Page 25 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

‘ I know you do not enjoy celebrating your birthday. But I hope this one was different. Even just a little… Happy Birthday, Your Highness.’ Alora pushed up on her toes.

Without hesitation, he leaned down to meet her when her lips pressed against his cheek. His eyes fluttered shut, savoring the feeling of her warmth before she pulled away.

‘Don’t forget. You survived every nightmare so far, real and those that still torment you. Don’t let them win.’

Garrik held the neck of a bottle to his lips, allowing the amber liquid to wash him further into oblivion. Slowly, the drink washed into his consciousness and wrapped him in a guilt-ridden vise that did nothing to keep him from falling apart.

Where are you?

He was breaking. Swallowed by the pain of the memory.The one repeated every year with the same faces. The same names.

They should have remained on that hillside.

How, instead of the forest, he could be resting in the grass, watching Alora point at bursts of prismed magic in the night sky and decipher the shapes they resembled.

Stars, he wished he could see her face now.

Illuminated by shades of navy and emerald and violet.

Watch her stunning eyes widen with every eruption and marvel at the lightshow that would never compare to the glowing sapphire of her eyes.

Why didn’t he just … stay?

The welcoming sting of liquid burned his throat, swallowing deep until it emptied. And on a Smokeshadow wind, another appeared in its place.

Garrik touched it to his lips and accepted its offering to dull his pain, but it did nothing to comfort him. Did nothing to keep them away. The nightmares.

It usually kept them away…

Kept … her away.

Why wasn’t it keeping them away?

Where are you?

Again, he ignored that voice—that plea.

He refused to ignite torches tonight. No. Tonight, the darkness would be his only companion. No one else deserved to be dragged into the hollow echoes Garrik’s mind forced him to relive. Again and again. It never ended.

He needed it to end.

Garrik reclined against a tall pine in the forest far outside camp, where he had dawned after watching Alora pluck a book from her new bookshelves and settle beside the warmth of their firesite’s flames.

It was too much; the celebrations honoring his birthday. They continued into the clear night, but he needed to escape. All day he had needed to.

Being surrounded by fae and soldiers—his Mystics—felt too similar to the prison he had suffered for thirty years—and the seventeen Blood Years after that. Playing the pretender. That happy High Prince, who they thought deserved another turn on Elysian.

If they only knew that the day they were celebrating was the day he had pleaded the most for death.

She made certain of it—called it a cause to celebrate. For her to impart an oh-so-gracious gift.

No. While his Dragons danced around their fires stacked high into the night sky.

While his shield allowed them a night of frivolity and carelessness under his and his magic’s careful watch, the only gift he wished for was the soundless darkness six feet below him.

For the memories to eddy from existence.

Stars burn him. Thalon was right. He was breaking.

Thalon had fumed at his unwillingness to admit it, and his nearly healed, busted lip—and being locked inside Aiden’s cell on his ship after he lost control—was evidence.

But they could not see. He would not allow them to see. They didn’t deserve to be crushed under his burdens.

Another bottle.

Then another.

Nine more until his Smokeshadows refused him, knowing how dangerously close he teetered on the edge of unconsciousness.

Glass shattered and rained glistening shards when he hurled a bottle at a tree.

Peace. He just wanted peace .

Everything pulled at him. Everything touched him with phantom hands.

Even the air he breathed was too much for his lungs.

The air felt too warm when confronted with the permanent chill housed in his body.

It clashed and clawed its way out of him with every breath, as if the very air surrounding him rejected his right to breathe.

He could not stand the feeling of his own tunic against his rigid scars.

So, his frantic fingers scratched along the fabric, finding every button and popping them open.

He could not endure it. That every brush of the fabric, today and every day, reminded him of her. What she had done for thirty years.

Reminded him of her touch in his dungeon the day before.

And the day before that.

Three torturous days serving at Magnelis’s feet only to kneel at hers?—

Where are you?

Garrik ripped a dagger from his belt. The sharpened edges filtered in and out of view as he tried to focus, but failed. With a quick shake of his head and an unsteady hand, he threw it at the oak tree not far ahead.

A miss.

Wind danced leaves around his boots, but the way they curled and coiled and twisted seized Garrik’s attention.

Their autumn colors appeared like the scales of a serpent in the midnight moonlight.

But he could not draw his wavering stare away from how they seemed to slither.

How the scrape of their dried edges resembled the caveat rattle of a hollowfang prepared to strike.

Dangerous. Deadly.

A warning?—

That iron should be lodged in your skull, his mind snickered, and any semblance of strength he had remaining was gone. Only, it was not his voice he heard.

Covered in obsidian clothing and endless abyss in her eyes, his serpent cooed as she always had on this day for thirty years, Come now, pet. Everyone deserves to be fucked on their birthday.

For a long, dying heartbeat, his silvers played tricks on him. Misleading his vision as he slammed his eyes shut, only to crack them to hallucinate the shadows between the trees shifting.

Across the darkened forest and trees ahead of his swirling gaze, an onyx dress and silver-snaked heels parted the slithering whorls within them.

Garrik made to stand, to reach for another dagger, but only a shiver of movement answered.

Powerless—utterly powerless —he growled at that shadow with soft fury, “ Do not touch me .” But it only cut as a slurred murmur.

A branch snapped, as if his words were easily ignored, accentuating his flinching heartbeat as calculated, soundless steps ambled toward him.That figure—that infernal creature—knelt by his feet.

The haunting scrape of ombré-colored, daggered nails prowled up his legs.Hands invaded like a poison seeping into his veins.

Then a voice like cold, torturous death drawled amidst the trees. Happy birthday, my pet.

Garrik gritted his teeth and fought to keep his eyes from falling shut. Stay awake. You have to stay awake or she’ll… He pushed the image anywhere it would go on a surge of whatever power remained inside him. Unleashed it from his mind through the trees and around every creeping thing.

It soared through the sky, to the stars, and far beyond. Echoing as if searching for salvation. Wishing. Hoping. Pleading for anything to grab hold and rescue him from the hellstorm he was plummeting into.

Where are you, starsdamnit?

Shadows whirled around his face and hands, desperately pulling at his ice-fevered skin and coaxing him from the bourbon-induced memory. Pleading with him to realize she was only an illusion.

A memory couldn’t really hurt him …

Except it was.

And he could feel the icy sting of her fingertips as his serpent’s hand found his belt and traced the leather, claiming him with every scratch of her claws as she trailed them over the belt loops.

Until she made his buckle her new home. Teasing as her other hand roamed his abdomen.

Sharpened nails ravenously—painfully—pierced into his scars and produced shades of crimson flowing from the wounds.

As she declared his flesh as her property, her toy, her smile contorted to something serpentine. Then her cold command, Scream for me.

“No.” Garrik’s eyes faded to inky black. Damning. Lethal.His face paled.

Viper-like darkness wrapped around his wrists, forcing his hands behind him and trapping them against the coarse surface of the tree. Chains he was hopeless to break. Filled with stolen dreams and horrifying nightmares that tendriled around him and climbed up, up, up to his neck.

They squeezed, forcing him to extend his neck. His throat working against the magic that claimed him as her nails pressed deeper, ripping beastly gouges down layers of his skin.Strangled gasps clawed from his lungs, begging for air that would not come.

“Release me.” The words laced with authority and warning. It was enough of a threat that the forest became veiled in silence. Enough to cover the terror in his voice and the tremble in his bones.

A shadow moved, prowling around his legs like the gradual wave of his mother’s seas. A taunting murmur. A warning that coiled up his thigh, his hip, and did not stop until it reached his lips.

Powerless, Garrik could not utter another word as that shadow transformed into a thumb, stroking him mollifyingly as that same voice in his nightmares called out again.

You know you cannot order me. Now …

Garrik gasped as she raised her hand and stabbed deep, cracking through the cage around his heart. Stabbing that useless beating thing.

The entire forest trembled as she shrieked, Scream for me!

And he did.

By the stars , Garrik did.

From the depths of his gut, Garrik unleashed from the place where the bottomless tortured parts of him decayed. Where the shreds of his very soul were caught in a tangled labyrinth of pain.