Page 29 of What Whispers in the Dark
“If I rip your head off, you will be to blame.” It was as much of a warning as Garrik would give.
From the flare of excitement on his brother’s face, he knew Thalon was not frightened and readied his stance as he shot back at him, “Bring it on, you spoiled little shit.” Speaking from when they were adolescent faelings, Thalon wickedly grinned and gave no time for Garrik to take another breath, and swung.
With the weight of his entire body, his fist slammed into a wall of nothingness. Garrik’s shield cracked his knuckles before Thalon recoiled and repositioned his stance, skin turning a furious shade of purple. At least with bone and flesh, the object could absorb the impact and shatter. With Garrik’s shield, it would be as if he had hurled his entire body weight in a powerful blow against a wall of marble.
Garrik’s power trembled the room. He stalked forward with rage-filled onyx eyes, shadows billowing from his body, leaving a trail of Smokeshadow footsteps in his wake.
And lunged.
Thalon swung out his arms, shaping a circle in front of him, and then jerked his clenched fists down to his sides. Lightning and thunderstorms traveled down his body, a vortex inverting in on itself and transforminghiminto a portal.
Flesh became rays of sunlight and electrical storms.
Garrik flew through him, landing behind Thalon’s glowing back near the table.
Thalon turned. Eyes like Sun himself—the Celestial sovereign ruler of day—glowing gold so bright Garrik’s vision threatened to incinerate.
“Impressive,” Garrik gritted through his teeth at the deception. “That will not work again, Realmpiercer.”
“Maybe if you’d trained in the arena instead of sulking in your tent, you’d learn something new.” Thalon swung open his arms, and the portal that had been engulfing his body detonated toward Garrik.
“Sulking?” With barely a breath, an imperceivable airwave roared into the incoming portal. The impact exploded around them in bolts and wind. Shaking the canvas, stirring maps and correspondence around the tent. “You think the damn nightmares are mesulking?” he growled, and with all the force from his boots to his fist, swung.
Black-veined knuckles collided with facial bones, and Thalon lost his footing, barreling back against the bed, producing a sharp grunt when the frame caught his spine.
One instant, the morning sun’s rays battered the canvas, illuminating every surface inside. The next, a fog of darkness descended. Smokeshadows swept from every corner, haunting the floor around their boots like damned souls clawing their way out of Firekeeper’s pits, and surged until they engulfed the room in an endless veil of night.
A thrumming pulse of static energy enclosed them. Garrik’s shield—one lastpermanenteffort of protection, even from himself, before?—
“Get out, Thalon, before I rip yourstarsdamned head off.” A threat—a damning, deadly andrealthreat. Teetering on the edge of something animalistic, that thin tether to his faemanity was slipping. His voice, unrecognizable to everyone except his Shadow Order. Beast-like, a dragon’s roar, called from somewhere in the dark, demanding to be released.
And then, a goaded whisper. Inches from Garrik’s ear. “No.”
“Thalon—”
A gurgled choke. Garrik’s neck caved in, pulled back by a corded arm with flawless speed, restricting the air from entering his lungs. A palm drove his head forward, gripping tightly into his gray hair. Then Thalon kicked in his knees, forcing him onto the furs as his punishing grip around Garrik’s throat tightened.
Portals sphered around the High Prince’s hands and compressed his wrists, constraining them to his sides likethrumming, electrified shackles. The floor opened beneath him, swallowing his lower legs, ankles, and boots before contracting at his knees, as if taking the form of an embedded mighty redwood, its roots swallowed by the dirt below.
The only way to tame a beast was to first chain it. So Thalon did.
A pulsing, steady beat pounded in Garrik’s head. He could not move. Subdued as if some glorified, holy force—a Celestial gift—raged in Thalon’s veins and blessed him with unmeasured time.
“Do not touch me,” Garrik grated out.
Unmistakable turmoil rushed Thalon’s features as he towered behind him. An unbreakable pillar of a male that could not be moved or persuaded. His voice shook uncomfortably as he whispered, “Is this what they did to you in Galdheir?”
It was … nearly the most devastated he had ever heard his brother sound. He almost wanted to lean into it—a part of him cried out to try. But that venom inside his veins roared above it,demandingto turn that heartfelt rasp into bloodcurdling screams.
With a malicious thought, Smokeshadows initiated a defensive, slicing against the invisible barrier on Thalon’s skin, unsuccessfully attempting to curl around his arms and rip him away. But with each gasping breath in Garrik’s lungs, they grew weaker, consumed by the terrors ofthoseyears, as if allowing the Guardian to strangle their master. Forsaking him as he called out to them.
Thalon’s voice hardened then. “Forced you to your knees…”
The shadows in the tent feathered—began to wither. Garrik thrashed—thrashed?—
“Put you in chains…”
Every vein in his body pounded and bulged, fighting—fighting—to stay alive—because … because his brother was right. And that hold—that holdaround his neck …
