Page 63 of What Whispers in the Dark
The High King carried no remorse, no inkling of fatherly affection, as his wicked mouth opened and spoke to his heir all but dying on the ground. “After today, he will be compliant.” And swept his eyes to the gardens. Where Airathel had been thrown. Where Ezander’s title ofbrotherdied with her. “He will not disappoint me again. Isn’t that right,prince?”
Garrik made a sound of hate—of damning, cursed hate.
Magnelis’s face didn’t move. Frightening calm cloaked his features. “Ladomyr,” he drawled. The wind tousled his long black hair as his ruby and amethyst spiked crown glinted hisdivine authority. “I believe the whelp cannot hear me from so far away.” He flicked his wrist. “Fetch him.”
Like Jade’s fiery hair dancing in the sea-misted breeze, the trees flanking the castle walls came to life. Between laden stones, roots shot from the ground, snapping them into pieces.
Soldiers backed away as branches snaked around Garrik’s torso.
They squeezed.
And squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.
Squeezed until he couldn’t breathe, and lifted him from the stones.
He barely registered soaring through the sky. Barely recognized the face of the male hovering in front of him. Or any of the faces on that balcony, save for one. Before Magnelis got what he wanted from him and Ladomyr’s magic dropped him back on the ground, the last face he saw was Ezander’s. Hiding in the shadows like a fuckingcoward.
The flaxen flecks of the princeling’s russet irises met sapphire. But as Alora blinked out of Garrik’s memory, something prickled the hairs on her arms, possibly on Ezander’s, too, because they both solemnly turned their gazes to Erissa and Garrik’s riverboat nearing a curve, drawing them away from the multitude of shops and docks.
Silver swirled with blackened abyss, staring back at them.
And somehow … she felt his pain screaming across the river.
Alora shivered as Ezander met those eyes full of death and said low enough that only Alora and Garrik’s minds could hear, “There are letters I wrote but never sent waiting in my chambers.”
Permission, an invitation, that, by the way Garrik rigidly turned away, fell on deaf ears.
Despite it, Ezander finished, “If he wants to know the truth…” He sighed in defeat. “Just … please. Ask him about the letters.”
That memory still clung to her like ash. The flashes of scorching heat, a clouded face in pain, sonic hissing and deafening sounds of ruination, then … nothing. Nothing but the blank void that washisface—where it should have been.
Not even a name to cry out for, to cherish on her lips, to carry in her heart besides that terrible ache in her chest. The one that felt like some sort of curse she would never be freed from.
But that damned fucking memory that lingered … repeating over and over and fucking over when she least expected it to surface again …
When it came, she couldn’t avoid it.
So, Jade put that hurt and pain and anger into the only thing thateverchased it away.
Violence. Terrible, scathing, venomous violence.
This bonus chapteris nestled inside Chapter Forty-eight, where Garrik and Alora dawn to Erissa’s bedchamber to finish Aiden and Alora’s previous search for Blood before they were nearly caught. Thalon and Aiden stayed behind in the garden, and Jade, having been training with Deimon, needed something else to distract her—to ease the torment constricting her heart and mind.
Though she doesn’t believe she wants it—evendeservesit—Jade realizes she will never be alone again. And somehow… that means more than she expected.
“Want to tell me what’s wrong, love?” Aiden held up his palms, prepared to defend a deadly blow. His shadow danced on the ground as if it were a mirage in the heat of day, faintlyfluttering over the moonlit garden grasses where she watched Garrik and Alora dawn from not long before.
But Jade wasn’t looking at Aiden. Not at Thalon or his Wingborne captain, Deimon, either, who she had sparred with for the last hour. Normally, she enjoyed looking at a male with leathery wings, but tonight …
That royal garden wasn’t a garden.
The shrubbery landscaped into a circle didn’t resemble the makeshift arena Aiden and Thalon claimed it to be.
No, tonight those towering castle turrets, flickering torches, pines, sculpted hedges, and rows of flowers morphed into something far more haunting.Terrifying.
A coliseum. But not justanycoliseum.
The one from her memories. The one she was reborn in. The one teeming with males shouting their bloodlust as females lost more than just their limbs but their lives—theirsouls—too.
