Page 35 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

T halon’s eyelids fluttered as a decrepit room came into view. Dragging him slowly through a fog of an awful pain pounding his temple and a heavy ache through most of the surface of his body.

Warmth, unlike the battle-black leathers he wore, wrapped around him like a thick, smothering blanket as rays of sunlight burst through the shattered glass of three windows framed by aged stone.

Which was … strange … considering his last thoughts were of falling down a mountain buried beneath a blizzard of snow.

And that rock …

Unleash Michael. That starsdamned rock …

Stifling a suffering groan, Thalon prepared to draw his fingers to his throbbing temple, but the movement was denied.

It was then he identified that his arms were crisscrossed over his chest while his left shoulder dug into the dirt impersonating a floor, trapping his fingers between his leathered sides and biceps.

At least it was warm; the fire not five paces from him had already surrendered to embers and ash.

Next, he wiggled his numb toes, pleased to know his socks and boots were dry.

He hadn’t fallen into the lake but instead wound up here—wherever here was.

And in that alarming thought, it became clear he needed to find that particular detail out.

How did he get there? Where were his friends? Who had made it down from Fourtress?

Who was dea— no . He refused that thought as much as the stiffness in his joints.

He couldn’t lie there any longer. Not when they were out there somewhere, wounded for all he knew. So, with a grunt, attempting to stretch and bracing for every bone to protest with the slightest movement, Thalon slightly shifted?—

Only to find something solid pressed against his back.

Something breathing… A distinctly male- something breathing.

Directly against the nape of his neck.

A horrifying realization slowly crept in as a very familiar scent whirled around him, heavy with the scent of the sea, unwashed sweat…

Stars. No.

Aiden.

Mortified, Thalon went wholly rigid. Not daring to move an inch as the male’s breathing behind him— against him —stuttered.

Thalon stiffened even more , if at all possible.

He twisted his neck, throwing a glance over his leathered shoulder to witness the absolute horror of a position he woke up in.

Aiden was curled up behind him, his mermaid-tattooed arm draped over Thalon’s hip, banded around his waist …

spooning him like an oversized, homely castle cat.

And to make matters worse, a clothed muscular leg was hooked over his own, another laced between his knees, as if they were bonded lovers?—

No.

No!

No, no, no, n ? —

Something shifted outside the open threshold, its doorway long gone, crunching snow beneath light footsteps and spotlighting the nightmarish scenario he prayed was only a hallucination but knew wasn’t.

Aiden, who most certainly was not sleeping anymore, must have felt his panic. As soon as Thalon so much as twitched—to run—to shift away—to get as far from him as possible—those half-human arms tightened around his waist, locking Thalon in place.

A breath tickled his ear. He felt Aiden’s mouth curve upward. “Ever wake up next to a handsome devil?” came that sleep-heavy, rough morning voice.

Thalon snarled at the taunt as a figure darkened the doorway, curled his fingers around the rolled white sleeve on his brother’s arm, and pushed to no avail.

How in Firekeeper-filled-hell ? —

“Don’t you two look cozy.” A slow, smug grin crept up Jade’s face as she leaned against the doorway and unwrapped her red cloak from her shoulders, shaking out water droplets with a snap .

Of course—of course— he would be caught in such a position. And by Aiden’s wiggling, closing any speck of distance between them and burrowing into his neck, he no doubt was pleasuring in Thalon’s torment.

“No— no! ” Thalon objected, attempting to detach Aiden, but somehow the halfbreed had acquired considerable fae strength overnight. The rock—his head—he’d blame his loss of fortitude on that… “This is … we’re not…”

Jade chuckled like she was in on Aiden’s scheme.

He growled in her direction, “ You left me here with him ?”

Her smirk turned positively reptilian. “You looked like you were having a moment,” she shrugged, “didn’t want to interrupt wherever that was going.”

Thalon opened his mouth, stirring with a slew of profanities and objections, but it was Aiden who cooed, “Where exactly is this going, Thally?” And nuzzled his face between Thalon’s shoulder blades as if fluffing his pillow for a long night’s sleep.

Staring at the ceiling in search of salvation, Thalon called on every one of his last Earned for strength not to strangle him and suffered a deep, steadying breath. “ Don’t call me that,” he snapped. “Now let me go .”

“Mmm,” Aiden hummed but didn’t move. “Alin?”

“Do not?—”

“Lin-y-pie?”

“You have three seconds to release me, or I’ll shove my sword so far up your ass?—”

“Oh, kinky .”

Thalon paused. His face betrayed nothing as he hauntingly turned to meet Aiden’s smiling face.

It quickly fell. “Oh—oh no. Wait— wait ! We can talk about this … we can talk about th —” Aiden shrieked louder than a startled goat as whatever forces had stolen Thalon’s strength severed their hold.

Thalon roared and shoved his elbow into Aiden’s ribs, hard, and twisted in his arms the moment they loosened.

With no technique whatsoever, Thalon unleashed a storm of kicks, knees, and slaps in the most undignified fight in Elysian history.

Rendering Aiden utterly helpless and displaying nothing akin to the lethal, highly trained, fully grown warrior his Keep raised him to be, as Aiden shrieked and shrieked and shrieked.

“Stop smacking me!”

“Oh, I’m sorry .” Void of any remorse, Thalon swung an open palm again, not bothering with actual combat tactics. “I meant to hit your face.”

“ That is my face ,” Aiden screeched and swung his palm, landing it for the first time on the back of Thalon’s head, clacking his Earned together. His eyes widened. “ No ! I didn’t mean to— I DIDN’T MEAN ?—”

A high-pitched scream stabbed the air around them as Aiden cried out, flailing his limbs in a pathetic attempt to defend himself as Thalon locked his thumbs and forefingers on Aiden’s nipples, latching onto the piercings he felt underneath his white shirt and twisted.

Thalon was happy to hold him there under his torture until the back of his leathers were ripped at his neck, choking him and dragging him backward, grappling for a handhold on the dirt floor.

“I don’t care what idiotic male bonding ritual you morons are doing,” Jade snapped her arm, releasing Thalon on his hip, “but knock it the fuck off before you open your damned wound and I have to explain to Garrik why his general suffered more of a brain injury than the one he was born with.”

Bracing himself on his elbow, Thalon furrowed his brows enough that he noticed a velvety material on his forehead still pounding like the forges in Tarrent-Garren. His fingers scraped over it—a bandage of some sorts—and ignoring Jade’s insult, argued up at her, “We’re not bond ?—”

“Shut up,” she snapped, pointing at his lips with a dagger now poised in her hand.

Then waved it like the threat it was as she said, “I’ve reached my limit on babysitting overgrown faelings and want to go home.

To my tent. In my warm bed. Where I’m not forced to sleep in the fucking cold all night. ”

Aiden, having fallen onto his back, heaving breaths while he rubbed his abused chest, managed a pained grin and drawled, “If I remember correctly, I do believe I mentioned a little something about sharing warmth.” And gestured between the three of them, waggling his brows before Thalon launched a dirt clod at him like the very overgrown faelings Jade coined them as.

She rolled her eyes—for Aiden’s sake or his, he wasn’t so sure. “Not even in your damned dreams,” she growled, mumbling something about disgusting male bodies and that she’d rather freeze to death, before she flattened her back to the stone wall, glaring.

A warm wind blew through the windows, casting flickering patterns of sunlight along the walls as Thalon sat up carefully.

Every movement sent pain lancing through his bones and drew his attention to every abused inch of flesh that had suffered on his fall down the mountain and muscles that over-exerted themselves in his embarrassing display of warfare.

His back muscles protested as he flexed them, still too stiff to deny any sharp winces before he complained, “So you left me as a victim to his horrifying whims?”

A sound of annoyance, then, “ You were freezing”—Jade pointed to him, then swiped her finger toward Aiden—“ he generates heat like dragon’s breath. It was either that or let you meet Maker of the Skies with fucking frostbite.”

Aiden exaggerated a groan and rubbed his shoulder as he rose to his feet. Shamelessly unrepentant as he stretched in front of a window with trees displaying the first signs of spring. “Bloody hells. Save your life, and this is how you offer your thanks?”

Thalon merely blinked, flatly stating, “You spooned me.”

Aiden grinned. “You act as if it weren’t thoroughly effective.” That grin widened. “So, shush that delightful mouth and let me love you.”

Thalon sent him a glare that could kill, cold as the crow-picked corpses lining battlefields he had been unleashed upon. He couldn’t deny it, though. Without Aiden’s warmth, he could’ve succumbed to the Fourtress’s wintry conditions, marking him yet another poor soul felled by that cursed mountain.

But he wouldn’t tell them that.

Instead, he crossed his arms and grumbled, “We are never speaking of this again.”

A wicked touch of mischief cloaked Aiden’s features. “You’re welcome for not letting you turn into a bloody icicle.”

Jade sighed loudly, as if their entire existence was nothing more than an irritation. “Will you fools shut up? Everything’s melting.” Gesturing with her head out the door. “We need to find Garrik and Alora. Let’s go.”

Ignoring the way his body protested and pushing through a wave of pain spinning his vision, Thalon forced himself to his feet, but not before flashing Aiden one last fiery glare.

And as he fastened his golden sword to his back and secured the bandage on his forehead, he wordlessly hoped Garrik and Alora had a better night than he did, wishing to forget this humiliation forever.