Page 39 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

B uttery warmth worshiped her skin while mounds of bubbles—scented as the most delicate flowers Kadamar offered—misted and popped.

Alora closed her eyes and drowned out Miwa finishing her bedtime preparations in the bathroom. The steam from the bath tickled her face almost too pleasantly as she danced her fingers through the water.

Even engulfed by floral and citrus scents from shampoo vials, Alora could still smell Garrik’s leather and metal scent. Still picture him leaning against her doorway, looking so …

She scoffed—he had no right to look like that .

How every piece of Garrik’s clothing seemed to be tailored perfectly for his body alone. The outline of muscles. That perfect V extending to his waistline. The way he seemed carved from marble.

Heat flushed her cheeks.

She shouldn’t have drunk so much wine; he shouldn’t have escorted her back to her room.

Starsdamn him.

“Do not open this door for anyone,” Garrik’s voice, a memory, echoed.

Unable to control the shiver across her skin, Alora sank lower under the bubbles.

“Anyone but you , of course?” she’d toyed, watching his eyes darken.

Wondering if he’d even known how often they did so.

How his head would cock slightly to the side or how his jaw would tighten.

She knew and saw it all. Every flicker and twitch.

Alora closed her eyes, imagining her doorway.

Garrik squeezed the top of the threshold and leaned just barely inside. She wished he would take that step inside. Knowing he wouldn’t. “Especially not me,” he warned with an edge of certainty.

Why had it seemed like a challenge?

Closing her eyes, Alora brushed her fingers along the silky skin of her leg, up her hip.

”What is that look for, clever girl?”

Alora only hummed, a sound entirely menacing and scheming as she leaned her hip against the tall back of her waiting room chair. Scanning him. Scanning every swell and dip of muscle. Wondering … “Dance with me?” They hadn’t found the chance all evening. And then with Erissa …

For a moment, amused disbelief stole his features.

Garrik pulled his hands from the top of the threshold and crossed his arms over his chest. The movement, wholly treasonous as it appeared his muscles would tear through his tunic fabric at any moment.

“I believe that to be the very opposite of what I said.” He lifted a brow.

A feline grin. “Since when have I listened to you before?”

Garrik lightly chuckled—a real one—the sound like a gentle caress to her cheek and just as inviting.

And it was about all she could imagine besides that smile accompanying it; his hands on her skin.

Holding her. Swaying to some made-up melody she’d compose.

Gazing into eyes that resembled polished, molten steel and burned just as scorching when he looked at her.

“Dance with me,” she offered again, pushing from the couch and taking a step toward him, meeting the heat of his stare. Mesmerized by it, Alora half-stumbled, nearly knocking into the table between them.

Maybe making a dance floor in the middle of her room while overcome by wine wasn’t the best idea.

“You think?”

Alora whipped her head back to Garrik, then stuck her tongue out.

Maybe that wasn’t the best idea considering that look of her favorite predator returned, hot and scathing, forming her own heat low in her belly as he said, “Mind that tongue, clever girl. Before I wonder what other things it can do.”

A flush bloomed on her cheeks, and she was hopeless to blame it on the liquid claiming her mind.

She had imagined those other things more than a few times in the last days.

As he sat by her bedside debriefing and studying and analyzing parchments with stars-knows-what written all over them.

As that considerable male body lounged in her reading chair, his steely legs widened so perfectly she could sink between them.

How her hands could trail up, up, up, feeling every hardened muscle that kept him standing and fighting, the ones that could hold her weight while he carried her, and eventually, glide across his thighs to meet his cock ? —

Garrik cleared his throat. Shifted his legs rather uncomfortably.

Alora smirked in his direction.

A lethal warning filled those silver eyes, but she dared to take it as a challenge and sent that same image along their tether. Only this time …

She licked her lips at the thought—at the feeling of her mouth watering—at the look she pictured Garrik’s face making and the sounds that would escape him as she’d run her tongue along his length, giving him a pleasure he had given her ? —

Alora bit her bottom lip. Pictured him there as if he had dawned across her bathroom threshold, thrown her over his shoulder, and taken her to her bed.

Maybe she imagined it, but that was a breathy, stuttering exhale. A purely male groan of approval.

“Can I get you anything else before I tend to the bedchamber, my lady?” There were no more thoughts of taking Garrik into her mouth the moment Miwa spoke that awful title.

My lady , Alora soundlessly groaned.

Too tired—too drunk—to entirely care tonight, she decided to remind Miwa of her name later. Through slitted eyelids, Alora peeked at Miwa, who delicately draped a cherry-colored satin robe, embellished with roses, across the vanity chair before laying out oils and creams.

She didn’t have the heart to tell her she despised that color—that flower—either.

Miwa turned. Her bone-white wings flared in the movement as she leaned down and placed a pair of slippers beneath the chair.

She could have sworn she heard Garrik through the walls. Wicked thing.

Alora may have hummed her agreement, gathering a sated grin at the sight of the robe.

At imagining how wonderful the satin would feel instead of fighting leathers.

At how soft those slippers appeared and not the suffocating warmth of battle boots.

“I should bring you back to camp. I’m going to miss this treatment.

” Water waved over her shoulders as she sank lower again, wiggling her toes below the water.

Miwa closed the distance and perched on the pool’s edge, dropping an elbow on the ledge and reclining. “Not much pampering in the High Prince’s camp?”

“No,” she scoffed, though it sounded more like a whine.

Chuckling, Miwa folded a towel fit for a Celestial and placed it beside the bath.

And Alora imagined hugging her in gratitude for the pearlsea oil she dropped in the water before she twisted away and walked toward the door.

“I’ll set an elixir to prevent head pain on your bedside table before I leave. ”

“Thank you.” Alora lifted her gaze a little too fast, only to see more than one faerie with long teal curls standing there.

A sly grin grew on Miwa’s face. “Careful. Royalty isn’t known to offer pleasantries to their servants here. You won’t fit in at all.”

“Good thing I’m not royalty.”

Miwa hummed, “Good thing,” and turned to the doorway. It wasn’t more than a few breaths before she halted at the threshold. Her body fell rigid. Those incredible wings, like daylight clouds, unfurled slightly.

“What’s wrong?” Alora sat up in the bath.

The maidservant peered over her shoulder. Amber eyes filled with hesitation, and she peered back into the darkened chamber.

“Miwa?” Her stomach threatened to empty.

Another moment passed. Miwa didn’t look at her as she answered, “Apologies, my lady. The … darkness.” She paused.

At last, those incredible wings relaxed as Miwa half-turned, hands laced in front of her purple gown.

That strong female that had dared to take issue with Thalon only hours before returned as she glared inside the bedroom.

Carrying no kindness in her eyes, as if in careful warning, as if entirely a threat, Miwa said to the darkness, “ It … is unsettling.”

Alora could’ve sworn the darkness thickened at the words.

Before Alora could say anything more, Miwa curtsied and disappeared into that darkness. Leaving only muffled murmurs of displeasure and disapproval behind.

By the stars , was the robe made of clouds? Soft, satiny, endless clouds that extended from her shoulders and pooled at her feet. She slipped into those shoes made of white fur and sank onto the vanity chair, marveling at the arrangement of creams and oils.

Not so long ago, she’d sat at her own vanity. Not one borrowed—and not one in such a place as grand as these castles. And even among the danger that lurked the cloisters, halls, and rooms outside her High Prince’s protection, still, she wouldn’t wish for that vanity over this one.

Groaning almost embarrassingly, Alora finished lathering lotion on her skin and crossed into the darkness of her bedchamber.

Carefree and giggling at how unsteady her legs carried her across the space until the stars’ glow brushed against the mound of pillows on her bed and the plushest blankets she’d ever lain on.

Alora twisted backward and dropped in bliss to the sheets.

This. This was a Stars Eternal dream.

She delightedly hummed the moment her head hit the pillow.

Perfectly cold as Smokeshadows, soft as pearlsea petals, as comforting as an icy embrace carrying her through the night sky.

She nuzzled into it and twisted on her side, threading one arm under and the other on top to cage it to her head as her lids blissfully closed?—

“Hello, clever girl.”

Alora’s eyes snapped open to Garrik’s face inches from hers, with his head propped on a fist, stretched out on the bed, lying on his side.

“What are you doing here?” she bit out, head spinning too much to even attempt backing away.

Something like mischief gleamed in his eyes. “Do you always moan when you bathe?”

That wasn’t an answer. And she wouldn’t indulge him. “What. Are you. Doing here?” Alora repeated flippantly, but the desired effect didn’t rouse him.

He simply smirked before rolling onto his back. Those incredible arms lifted above him before he laced his fingers together behind his head. “Your bed is comfier than mine.” Gray hair fanned around him as Garrik dropped his head further into the pillow.

She offered him a flat, unamused stare.

The mighty bastard side-eyed her. “I wanted to make certain you would not drown.” That was honesty. He meant it. She didn’t doubt that. After all, she had practically fallen down the steps when she’d clambered out of the bath.

But that honesty was short-lived. A wicked grin again twisted on his face when he admitted, “And became concerned with all the noise you were making.”

A feline grin widened on her face just the same. “Jealous that a bath can make me moan louder than you can?”

That may have very well been a mistake.

One moment, she was on her side, and the next … she couldn’t contain the ridiculous giggle as her back flattened onto the sheets.

Amusement spilled from his lips as his torso hovered over her. His face drifted inches from hers, so close they shared breath. Then Garrik’s voice deepened to something critical. Something final. “Sober up, darling. Then we can see just how loud your moans can get.”

That … sounded like a pitiful idea. “Why wait?”

Garrik pulled away with a graceful motion, straightened his spine, and sank onto his heels. “You know why.”

She didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t care.

Alora sat up, gripped his shoulders, and pulled him back against her chest while her heart hammered. It was only a shame that her robe and his tunic separated them. “I’m not drunk enough that I can’t make decisions.”

His sigh was devastating. “It is enough to make poor ones and to regret me in the morning.”

Huffing, Alora frowned like a faeling.

Garrik flicked her nose. “Pout all you wish, it is not happening tonight.”

Alora warded off the urge to cross her arms and instead rubbed her eyes and yawned.

Garrik’s grin broadened.

“At least allow me to—” She struggled to find the words but managed to twirl her fingers vaguely toward her forehead. Imagining a fiery wall of starfire in the depths of his consciousness that she had little hope of explaining in her current state.

He seemed to understand and shook his head. “Not a chance, clever girl. If you could barely walk without stumbling to your bed, you will not be walking inside my mind tonight.” Garrik pulled the blanket over her until it draped over her neck.

“But you need to sleep.”

“You need to sleep.”

She couldn’t argue. Not even as he brushed a hair from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear, loving how that simple touch felt like everything she had ever hoped for. And before she could stop her loosened tongue, she decided that he needed to know.

Without a second drunken thought, her hand found his cheek. “You’re not at all who I thought you’d be.” She licked her lips, swallowed dryly, and slurred, “You b-brought me back to life.”

The world seemed to blur then.

Her eyelids bobbed, even though she commanded them to stay open. She had … so much more to say. To tell him. But a darkened silhouette slipped from the bed and glided from her fingertips, which dropped into the clouds of her bedsheets.

Icy lips pressed into her hair.

She wasn’t certain if she was already dreaming. But somewhere outside the borders of her mind, Garrik’s lovely face smiled before he tenderly whispered, “You are bringing me back, too.”