Page 16 of What Whispers in the Dark
Sunlight poured through every window, casting his monstrous shadow along the walls as he glimpsed the sea and balconies strewn across the castle. Avoiding one particular balcony that he had spent countless nights bleeding on, Garrik tore his attention from the windows when a darkened figure rounded the corner at the end of the hallway.
They both stopped cold as death.
Ice crept along the walls as scorching heat burned in those night-blue eyes.
Garrik’s hand fell to his sword as the High Fae male registered the movement.
He appeared distraught; his black tunic was ripped slightly on his upper arm and revealed glimpses of tattooed bones and scales. Unbuttoned, the front half showcased a cityscape of inkacross his chest, and some raised marks appeared as if dragons flew off his skin. Over his heart, slicing through that city, one word was etched, and Garrik wondered if it was a name. Usually kempt to perfection, his pants were wrinkled, and harsh lines formed between his brows. That night-dark hair was disheveled too, as if he had run his hands through it a hundred times, with dark circles under his eyes.
Malik—Malik was here. In the castle. Which meant?—
The male schooled his face into calculated, deadly calm, but his eyes … they flickered uneasily behind Garrik.
Something whispered across the back of his neck. A slithering feeling. Cold, venom-like.
His teeth grew to sharpened points, clashing together when darkness slithered around his neck and traced down the hardened planes of his chest until it wrapped around his wrists to force his arms behind his back.
And he did not need to turn to know whose hand was snaking around his abdomen. They teased at the first snaps and ties of his pants.
Talons curved into his armor at his shoulder, threatening to tear it open.
“Do not fucking touch me,” Garrik growled, a desperate attempt to mask the tremble in his voice. But his commands never worked on her. And it was as if his body knew not to fight her and refused his mind from doing so. That his body was truly not his own—it had not been for decades. And denying her? The pain she would inflict in retribution would be much worse.
In the end, he had no choice. So why fight?
He suppressed a shudder as an ombré-colored hand gripped his chin, turning him over his shoulder to pierce blackened abyss—the same abyss his were mirrored after.
A serpentine smile contorted her alluringly evil face. That haunting voice reigning in his nightmares singsonged, “Whata delightful surprise,” before she snapped her fingers and the hallway stormed with her cronies, forcing him from her embrace and shoving him to his knees.
The needle was in his neck before he could choke out a breath, feeling his strength—his magic—slip away.
No. Please, no?—
“I’ve missed you, pet.”
He stared forward.
Almost like looking straight through her ghost; as if his body was there, but his soul was floating somewhere else.
He must have killed every starsdamned one of them a hundred times.
A thousand.
Obliterated them. Cast their souls to Firekeeper.
If only it were that easy.
But tonight … the only soul that had one foot in those burning pits and the other there, where nightmares reigned not only in his mind but outside, was him.
The urge to spill pitch-black blood had been his constant obsession since he stepped into that annulus hours before. From the first tendril of shadow forming the body of the female and male’s he fantasized about killing ten thousand times, the desire pulsed through the open wounds and scars of his abdomen, the bruised flesh of his waist and ribs, and the vile taste that defiled his mouth.
He should have gone to the Dawnspace. Not this annulus.
Should have dawned to his dungeon flooded with his blood. Conjured their true selves so he could watch their faces wrinkle and writhe in agony as he ripped them apart over and over andover,just as they had done to him.
Yet he found himself there. Surrounded by flames as if mere warmth could be his salvation.
Could keepheraway.
