Page 42 of What Whispers in the Dark
Against the canvas, shadows of their sentries patrolling danced in the flickering glow of firesites as he stepped to the foot of the bed and began unlacing Garrik’s boots. Doing this minor thing now because he couldn’t help him so many years ago—when he wasforbiddento do a thing. Thalon fought the urge to curse that command, but instead, one by one, pulled Garrik’s boot from his heel and off his feet before he settled them on the floor.
It would have to do for the night. Garrik wouldn’t want his clothing tended to. Wouldn’t want to be subjected to more touch, even unconscious, and Thalon wouldn’t undress him without Garrik’s consent. He’d make certain to change the filthy bedding in the morning.
Pausing at the foot of the bed, Thalon scanned his High Prince lying there as he had the night before—when Nevilier had spat him out of his portal like he was nothing more than a heap of spoiled meat to be discarded. Thalon could not stop the memories invading. And just as then, he couldn’t do much more than stand there and watch over Garrik until he awoke.
The bruises, the damn handprints, on his neck were gone now, but the memory remained. He’d seen those too—unsure if they were from Magnelis or …her—and had covered Garrik with the collar of his battle leathers so no one else would see.
But he always saw.
Always.
And he had vowed on his every last Earned to be there for Garrik when the castle left him with new nightmares he’d never discuss. That’s why he did what he did in Garrik’s tent earlier… Why he couldn’t allow Garrik to suffer alone after seeing his nightmares reign while he sat in his chair… Why he’d pushed the fight.
Unleash Michael on them all.Thalon sealed his eyes and allowed wrath to flow through his Guardian veins. He’d call upon his entire House—the entirety of Tarrent-Garren Keep—and wage an apocalyptic war on every hand that harmed his brother. Brimstoned vengeance melted deeper in his soul than the forges of gold in his territories’ mountain, and hotter than that precious metal could ever boil.
He could nearly hear it now; the sound Garrik’s body made as it hit the meadow floor. His lifeless body. How he’d heard and seen the same horrors decades past in the torture chambers of Galdheir. But he’d only been on the outside… His memories werenothingcompared to what Garrik had endured and suffered. What he lived with, haunting him every moment of every day.
Because of that, Thalon never faulted Garrik for these drunken nights. He’d face damnation before ever casting judgment for the way Garrik survived. Thalon would always carry him home in the hope that someday … the Garrik they all knew would return. That … that he would smile again.
Live again …
He’d seen more life in the eyes of corpses lining battlefields.
Something wet slipped down Thalon’s cheek. He wasn’t ashamed when it trailed down his neck and burrowed under the leather of his vest and white tunic. Wasn’t ashamed as the next followed. And the next. A parade of anguish for his brother held captive by chains he wouldn’t allow them to see.
Thalon sat on the edge of Garrik’s bed and dropped his elbows to his knees, his face to his palms. His chest caved in as he said to the silence, “I don’t know what else to do.”
Somehow, speaking it aloud… Hurt worse than losing his honor. His Earned. Hurt worse than beingdamnedfor all eternity.
There was nothing hecoulddo. Life had been ripped from Garrik five decades past. Never returned to him. And each day Thalon was forced to watch as the tormented, lifeless parts of him bled out until one day there would be nothing left and Garrik suffered his final breath.
And he could donothing!
Powerless—powerless!
Shadows coiled around his defeated shoulders. Draped around him until he mistook them for another’s arm embracing him. The … same way Everlyn used to hold him. The way he used to cradle her in the nights, where it was only sorrow and savage thoughts of bloodshed to get Garrik out. When they couldn’t do anything more than pray and hope andobeyas their stomachs churned at the smell of his blood pounding at the underground doors below the castle. When they were ordered to stand guard over the prisoners.
When they were forced to hear Garrik’s screams.
An ache wrapped around his Guardian heart andsqueezed.
He couldn’t stop himself from twisting around and dropping his face to Garrik’s neck, from cradling him with his arms, a palm to the back of Garrik’s sweat-drenched head, as emotion clawed out from his chest. In the silence of his High Prince’stent, Thalon made a wet sound in his throat. Strangled.I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help him, Everlyn.
She had always held the answers. A better warrior than him. Far more strong-headed and from the ancestral House of healers inmindsand bodies. She would know what to do.
Maybe it was the sorrow or the mere thought of her name, but a flutter like the sweet smell of first rain, the first glimpse of dawn’s pastel colors, or the shards of rays from the morning sun, whispered in the silence.
My sweet protector.
Thalon choked on the air in his throat. He waited long enough to convince himself demons were playing a scheme when that voice like warmth and sunlight and home, like flying through a cloudless sky, breathed,You love him just as you have been. As we always have.
“Eh—Ev,” he sobbed into Garrik’s neck. Sobbed as his hold on him grew tighter.Everlyn… Ev…“I just want to see him smile again. To see him not suffering.Maker, please.If we could just go back. If we could go back—” To when she was alive. To when Garrik was alive.
And Thalon gave himself over to it. That deep-seated anguish that who they were and what they had wasgone.Gave himself over to that weapon that tore him apart every time Garrik’s eyes dulled. Every time he froze at the sight of flames or heard the crack of a whip. Every time his stare was kingdoms away, haunted. Each moment his brother flinched, and for a fleeting, terrified, torturous second, recoiled from a breath of touch.
Thalon let that anguish drown him as deep as the chasm his tears ruptured from.
His body trembled.
