Page 27 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

All lucidity faded as his drunken thoughts hit him like a damning blow. He opened his mouth, but all that spilled was, “I died—I should have remained dead. Met Firekeeper. Why did she keep bringing me back?”

The look on Thalon’s face could have sobered him.

Then came that tender whisper, “Because we love you, Garrik.”

Garrik’s heart clenched. Actually clenched.

Thalon held his stare; something like holy fire flickered in that golden gaze.

Garrik was helpless to weather it as his brother urged, “Maker of the Skies knew that. The stars knew. If you were gone…” A choked breath escaped him.

Relentless tears flooded that dark face, but Thalon ignored them and continued, “We would have stormed the gates of the Stars Eternal to get you back. Don’t you understand that? You’re our family. ”

When Garrik said nothing, Thalon leaned down and motioned with a tattooed hand. “Put your arm around my shoulder.”

Garrik scoffed. “Love?” His boots scuffed against the dirt as he batted his brother’s hand away. “I slaughtered your family. I do not deserve love .”

It seemed Thalon did not accept the refusal. Instead, he banded Garrik’s arm around his shoulder; the High Prince winced when it stretched his still-tender ribs.

With one hand gripping Garrik’s palm and the other around his lower back, Thalon lifted them to their feet. His usually gracious face stern as he said, “No, Garrik. You didn’t.”

Silver eyes blinked fiercely until his vision narrowed on a string of golden beads strung on a single braid dangling from Thalon’s head. His eyes flicked to the tattoo marked on Thalon’s chest. “Everlyn. Koen. They are gone, I killed them.”

Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.

If not for Thalon holding him, he would have fallen. Clear through the dirt to the deepest burning pits reserved for him.

Thalon blew out a breath. “ She did that to you. She killed them.” His grip tightened. Thalon suffered a step forward, dragging Garrik’s feet across the dirt because he was too far gone to do it himself. “Do you hear me? It was not you .”

His chin met his chest. Stars, his eyes felt weighed down by boulders as they sealed. When they surfaced, when he could barely determine the sound of their steps, he breathed, “Leave me.” Let him die there. He was ready.

“Do not ask that of me again. I will never leave you. I don’t care if you have me punished for it.”

What remained of Garrik’s strength faltered, and he buckled on Thalon’s shoulders. When his knees gave out … surely Thalon would let him fall. And fall and fall and fall.

But that grip tightened. Thunderstorms and swirling lightning manifested.

The glow of a firesite cast flickering light across the short distance between them, weaving between the destroyed trees.

He heard a voice. A beautiful, soothing voice.

And suddenly his desire to die there on that forest floor ebbed away.

“Tell Alora…” he began, not entirely certain his mouth was moving.

Maybe he imagined it. “Tell her I—” It was hopeless to finish as his words trailed off in a mumble.

Hopeless as darkness swept from the borders of his mind like ink in water, fading her face into the abyss.

And the last thing he heard before withering to that place his nightmares reigned was Thalon’s relieved sigh chased by, “Thank Maker of the Skies you’ll forget this in the morning.”

Thalon cradled the back of Garrik’s head, his fingers tangled in sweat-damp hair as he lowered him to the bed.

The tent was too quiet—too still. Garrik’s breaths were shallow, each one taken by the strongest male he knew …

who’d given up. Thalon swallowed hard, pressing his forehead to his brother’s for a moment, as if willing strength into him. “Stay with me,” he whispered. “Please.”

He tried not to think about how slow Garrik’s heartbeat had become over time.

How dangerously slow. Yet Garrik seemed to have mastered each skip, every flinch, and painful prick despite the state it left him in.

At that moment, Thalon not only thanked Maker of the Skies for that mercy, but also that Garrik was safe for the night.

That his body could at the very least rest and regain his strength come dawn.

Even in Garrik’s tent, his brother safe , he still couldn’t quell the lingering ache in his chest. The insurmountable rage and deep desire to slaughter. Garrik may not have known it, but the moment Thalon had stepped through his portal, his mind magic had struck him like a solid wall of granite.

Thalon had seen … everything.

Everything Garrik was imagining. To the point Thalon saw crimson and almost sank his familial blade into the viper. Thinking she was there. Seeing what she was doing to him.

Thalon’s fist trembled at his side as he drew his inked knuckles so terribly taut they discolored.

Against the canvas, shadows of their sentries patrolling danced in the flickering glow of firesites as he stepped to the foot of the bed and began unlacing Garrik’s boots.

Doing this minor thing now because he couldn’t help him so many years ago—when he was forbidden to do a thing.

Thalon fought the urge to curse that command, but instead, one by one, pulled Garrik’s boot from his heel and off his feet before he settled them on the floor.

It would have to do for the night. Garrik wouldn’t want his clothing tended to. Wouldn’t want to be subjected to more touch, even unconscious, and Thalon wouldn’t undress him without Garrik’s consent. He’d make certain to change the filthy bedding in the morning.

Pausing at the foot of the bed, Thalon scanned his High Prince lying there as he had the night before—when Nevilier had spat him out of his portal like he was nothing more than a heap of spoiled meat to be discarded.

Thalon could not stop the memories invading.

And just as then, he couldn’t do much more than stand there and watch over Garrik until he awoke.

The bruises, the damn handprints, on his neck were gone now, but the memory remained. He’d seen those too—unsure if they were from Magnelis or … her —and had covered Garrik with the collar of his battle leathers so no one else would see.

But he always saw.

Always.

And he had vowed on his every last Earned to be there for Garrik when the castle left him with new nightmares he’d never discuss.

That’s why he did what he did in Garrik’s tent earlier…

Why he couldn’t allow Garrik to suffer alone after seeing his nightmares reign while he sat in his chair… Why he’d pushed the fight.

Unleash Michael on them all. Thalon sealed his eyes and allowed wrath to flow through his Guardian veins.

He’d call upon his entire House—the entirety of Tarrent-Garren Keep—and wage an apocalyptic war on every hand that harmed his brother.

Brimstoned vengeance melted deeper in his soul than the forges of gold in his territories’ mountain, and hotter than that precious metal could ever boil.

He could nearly hear it now; the sound Garrik’s body made as it hit the meadow floor.

His lifeless body. How he’d heard and seen the same horrors decades past in the torture chambers of Galdheir.

But he’d only been on the outside… His memories were nothing compared to what Garrik had endured and suffered.

What he lived with, haunting him every moment of every day.

Because of that, Thalon never faulted Garrik for these drunken nights. He’d face damnation before ever casting judgment for the way Garrik survived. Thalon would always carry him home in the hope that someday … the Garrik they all knew would return. That … that he would smile again.

Live again …

He’d seen more life in the eyes of corpses lining battlefields.

Something wet slipped down Thalon’s cheek. He wasn’t ashamed when it trailed down his neck and burrowed under the leather of his vest and white tunic. Wasn’t ashamed as the next followed. And the next. A parade of anguish for his brother held captive by chains he wouldn’t allow them to see.

Thalon sat on the edge of Garrik’s bed and dropped his elbows to his knees, his face to his palms. His chest caved in as he said to the silence, “I don’t know what else to do.”

Somehow, speaking it aloud… Hurt worse than losing his honor. His Earned. Hurt worse than being damned for all eternity.

There was nothing he could do. Life had been ripped from Garrik five decades past. Never returned to him. And each day Thalon was forced to watch as the tormented, lifeless parts of him bled out until one day there would be nothing left and Garrik suffered his final breath.

And he could do nothing !

Powerless— powerless!

Shadows coiled around his defeated shoulders.

Draped around him until he mistook them for another’s arm embracing him.

The … same way Everlyn used to hold him.

The way he used to cradle her in the nights, where it was only sorrow and savage thoughts of bloodshed to get Garrik out.

When they couldn’t do anything more than pray and hope and obey as their stomachs churned at the smell of his blood pounding at the underground doors below the castle.

When they were ordered to stand guard over the prisoners.

When they were forced to hear Garrik’s screams.

An ache wrapped around his Guardian heart and squeezed.

He couldn’t stop himself from twisting around and dropping his face to Garrik’s neck, from cradling him with his arms, a palm to the back of Garrik’s sweat-drenched head, as emotion clawed out from his chest. In the silence of his High Prince’s tent, Thalon made a wet sound in his throat.

Strangled. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help him, Everlyn.

She had always held the answers. A better warrior than him. Far more strong-headed and from the ancestral House of healers in minds and bodies. She would know what to do.