Page 17 of What Whispers in the Dark
He ripped his tunic off sometime ago, unable to stand the touch of the fabric where her hands had been. And no matter what retribution he carried out with sharpened steel, he could not purge the memories or the sickly, sour feeling churning his insides. The only thing that could come close was the slow deaths of the shadow figures he conjured—and cutting down Smokeshadow likenesses of those who were to blame for his torment and suffering. Knowing nothing, caring for nothing, but the way his blade felt in his grip and the screams he imagined them making.
Yesterday … if only he could have gone back to yesterday.
To have stayed in camp after seeing Alora safe to her tent. To have sat around the fire with Thalon and pretended that he deserved to be there. Threw daggers with Jade or sat in the solemnness of Eldacar’s library and listened to the scratch of his quill.
A guttural howl erupted around the annulus before Garrik, in one thorough swing, relieved the heads of five shadows moving in a circle around him. His lips curled back from his teeth, eyes swirling with hints of oblivion surveying them.
Starsdamnit.It was. Not. Enough.
It wasneverenough.
Another shadow formed directly beside the last misting away. His feet ate the short distance.
Garrik’s damning blade swung again before it even had a chance to lift its hand.
Then another.
To its left. Only, that one didn’t fully form before it dissipated into the chilling night air around them like dust in a windstorm.
Over.
And. Over.
And-fucking-overGarrik’s severed soul cried out in ruination as that thing in his chest threatened to cease beating. As his sword … the sword he wished was turned on himself… As that damned,uselesssword sliced and cut and heaveduntil he could not feel anything but the ache in his arms and the strain in his bone-white grip.
He would not stop—couldn’t.
The very moment he did, the voices—her voice—would creep in.
Leather groaned in his hand. Some part of his heart … some part he thought was long lost and buried so deep he could never touch it again, ached. He did not allow it to stir. To allow self-hatred and pity to consume him. There was no pointin mourning for the male he once was. That part of him would never return.ThatGarrikwas gone.
Butchered and obliterated and ruined.
Ruined.
The word chased his sword as his legs nearly buckled and pummeled into him as he missed the throat of a pillar of shadow that formed Malik.
Snarling, Garrik jammed his hand forward, eliciting a weaponized air wave, mystifying the male. And by a harsh curse, he relished the feel of his thrumming veins as he envisioned Malik’s eyes widening—just as they had in Galdheir that morning. Relished that violent delight before Malik’s life in that annulus was nothing more than a memory.
If only, for tonight, he could simply eviscerate today’s memory … then their voices would stop. Everything would be back to … normal?
He could have laughed—did.
What wasnormal?
The way he suffered in silence around the firesite while his family laughed, plagued by the screaming in his mind, locked deep in the spiraling walls and staircase of his adulterated prison of pain? Was it normal when he illusioned his wrists and ankles, concealing the shackle marks marring his flesh even when he was alone because he could not stomach the sight of his own skin? Normal like hiding the handprints on his neck, the bruises on his ribs, the open wounds on his abdomen and inner thighs when he returned from Galdheir, precisely as he did in that annulus because the mere thought of looking down would have him scouting out the nearest cliff to throw himself over?
Garrik sucked in a ragged breath through his teeth as he drove his blade through the short form of Smokeshadows depicting Brennus. Normal wasn’t his to reach for anymore.
The darkness that knew him to his core dissipated in whorls until they disintegrated into the dirt, but he barely registered this death.
Because it was not Brennus’s death he was ravenous for.
No. Not his.
As those hidden bruises and open wounds thrummed to the rhythm of his dying heartbeat, another shadow crept behind him like a beast stalking its prey.
Something like a lover’s caress whispered across the front of his neck. He swallowed against it.
