Page 46 of What Whispers in the Dark
Then another memory. It swept in like a hurricane wind, and he was helpless to defend against it.
“Are you out of yourminds?” Everlyn growled, slamming her hand to the table and drawing the attention of twelve Ravens. The tavern candles burned low, casting the place in harrowing light. Her voice lowered as she curled her palms into fists.
Sitting, her purple cloak pooled on the floor beneath her chair. “Unleash Michael, husband. You are sworn to the High King.” She spoke to Thalon, then swiped her gaze to Aiden and Jade. “You two are not to encourage his reckless heroics.”
Thalon said nothing as Jade’s lip curled back. A look of death that inspired thoughts of corpses on a battlefield from none other than her blade. “He’s been down there for ten months.Ten!”
Reclining in his chair and chewing on a toothpick, Aiden winked at a female Raven, who seemed a little too interested in the seething females around him.
He plucked the twig out and dropped his elbows to the table, regarding the firestorm about to rage, and warned, “Might want to keep it down, loves.” He gestured with his toothpick to the table behind Thalon. “Wandering eyes make for stormy tides.”
Jade ignored him and quietly snapped at Thalon’s wife, “I smell his blood every fucking day. We’re getting him outtonight.”
They didn’t.
They hadn’t gotten him out. Not that night. Not the three decades after. Not ever.
The Garrik that escaped the dungeons was not a creature born of that world. He was Made. Made for Magnelis. Controlled and imprisoned until he walked into Thalon’s Raven tent and unveiled himself as returned as the shattered pieces they left him to hold together.
Thalon tenderly brushed the sweat-soaked hair from Garrik’s forehead and whispered, “How do we save him, Everlyn?” With severed hope, Thalon removed his hand and dropped his chin to his chest, listening to the sound of Garrik’s breathing.
Wind drifted through the tent doors as if in answer. A warmth that carried from the crackling fire outside. Thalon angled his head when it didn’t stop, angled his head to watch the doors rustle open to frame a face.
Her white hair flowed in the breeze. Some strands tickled her drawn face. Those blue eyes were dark as she spoke to someone—he guessed Jade.
Brows pinched, he watched as that question charged through him.How do we save him?
Again, wind. Again, those doors fluttered wider.
And he knew.
Finding the Mystics in Alynthia was supposed to be seamless—Garrik had done it a thousand times. Leave the legion on the outskirts, dawn inside, and convince them to join the treason marching through Elysian to overthrow the usurper High King, Magnelis.
Only this time, it wasn’t so simple.
It waspainful.
A pain that he would inflict on every damned thing in his path.
This bonus chapterproceeds Chapter Fifty and the events that occurred moments after Alora burned Garrik during her panic-induced anxiety attack in the tavern fight. Garrik left shortly after she did and dawned into the mountains where the Savage Prince encounters Ravens.
There aretrigger warnings for this chapter.
Blood dripped like a haunting melody from Garrik’s sword. The iron taste overwhelmed the air. One by one, the cold metal of silver armor and strips of purple fabric littered the dirt like his own personal battlefield.
Twelve remained.
But not for long.
Everything felt numb. Like he didn’t exist in this realm. Like walking in the Middleworld, between space and time.
Thalon panted at his back, only having portaled alongside him as Garrik relieved the last Raven of his head on the ground.
Garrik swung and thrust his sword, hoping—pleading—that he would feel something again. Something other than?—
“Garrik.” Thalon’s voice was realms away. Nothing but a muddled scream underwater. “Garrik,” he screamed again.
But Garrik teetered on the edge of reality, that tether he could control. His eyes wholly black, void of all light, he scanned the trees, the mountain, and every cruel star in the sky. Entirely colorless, his vision was a prism of grayscale inside his abyss for eyes.
