Page 47 of What Whispers in the Dark (Promises of the Marked)

“ W ant to tell me what’s wrong, love?” Aiden held up his palms, prepared to defend a deadly blow. His shadow danced on the ground as if it were a mirage in the heat of day, faintly fluttering over the moonlit garden grasses where she watched Garrik and Alora dawn from not long before.

But Jade wasn’t looking at Aiden. Not at Thalon or his Wingborne captain, Deimon, either, who she had sparred with for the last hour. Normally, she enjoyed looking at a male with leathery wings, but tonight …

That royal garden wasn’t a garden.

The shrubbery landscaped into a circle didn’t resemble the makeshift arena Aiden and Thalon claimed it to be.

No, tonight those towering castle turrets, flickering torches, pines, sculpted hedges, and rows of flowers morphed into something far more haunting. Terrifying .

A coliseum. But not just any coliseum.

The one from her memories. The one she was reborn in. The one teeming with males shouting their bloodlust as females lost more than just their limbs but their lives—their souls— too.

Jade stretched out her hand along the ground.

Reaching and reaching and reaching. Toward that explosion.

Toward those night-dark eyes and a face she couldn’t see or remember, screaming—wailing—as chaos and every damning thing rained around her like the sky opened up and delivered them a storm of hellfire and dragonflame.

The year-weathered scales of the red dragon’s paw, which she vowed never to bow to, slammed beside her face. A claw sank into her abdomen ? —

Jade’s fist slammed into Aiden’s hand again, refusing the tears forming in her eyes.

Then a voice. Another voice. Much lower than the dragon lurking by her side, pinning her to the ground. His voice was too quiet to hear—or perhaps the coliseum was deafeningly loud—but Kieran … out of dragonform … was on top of her. Flipping her onto her back the moment Vaddrach released his claw.

His fist raised high as that red dragon she would kill prowled closer to the inferno.

Closer to that figure who … who no longer stood.

A mere heap on the ground. Burning. Dying. Probably already dead.

She didn’t make a sound before Kieran’s fist fell. Before the searing pain overcame her body, which was reformed by bubbling burns and cuts and wounds. Didn’t make a sound as darkness swept her away.

“No,” Jade snapped, not intending for it to be cruel and harsh, but regardless, it came out that way. No—she didn’t want to speak. Didn’t want to do anything but punch something because that stupid thing in her chest had hollowed out so viciously that all that remained to fill it was pain.

A fucking nightmare. The nightmare. The one that followed her from Torgal.

It was why she was out there. Why she needed to punch something— anything.

Aiden must have recognized it the moment Deimon flew her into that garden.

Jade slammed her fist into him again.

Her sea-captain weathered it expertly, as he did each punch.

Not only from her firsts, but over time, over the years since they found each other, the venom that spit from her words, too.

Concern flashed across his features as his gaze flashed to the castle turrets so far in the distance they barely peeked through the trees.

Jade didn’t waste the opportunity.

Taking full advantage of his distraction, her fist barreled at his jaw, sending him stumbling back into the shrubbery.

“Leave me alone, Aiden.” Jade didn’t need to turn to growl her warning; no longer in the mood to be around anyone, should her temper worsen to the point of regretting her reactions and littering the earth with blood and bone and splinters of teeth.

But the fool didn’t heed the warning. His rushed footsteps continued behind, drawing louder, despite the very real threat against his life. Scuffing along the dirt and stones of the path she had ventured to within the forest surrounding the castle.

With no actual plan other than finding a tree to obliterate with her daggers, she had happened upon this trail fifteen minutes prior.

Recognizing it as one that the High Guard would march along.

It broke into four paths eighty paces ahead, all leading to various training grounds, with one curving upward to the cliffside where they had watched Garrik and Ezander nearly batter each other to death.

“Jade—”

“ No .” That one word carried more death than any of the daggers strapped to her side.

Again, those footsteps didn’t stop. Closer now. Much closer.

A hand curled on her shoulder?—

Before the gasp left his throat, Aiden’s back hammered against a tree.

His throat worked against the cold angle of her karambit licking the soft tan flesh there.

Putting her full weight into it, Jade leaned close while her teeth gritted to the point of pain, and her emerald eyes burned a disastrous promise into his darkened orbs.

“I said no. ”

Aiden didn’t fight back. He only relaxed against the tree and studied her face carefully.

She half imagined him spewing some nonsense, when instead, he swallowed against the infernium steel of her homeland, and gently coaxed, “Love.” Why did it sound so …

understanding? That pissed her off even more. “Please?”

Please? Please ?

Why did that have her heart—that stupid, useless, hateful thing—aching? Why did it feel like the fire in her veins extinguished to glowing sparks? Like her flaming heart had settled to a spark?

Aiden wasn’t begging for his life. She registered that.

Made certain by the way his eyes softened.

By the way he stroked his fingers along her side and back.

Not pushing her away but holding her there like he had done countless times on his ship and by the cover of dark alleys under moonlight.

Not allowing her to leave like her life depended on it.

Some nights, she wasn’t sure it didn’t.

“Come with me,” he breathed and gestured his head toward his right shoulder despite the blade that slipped along his skin. Blood pebbled and beaded, but Aiden didn’t so much as wince.

Did he know she needed blood? Needed to bleed something? Is that why …

For a fleeting moment, her jaw loosened, releasing not only the tension but the emotion clawing out of her chest. Curse the fucking Flames, she couldn’t stand feeling so vulnerable.

Like any minuscule amount of weakness in the form of an aching chest or stars-fucking-forbid, a tear slipping down her cheek would have her enemies and memories and nightmares reigning down, staking their claim.

It felt like Kieran stood there with his flames … like Vaddrach would?—

A sharp breath. As scathing as dragon flames and just as cruel.

But Aiden remained there. Waiting as he always did. Watching her. Allowing her rage and fear to stir and settle for either pushing him away or something much, much worse .

Allowing him to see her break.

He was the only one she would allow to see it. The only one who never took advantage of it and punished her for the humiliation it brought to her kind and kingdom.

And for some damn reason, she never killed him for it. The only male alive, not even Thalon or Garrik, who had ever seen her fracture.

Maybe that’s why, despite her every logical protest, she scoffed, “To where?” It wasn’t an indication she was interested. Even if she had been, she wouldn’t tell him that.

Mischief played in those summer sky-blue eyes, which, in the silver moonlight glittering between the trees, appeared entirely colorless. Aiden squeezed his hand around her waist, smiled, and promised, “You’ll like it.”

“You’re so sure,” Jade snapped back between her teeth, surveying his face like it held the plague.

“And you have forgotten that I know you well.”

That hand still didn’t move. His face, still offering …

It was an hour later, through the castle gates and around the High City, that Aiden led her to the lesser parts of Karanagar. Some sense of belonging waved over her as their boots squelched in the aftermath of a downpour.

In all the years she’d spent alongside Garrik, living in the castle and accepted as one of Airathel’s adopted elder faelings, the ornate halls and rich belongings never felt … right. Not to one born in moldering tunnels and a city doomed for an eternity below the Upperground.

But this place he’d brought her …

A place that stenched like sweat earned in a full day of weapons training just for survival and not sport. Of mold from muddy streets soaked in a downpour. Of ale and piss spilled beneath boots with far too many holes in them and soaking into the only other pair of socks she had once owned …

Jade couldn’t help but feel a small sense of home. Of … belonging.

In that moment, she wanted to hate Aiden for it—for knowing her so well . But only gratitude surfaced as they strolled alongside crippling walls and rain dripping from roofs with gaping holes, as if winged creatures had burst through the rafters to find their next meal.

Twisting through the rundown buildings, some with nothing but a single candle flickering inside windowsills with no barrier of glass to keep them from the cruel skies and heat of sunlit days, Aiden ushered her forward.

She nearly grumbled to him when he stopped outside a place smelling no better than the piss and ale she thought of earlier.

By the time her boots slipped to a stop in the mud, Aiden had ambled forward and skidded a wooden tankard off a table, straight from the hand of an unconscious male, before he tossed it to his lips.

Aided by one flickering glass-and-iron lantern hanging above a rickety wooden door, Jade studied the carving inlaid in the grain: a silhouette of a howling bear, chin angled toward a crescent moon with arcane lunar symbols encircling its head like a Celestial crown.

The Moonbrew Maw.

This realm and its infatuation with the moon —she almost rolled her eyes again but tore them away from the tavern to find Aiden enjoying the male’s drink and muttering something like mustn’t let it go to waste.