and all he could hear was the echo of twisted laughter as the weight of invisible chains settled on his wrists.

You are not back there. You are not back there. You are not ? —

The air thickened until his lungs could no longer expand. Phantom hands crept down his bare skin, pulling at his belt until he no longer believed he was in an annulus. It swallowed him whole. Suffocated him with poisonous air. Dragged him backward?—

Fight this. She is not here!

—inside that bedchamber, making his legs falter when they met the cold bed frame.

No—NO. Please ? —

A breath whispered across the annulus.

One simple breath that cut through the air like a falling star, obliterating that bedchamber. Carrying the unseen, wicked hands along with it.

Then he felt it—a subtle shift in the air, the faintest murmur of … a presence.

He would know the sound of that breath even if he were deaf and dying.

Because as he lay in damp and moldering dungeons, clinging to his pathetic life as his own breaths became few.

While his blood painted the walls and stone floors and clothing of his torturers beneath the foundation of Galdheir …

it was her breath and voice alone that kept him from entirely breaking.

Alora.

Listening, Garrik suffered an inhale of his own. Strangled. Warring for control and mirroring hers as if she taught him how to breathe without knowledge of it.

One. Two. Then three. He counted until it was only her breaths filling his mind, allowing it to center him. To remind him he was not at the castle under her , alone.

And slowly, his breathing steadied, and he opened his eyes; the silhouettes of the trees feathered into focus.

One. The tremble in his abdomen lessened.

Two. The pain in his chest eased.

Burning stars. His pitiful state hit him like a fatal blow.

The colossal lack of judgment in being unaware of his surroundings.

In choosing to not be aware. Him—the fucking High Prince— gray-haired demon of Elysian — had allowed himself to be spied on.

Too fucked up to follow his own rules of knowing every minuscule movement and twitch and empty space around him.

So much for his impeccable attention.

He never permitted his control, his awareness, to slip so easily. By the fucking skies, she could have been a Raven—or worse, the male who raised him. How could he be so irrevocably careless? So reckless?

But even as anger and shame threatened to consume him, he could not bring himself to let it fester and grow.

If she had not been there … what would have become of him? Though he hated to admit it, that simple breath was his salvation. And he was not ready to throw himself back into the damning pits of his soundless tent just yet.

And suddenly, he felt himself drawn to remaining in that annulus—unable to stop himself from seeking her out.

Needing to be closer— much closer—no matter how much his mind reprimanded him for doing so.

No matter how much Thalon’s voice raged, warning him to stay away.

No matter the reminder of Aiden, Jade, and Eldacar pinning him down until serpent darkness stopped consuming him and he could listen to reason.

But Thalon was not here. None of them were.

And Alora was not a Lady of Telldaira locked in her betrothed’s mansion. Nothing was endangering her now.

Nothing but him…

The weight of her glowing sapphires pressed on him like a castle crumbling down.

Garrik acted before he could convince himself otherwise. With a thought, Smokeshadows snuffed out torches, leaving a few casting the annulus in low light. With his shoulder to Alora, the grass beneath his boots shifted as he stalked to the tree line and slipped inside.

Then waited.

A smirk crept up his face as he wedged his shoulder against a tree, crossing an ankle over the other, and he leaned into it, then dropped one sword and his tunic in the moss below.

Clever girl. Thinking she had gone unnoticed. She almost had. If not for the fact that he needed her to hate him, perhaps he would praise her for it.

Garrik folded his arms across his chest and rubbed his chin to stifle his grin, amused by how she defied his orders. While Jade slept soundly in their tent. While his entire Dragons’ encampment slumbered save for his sentries, who would be reprimanded come morning, she was here.

She had played a cunning little game with him in his tent the morning he rescued her from Telldaira. Little did she know she was about to play his.

How did you slip past my sentries and my senses? Twice, he mused but quickly sliced his focus on the way her muscles bunched, clinging to the tree.

Alora’s breath stuttered. She bit her cheek as if to distract herself from breathing too heavily for fear he would find her out.

Too late. The slight tremble in her body proved how hard she tried to keep from moving.

The tiny shift of her hips. The way she bit that starsdamned lip thinking about when it was safe enough to?—

There it is. He darkly chuckled.

That single thought that he was gone. That she was safe enough to turn back to camp?—

His boot clamped down on a branch, eliciting a snap. The distance between them was so small, a few strides at most, but he turned into smoke and wind and shadow. Braiding into existence behind her and prepared for the moment?—

Alora whirled, illuminated in an amber glow as the wind peppered him with the wintry scent of her hair, in time for the sharpened edge of his sword to glide from his sheath.

The soft flesh of her neck met cold steel in the torchlight.

“Thought you would go for another stroll, clever girl?” he rumbled, low and dangerous. Amused, he slipped on the mask of Elysian’s deadliest predator.

She froze, and he could not steal his attention from the way she swallowed against his blade.

Darkness coiled around Garrik’s shoulders as he leaned forward into the light.

The breeze shifted through the trees, and he caught the way she took in the scent of his hair, or the taste of vanilla and oak that carried from his lips.

His mouth twisted, brightening the amused hunger in his eyes like a beast who had caught his prey in a chase only he could win.

“Maybe I should double your guard. But then again, it would not make for such”—he bit his bottom lip—“ pleasurable interruptions to my night.”

Instead of retreating, she glared up at him, meeting his stare, unyielding, and with a sharp wince, leaned forward to push against his blade.

Though her bravery brought a warmth to his veins he had not felt in decades, Garrik gritted his teeth and suppressed the urge to growl at the trickle of blood down her neck.

This game was not meant to harm her—just to make her hate him a little more.

Despite it, his lips pulled into a wicked grin at her next word.

“Prick.” Her eyes lit with embers.

Excitement gleamed in his.

Fuck. That mouth. The urge to groan was hard to deny.

Why did he find this, from her, especially appealing? Delighting in her defiance. Marveling in her sheer boldness when none other dared to speak to him that way?—

A haunting chuckle, far more sinister than he meant it to be, escaped his lips.

Garrik controlled his blade to remain perfectly still and leaned forward until he could nearly kiss her with every word.

“Hiding in the shadows,” he drawled the words, testing them on his lips and growling his tone so thoroughly it pebbled her flesh.

Then said, “Careful. You should know by now that you cannot hide from me. Especially with them watching.” Like they were in on his schemes, Smokeshadows swirled in whorls.

They cascaded from his bare shoulders, tendriled around his glistening torso and steely arms, and writhed around his boots. His to command.

And by the skies, again those eyes gleamed. No terror awaited there— none. Her eyes danced with a refreshing stab of defiance, and he waited—prepared for that split-second reaction that she would drive her palm to his face before he would snatch it. But it never came.