Page 61 of What Whispers in the Dark
There aretrigger warnings for this chapter.
Ezander scowled at the riverboat in front of them, watching his sister poised on Garrik’s arm as they floated by exclusive shops and fine eateries. His shoulders were taut, the same as his jaw. Those russet eyes drifted to Garrik—on the Savage Prince’s abdomen—and he suffered a long breath.
Alora saw grief settle in Ezander’s features. Longing, perhaps.
“Can you do something for me?” Ezander broke his silence, his attention unwavering from the way Garrik plucked his tunic—or on the way he flinched when Erissa’s hand flattened to his thigh before he forced her hand away.
Though it was painful to pull her own attention from her High Prince, Alora suffered a glance at Ezander, lifting an eyebrow in question.
The princeling hesitated. Then, through a harrowing exhale, said, “Ask”—Ezander shook his head, seemingly defeated before he continued—“…ask him about the letters,” and rubbed the back of his neck. “Please.”
It wasn’t her place to ask, but the words escaped her before she could reconsider. “How long ago did you send them?”
Erissa’s laugh sizzled across her skin like venom, drawing their attention to the boat in front of them.
Alora willed embers to stay dormant in her eyes, and instead, traced a finger along the crystal blue water when Ezander spoke again.
“I started the day after our High Queen … died.” He said the word as if even he didn’t believe it. As if what Garrik had said to him at dinner wasn’t news, that hedidknow what Magnelis had done, unlike the fabrications of her passing that were told to Elysian.
Alora swept her attention to him from the water trickling between her fingers, offering a sad smile. Encouragement to continue.
Eyes glassy, Ezander took it and offered, “I sent them for decades. Tried to tell him what I knew. What I had heard. He never answered. I visited the castle in invitation to Magnelis’s parties with Father and Kadamar’s court, though I never attended such events. From rumors, the entertainment was far too barbarous for my tastes. My father, like his Hunt, delighted in them, but I searched the castle hoping to find that Garrik wasonly avoiding me. That perhaps I could corner him in a stairwell or push him inside a room and block the door.”
He rubbed the back of his head and released a breathy chuckle. “Maybe lock him in the stables full of horse shit just so he wouldlistento me for only a moment.
“But every time, they discovered my wandering. A guardsman, Brennus, or Malik would see me back into Father’s wing and inform me thatHis Highnesswasn’t presently there. They all seemed a little too amused by the situation to be believed. And I eventually realized after years of searching that Garrik just wouldn’t see me. That they were only extending excuses that he no doubt had ordered upon them.”
Had the boat not been beneath her, surely Alora would have drowned by how her head was spinning.
Though the Blackstone Mountain air was frigid, waving across the river and High City of Karanagar above, it didn’t compare to the glacial cold outside a wall of stacked straw bales inside a wintry barn. Didn’t compare to the ice in her veins when Garrik had told her about such gatherings. About the agony her High Prince had endured while Magnelis and his subjects enjoyed the …entertainmentthat was him.
Garrik hadn’t avoided Ezander at all, but the princeling didn’t know that.
Ezander hadn’t known that he was being tortured inside the throne room and in a dungeon when he had written those letters. Garrik was the barbarous entertainment Ezander spoke of. And she couldn’t stop the thought: If Ezander had walked into one of those parties, would he have saved Garrik? Saved him from those weapons?Her? Magnelis?
Alora felt as if her stomach would hollow out entirely.
Save him from what she assumed was becoming aprizefor Ladomyr?
Ezander’s lip trembled as he interrupted her thoughts. “I didn’t have a hand in killing Queen Airathel.”
She wanted to believe him?—
A wall of soldiers in purple cloaks and metal armor crescented around her. Cobblestones bit into her knees and chest as dozens of boots swarmed the street.
No. Not a street. She was certain of that.
Because as a Raven’s hand gripped her hair, his nails digging into her scalp so terribly she could feel them splitting the skin, and forced her upright … those were Castle Galdheir’s walls and turrets towering over her.
Alora blinked, tears forming in her eyes from staring too long, realizing it … it was a memory. Not even hers. As her eyes flicked to the boat not far up river, a tendril of shadow brushed along the borders of her mind. Right through the door in her wall of flames, which she kept open for him.
For Garrik.
Her shoulders strained—not hers, but Garrik’s—as a terrible pressure sawed into his wrists.
A muffled noise carried from far,farabove. Rustling on smooth stones. Scuffs.
Garrik snapped his head up?—
