Page 23 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

Those enchanting eyes remained closed. Her cheek pressed into his bicep, as she curled her knees in the space between them and bent her arm so her loose fists framed her face.

Stars, no. In that moment, he did not need the Stars Eternal dream because everything in his was peacefully sleeping on him.

Alora… My dream.

No. Not his anything. But for a moment … this moment …

And he wondered as she trembled if his icy skin unbalanced the burning of hers. Perhaps tamed it. With a single thought, Smokeshadows feathered above her, braiding across her body, draping a blanket over her. Her tremors ceased, but he could not remove his gaze from her face.

One eyelid was visible, the other buried in his tunic sleeve. Loose strands of star-white hair tickled her face.

Garrik tucked them behind her ear, causing her mouth to twitch upward. In her sleep, Alora nuzzled closer. Not much, but enough that he felt her warmth without any other point of contact.

His fingers brushed from her temple to her cheek. So slowly, so carefully, not to wake her. Down her neck and to her shoulder, tender whispers of his fingertips as he imagined her doing to him. A comforting touch. Gentle. Something she had rarely received.

Could she feel it?

In her sleep, could she feel his unspoken words?

How he cared for her so deeply, he did not understand it.

That primal need to drown the world around them until it was only her in existence.

That the only sound he wished to hear was her voice beyond a smile as bright as starlight.

The only thing to eclipse the sun was her white hair, and to look upon it would prove fatal to his dying heart.

That the only color he would ever care to see was found in a pair of bright blue eyes.

He never realized colors would mean so much to him.

Not until his own was stolen and everything once vibrant and bright was replaced as lifeless, dull, and gray.

Insignificant. Unappealing. Never realized he would care about a prismscale until looking into a pair of sapphire eyes—or wishing to see them now but choosing to not disturb her because that perfect, solemn sleep was more important than returning to camp to rest before dawn.

More important than leaving for Alynthia.

There was no rushing for something he wished would last forever.

No rush because, for once in his starsdamned worthless life, forever was right there. In his arms. Bringing color and meaning and life back to his eyes to where he could almost imagine them returned to green.

For Alora … he wished they would.

Maybe that once simple, meaningless color would coax her cruel memories to fracture.

That she would offer a smile at his coloring like she had begun to in recent weeks as she watched grasslilies sway or studied the mossy veins of jadestone.

How she marveled at water spirits’ wings, fluttering like translucent clover flames dancing in the breeze.

Elated when her fingertips traced viridian filigrees on leather tomes or captured the glinting emeralds on the ring of his mother’s he wore.

No mourning willow or towering pine went unnoticed; their leaves a thing of beauty.

Even the putrid stench of bioluminescent algae, though a vile thing, inspired visions of redemption and renewal.

Dusk: a masterpiece of ivy, mint, and seafoam melting across the horizon. Nightfall: a symphony of unending verdant auroras ribboning through the darkened sky.

He had never stared at a green gradient for so long, only when it was her eyes as the looking glass. Garrik had never found perfection in it like she did. Such a … trivial thing. But to her, even if she did not realize it … meant more than just something that he wanted to study it too.

He always noticed. Started looking for it—the moment when that color would brighten her eyes with wonder. With joy. A joy he wished he could bottle and unleash the very second she needed it. When her past haunted her. When she encountered a staircase and discovered his eyes?—

Starsdamnit… If only they would return to green.

If only he could glimpse that very same awe and enchantment when she looked into them, then perhaps he would not feel like the demon he was famed. Maybe he could be glimpsed as even a grain’s worth of the masterpiece she turned every little thing into.

Perhaps he would dawn her a collection of deep-sea coral from the reefs in his mother’s oceans. The ones rumored to house underwater fae with fishtails. The formations that mirrored his corrupted pigment …

He longed to tell her about them. About how everything— everything— became different around her. Because of her. How his world, for a fleeting, unpromised moment, changed.

But Garrik only tugged Alora’s blanket higher and draped his elbow on his hip, crinkling the parchment in his pocket—the birthday gift of song lyrics she had composed for him—and searched her face. Her stunning, enrapturing, bewitching face. Mesmerized by every flawless inch.

Safe. She was safe.

He was, too.

A peace swept over him. Today—his birthday. The first one he was truly safe.

For once since he could remember, he was not wholly terrified to close his eyes. But he did not allow them to seal for long. Not when Alora was sleeping soundly on him, unafraid of the monster he was Made to be.

Garrik opened them and thought of something far better than rest. Utterly mesmerized, he began counting until sleep threatened to take him to that dark, damning place.

Who would have known that a number could mean so much, too?

From the one eye he could see; the number of her eyelashes.

One hundred and forty-two.