Page 45 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

E zander scowled at the riverboat in front of them, watching his sister poised on Garrik’s arm as they floated by exclusive shops and fine eateries. His shoulders were taut, the same as his jaw. Those russet eyes drifted to Garrik—on the Savage Prince’s abdomen—and he suffered a long breath.

Alora saw grief settle in Ezander’s features. Longing, perhaps.

“Can you do something for me?” Ezander broke his silence, his attention unwavering from the way Garrik plucked his tunic—or on the way he flinched when Erissa’s hand flattened to his thigh before he forced her hand away.

Though it was painful to pull her own attention from her High Prince, Alora suffered a glance at Ezander, lifting an eyebrow in question.

The princeling hesitated. Then, through a harrowing exhale, said, “Ask”—Ezander shook his head, seemingly defeated before he continued—“…ask him about the letters,” and rubbed the back of his neck. “Please.”

It wasn’t her place to ask, but the words escaped her before she could reconsider. “How long ago did you send them?”

Erissa’s laugh sizzled across her skin like venom, drawing their attention to the boat in front of them.

Alora willed embers to stay dormant in her eyes, and instead, traced a finger along the crystal blue water when Ezander spoke again.

“I started the day after our High Queen … died.” He said the word as if even he didn’t believe it. As if what Garrik had said to him at dinner wasn’t news, that he did know what Magnelis had done, unlike the fabrications of her passing that were told to Elysian.

Alora swept her attention to him from the water trickling between her fingers, offering a sad smile. Encouragement to continue.

Eyes glassy, Ezander took it and offered, “I sent them for decades. Tried to tell him what I knew. What I had heard. He never answered. I visited the castle in invitation to Magnelis’s parties with Father and Kadamar’s court, though I never attended such events.

From rumors, the entertainment was far too barbarous for my tastes.

My father, like his Hunt, delighted in them, but I searched the castle hoping to find that Garrik was only avoiding me.

That perhaps I could corner him in a stairwell or push him inside a room and block the door. ”

He rubbed the back of his head and released a breathy chuckle. “Maybe lock him in the stables full of horse shit just so he would listen to me for only a moment.

“But every time, they discovered my wandering. A guardsman, Brennus, or Malik would see me back into Father’s wing and inform me that His Highness wasn’t presently there.

They all seemed a little too amused by the situation to be believed.

And I eventually realized after years of searching that Garrik just wouldn’t see me.

That they were only extending excuses that he no doubt had ordered upon them. ”

Had the boat not been beneath her, surely Alora would have drowned by how her head was spinning.

Though the Blackstone Mountain air was frigid, waving across the river and High City of Karanagar above, it didn’t compare to the glacial cold outside a wall of stacked straw bales inside a wintry barn.

Didn’t compare to the ice in her veins when Garrik had told her about such gatherings.

About the agony her High Prince had endured while Magnelis and his subjects enjoyed the … entertainment that was him.

Garrik hadn’t avoided Ezander at all, but the princeling didn’t know that.

Ezander hadn’t known that he was being tortured inside the throne room and in a dungeon when he had written those letters.

Garrik was the barbarous entertainment Ezander spoke of.

And she couldn’t stop the thought: If Ezander had walked into one of those parties, would he have saved Garrik?

Saved him from those weapons? Her ? Magnelis?

Alora felt as if her stomach would hollow out entirely.

Save him from what she assumed was becoming a prize for Ladomyr?

Ezander’s lip trembled as he interrupted her thoughts. “I didn’t have a hand in killing Queen Airathel.”

She wanted to believe him?—

A wall of soldiers in purple cloaks and metal armor crescented around her. Cobblestones bit into her knees and chest as dozens of boots swarmed the street.

No. Not a street. She was certain of that.

Because as a Raven’s hand gripped her hair, his nails digging into her scalp so terribly she could feel them splitting the skin, and forced her upright … those were Castle Galdheir’s walls and turrets towering over her.

Alora blinked, tears forming in her eyes from staring too long, realizing it … it was a memory. Not even hers. As her eyes flicked to the boat not far up river, a tendril of shadow brushed along the borders of her mind. Right through the door in her wall of flames, which she kept open for him.

For Garrik.

Her shoulders strained — not hers, but Garrik’s — as a terrible pressure sawed into his wrists.

A muffled noise carried from far, far above. Rustling on smooth stones. Scuffs.

Garrik snapped his head up ? —

“ Garrik !” a voice of death—his mother’s voice—wailed. High atop the castle, her upper arm held by Magnelis with her hands bound behind her back, unsteadily teetering as she was forced to stand on the balcony’s balustrade.

No—

Magnelis’s voice boomed, “Let this be a lesson to all those who believe they can defy me.”

“ Garrik !” was the last Airathel screamed before the High King ripped her arm forward, throwing her off balance. A threat, perhaps a last chance for an apology, to plead for her life. His mouth was moving, but Garrik couldn’t hear as his mother screamed his name again.

“Mother! No !” A Raven jerked his head back. A wordless order to remain silent.

Still there—she was still there. He still had time. The ropes: he was going to snap them. Then run. He could catch her—he could . He only had to ? —

Then … silence.

All sound escaped him. Elysian held its breath.

Garrik watched his mother’s body slip from the ledge by Magnelis’s hand. Like in slow motion, the wind collected the sea-green fabric of her gown. The sunlight burst from the gemstones garnishing it as the layers waved like the crash of a sea.

Those turquoise eyes met his. Full of love and every perfect thing the world would be if she were its ruler. Of a future he desperately hoped for with her in it.

She smiled at him. Stars, it was beautiful.

Garrik almost did too.

Her eyes flickered down. Then back to his. “Your father. You are the key,” she mouthed. “I love y ? —”

Then he was screaming. Screaming because his mother had disappeared behind the castle wall, where her gardens would be. Where the ground …

He stared at those walls as if they would mist away and his mother would be standing there whole. Unharmed and alive. Knowing perfectly well she would never be whole again. Knowing if he were to walk through the stone archway to the left …

Two hands held firm to his shoulders as he fell forward, forcing him to remain upright when his entire body refused to cling to life.

When his screams ceased and all he could do was tremble and attempt to breathe, Magnelis’s eyes darkened as he angled his head over his right shoulder.

If the High King could ever conjure a real smile, that was the first, as he said loud enough for the citadel to hear, “Thank you for your insight. It was most beneficial in ridding Elysian of the High Queen’s treason. ”

Garrik’s eyes flickered to the figure who had stepped forward. Whose hands wrapped around the balustrade and curled his body halfway over to stare into his mother’s treasured gardens. Whose russet eyes scanned the ground where Airathel had fallen—where she was thrown.

Rage—unconquerable, bloodthirsty, outworldly rage—hit him as the words betrayer and traitor stabbed him deeper than any weapon ever could. Red clouded his vision. His wrists burned as Garrik stared at the male whom he had called brother since birth, standing beside Magnelis.

Ezander.

Those eyes widened when they met the green of Garrik’s.

His mind roared. Roared so terribly that he felt faint. Unsure if his knees would hold him up because his blood nearly hollowed out of every vein. If it were not for the Raven’s hold in his hair, he would have plummeted to the stones.

From the depths of his soul, Garrik cried out.

A sound only the dying made. A sound a mother made over the loss of a youngling.

Of knowing what once was would never be again.

Not entirely sure if the sound of his voice shook the castle, the walls, the ground beneath them, or if the Stars Eternal did.

Screamed so loud his throat tore and bled.

He did not lose one so dearly treasured—so loved— that day but two— two.

A fist slammed into Garrik’s cheek, barreling his body sideways before the ground crushed his shoulder.

Pain radiated up his neck, down from his jaw, but it was nothing compared to the agony feasting at his heart.

His vision blurred. Liquid slipped down his cheek.

Male laughter echoed and bounced off every hardened surface, splitting his skull and threatening to ring him from consciousness.

Then another voice. A voice he had known his entire life snickered, “Well done, your High Majesty.” He could imagine that vile, sniveling face. Imagine his pathetic, groveling bow and the poor excuse for a crown that never fit his bald head nearly falling.

“And to your heir for their part,” Magnelis returned. “Make no mistake, Kadamar will be greatly favored from this. You and yours have pleased me immensely, Ladomyr.”

“If I may say, it is only a shame that yours has failed you so astoundingly.”

Garrik looked up then. Even from such a far distance, he could see the faces of the High King and King of Kadamar glowering down at him.

Ezander was nowhere to be seen, but replaced by another radiating under the sunlight.

Her blonde curls spilled over her shoulder.

Fingertips covering her wine-colored lips as she surveyed the gardens below in a dress not much different from those his mother wore.

Used … used to wear…

The High King carried no remorse, no inkling of fatherly affection, as his wicked mouth opened and spoke to his heir all but dying on the ground.

“After today, he will be compliant.” And swept his eyes to the gardens.

Where Airathel had been thrown. Where Ezander’s title of brother died with her.

“He will not disappoint me again. Isn’t that right, prince ? ”

Garrik made a sound of hate—of damning, cursed hate.

Magnelis’s face didn’t move. Frightening calm cloaked his features. “Ladomyr,” he drawled. The wind tousled his long black hair as his ruby and amethyst spiked crown glinted his divine authority. “I believe the whelp cannot hear me from so far away.” He flicked his wrist. “Fetch him.”

Like Jade’s fiery hair dancing in the sea-misted breeze, the trees flanking the castle walls came to life. Between laden stones, roots shot from the ground, snapping them into pieces.

Soldiers backed away as branches snaked around Garrik’s torso.

They squeezed.

And squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.

Squeezed until he couldn’t breathe, and lifted him from the stones.

He barely registered soaring through the sky.

Barely recognized the face of the male hovering in front of him.

Or any of the faces on that balcony, save for one.

Before Magnelis got what he wanted from him and Ladomyr’s magic dropped him back on the ground, the last face he saw was Ezander’s.

Hiding in the shadows like a fucking coward.

The flaxen flecks of the princeling’s russet irises met sapphire.

But as Alora blinked out of Garrik’s memory, something prickled the hairs on her arms, possibly on Ezander’s, too, because they both solemnly turned their gazes to Erissa and Garrik’s riverboat nearing a curve, drawing them away from the multitude of shops and docks.

Silver swirled with blackened abyss, staring back at them.

And somehow … she felt his pain screaming across the river.

Alora shivered as Ezander met those eyes full of death and said low enough that only Alora and Garrik’s minds could hear, “There are letters I wrote but never sent waiting in my chambers.”

Permission, an invitation, that, by the way Garrik rigidly turned away, fell on deaf ears.

Despite it, Ezander finished, “If he wants to know the truth…” He sighed in defeat. “Just … please. Ask him about the letters.”