Page 17 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

“ Y ou fucking disgrace.” The male who raised him clenched his fists and stormed off his golden throne. The amethyst and rubies on his spiked crown glowed with the same fury raging in his demonical eyes as he stepped onto the first marble stair.

Garrik’s hand was entirely numb, threatening to drop his sword. Every vein stabbed like shards of ice. His bones quivered, drawing attention to every trail and splatter of blood covering his forearms and dripping from his fingertips onto the polished stone floor.

He had only just relieved the poor male—a Marked One, a Mystic—of his head in front of Magnelis’s court after hours of depraved entertainment at his expense.

And now, the male prowled down from his usurped throne. The wrath in his eyes latched onto the blood pouring out from the severed head as if it were an insult.

Because, apparently, it was.

Of course, Garrik fucking knew … Not given the order for the male’s death, he had ended the misery too soon. But the male’s screams … his blood. The soul that would haunt him after …

A pressure speared through his head as Magnelis’s cruel hands clamped his skull ? —

Garrik panted out a breath. He did not remember anything other than waking in his tent with Alora beside him afterward. Did not know what they did to him … his body … while he was lost in darkness.

And now, sitting in his tent, his bruises and scars, her touch, throbbed louder than Thalon pacing in front of him. He could only hope that this memory would not torment him like all the rest.

Garrik’s birthday in Chapter Forty-four should have been a celebration.

But when Alora and Jade saw Thalon storm out of Garrik’s tent, both with injuries they had not possessed when they went inside, confusion rippled through the Shadow Order’s firesite.

What happened inside that tent? What secrets were the males hiding?

There are trigger warnings for both parts of this chapter.