Crown of Blood and Ruin: A dark fairy tale romance (The Broken Kingdoms Book 3)

My friend,

I fear the battle is lost. Our refuge is filled to the brink. Eli has made his demands. I do not know what more I can do. If I refuse him, my sons, my husband, and my daughter will die.

But if I accept, they still suffer, and my soul dies. Perhaps death for us all will be sweeter. At least we shall dine with the gods together. I know you said we must live—to save this land—we must live, but you ask too much.

I will not watch them suffer. And I will not be a betrayer’s and false king’s consort.

By refusing him it will be the end of the Ferus rule. Do not mistake me, I will see to it we are all dead by morning before they get the chance to torture a hair of my family.

Farewell my friend. Be well. Be safe.

—Lili

Numb. Cold. Nothing.

I stared blankly at the velvet sky above me, softly rocking with the movement of the cart we’d used to travel to the encampment.

Where I should rage, I was silent.

Where I should cry, tears ran dry.

I recognized faces of those I loved around me, but only Valen’s face filled my head.

Part of me hated him. Part of me mourned for him. Part of me loved him so fiercely I thought I might break in two. But I said nothing, did nothing, simply stared at the soundless stars above my head, alone and numb.

Cold.

Nothing.

When the cart rolled through the walls of Ruskig, a hand rested on my shoulder.

“Elise.” My gaze turned to Tor. He would know, he would understand. His hjӓrta was lost to him too. A crack of pain jolted my heart from its stillness and tears brimmed in my eyes, blurring his face. Tor squeezed my shoulder and shook his head. “No. Not yet. Not here. Keep your head, My Queen, and think this through.”

How Torsten knew what I needed to hear I could only guess. With a quick swipe of my hand, I buried the sting of emotion away and rose from the back of the cart. My mind whirled. What steps came next? How did we get to Valen? Where did we strike?

“One action at a time, Elise.” Now Halvar’s voice melted through my silent hysteria.

“One action.” I cracked several knuckles. Every eye turned to me. Haggard, desperate, frightened folk looked to me now.

The pressure was crushing.

I nodded my head at no one, eyes on the back of the cart. Herja Ferus was alive. She rocked a sleeping child in her arms. Her eyes were swollen from quiet tears. She was weak, too thin; she shivered in a thin linen nightdress.

I licked my lips and faced Halvar. “Take the princess into the longhouse. Get her food, get them warm.”

Halvar nodded his approval. “As you say.”

I quickened my step in the same direction. Soon enough my flanks were marked by Siv, Brant, Ari, and the entire Guild of Shade but for Halvar who remained with Kari and Herja.

“Keep everyone who is not part of the king’s inner council from the longhouse,” I told Stieg and Casper.

They bowed their heads and rushed to the doors, barking at curious folk who came looking for answers. I would need to prepare our people soon enough. We’d fight. We’d bring war to Ravenspire. How and when, I didn’t know, but more than I knew I had to breathe, I knew war drew near.

Ari held the door for me, and I stormed into the great hall.

“I need a moment,” I snapped, and hurried to the bedroom.

Alone, my hand pressed to heart. I gasped through a sob as it ripped from my throat. Still on wooden shelves were Valen’s clothes. I grabbed one of his black tunics and held it to my face, breathing in the woodsmoke and freshness of him. His battle axes—he’d left them to avoid being recognized—were polished and set neatly on a table near our bed. My fingers traced the curved blades.

Once I’d despised these weapons, now I wanted nothing more than to see him here, tying them to his belt, laughing, or teasing. Anything so long as he was here.

“A woman told me to bring her in here.”

I whipped around. Herja stood at the fur covering the door. Her little daughter’s head on her shoulder. With furious swipes, I rid the tears off my cheeks, and I gestured to the bed. “Yes, here. Take this for you both.”

Up close I noted the similarities of Herja to Sol and Valen. She was not Night Folk, so her ears curved like mine, but her skin was a soft chestnut like theirs. Her hair like summer berries in the sunlight, and her eyes like tilled soil.

Her cheeks were sunken, and shadows circled beneath her eyes, but Herja Ferus had a fierce beauty about her.

“Clothes.” I fumbled around the shelves of my own dresses and tunics. Herja stood at least half a head taller than me, with longer arms and legs. I gathered the longest dress I had and placed it on the table, hands shaking. “I’ll . . . I’ll find more. And food. You should eat. I’ll get you—”

“Elise.” Herja’s hand stopped my fumbling and rambling. “We will get him back.”

My jaw pulsed. Heat flooded my neck, making a slow, tenuous crawl to my face. “He wanted to go to Ravenspire. I want to scream at him for I don’t know if he did this on purpose.”

“Why would Valen want to go to Ravenspire?”

My body trembled, but I was as stone. “The Sun Prince. We believe he has found something, but . . . we had plans to bring the Sun Prince to us, not put Valen behind the walls of Ravenspire.”

“Plans often change. We would’ve been slaughtered had he not done what he did.”

I didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want the rationale of a king who made the best—perhaps the only—choice for his people and family. I wanted him here to shout and scream and hold. Alive and warm. Safe.

I turned away from the bed and stared at the stars as if they might hold some sort of answer.

“You are Timoran,” Herja said after a long pause.

“Does it offend you?”

“Do you love my brother for his heart and not his crown?”

Hot tears sprang to my eyes. I bid them away, but they resisted violently. “Valen Ferus stole my heart and soul before I knew his true name. He could be a pauper and my heart would bleed as fiercely for him as it does now. Truth be told, I’d prefer the pauper to Ravenspire endlessly seeking to separate us because he is king.”

“King.” She scoffed with a bit of disbelief. “How long has he held the throne?”

“Since the beginnings of spring.”

Herja’s face shadowed, a groove formed between her brows as if a thought pummeled her head. It was a look gone in an instant, fast enough I wondered if I’d imagined it. When I looked again, a faint grin played with her lips. “To your question, I am not offended by the blood in your veins.”

“I am the great-granddaughter of King Eli.” I didn’t understand why I spewed all the rotten pieces of my lineage. Perhaps from a desperate need to have the brittle pieces exposed, a desire to hide nothing, to be accepted by the only Ferus I had with me.

“Ah. Am I supposed to hate you because of this? Is that what you’re getting at?” She shook her head. “I suppose I should despise my mother then. She was his most cherished friend, after all. Probably knew the bastard better than anyone. Oh, and she was Timoran. How horribly selfish of her.”

Three. There were three sharp-tongued Ferus’s in my life now. A smile would’ve come if my heart were not a pile of ash in my chest, but her dismissal of my fears helped ease the tension cramping my muscles in knots.

“This is what matters to me: if you love my brother as you say you do, then I will trust you to lead us back to him and my son with every beat of my heart.”

I blinked, unsure what to say. No words seemed fitting. I said nothing.

She turned away, tucked her daughter beneath the furs, and pressed a gentle kiss to the child’s forehead. Herja paused, stroking the girl’s cheek for a few breaths.

“I’ve only been able to kiss her to sleep a few times in her entire life.”

My heart tightened in my chest. “They kept you from her?”

“From both my children. Perhaps once every ten days I would get a few cherished moments with them. To be able to sit here beside her and hold her until she sleeps—I hardly know what to do.”

I held my stomach, eyes closed. “I’m sorry about your boy.”

Herja stiffened. “He is too bold. So like his father.” She glanced over her shoulder, an empty smile on her lips. “Their father is not what you might think.”

A patron. A rapist. If not that, what would he be? Where was he? I did not have a chance to ask the questions or press at all before the fur over the door was pulled back.

Tor and Halvar stepped inside the room.

Herja stood and rushed to them. Her arms hooked around both their necks. “I finally have a moment to breathe. Let me look at you both. By the gods, I never thought I’d see you alive.”

She kissed Halvar’s cheek. He grinned at her like a brother might. Herja paused at Tor, her palm on his cheek. “Torsten. Sol . . .”

“Yes, I know. I was just as surprised,” Tor said, voice rough.

Herja let out a quivering breath and embraced him again.

“It is good to have you returned to us, Viper,” Halvar said.

A raspy chuckle burst from the princess. “Hells, how long has it been since I’ve heard that name?”

Halvar looked to me. “We never knew when Herja might leap from the shadows and attack, all to practice and prove she was the greater fighter. We started calling her Viper.”

I forced a smile, but as delightful as the reunion might’ve been, my heart was hardened and scabrous and cold.

“Elise,” Tor said softly. “I understand this is trying, but you are queen and needed. The council is waiting.”

By the skies, I wished Valen were here. His presence added a strength to me. One I would need to summon now. For him. For our people. For Etta. I did not bother washing my face of the blood or kohl running down my cheeks and followed them through the doorway.

Frenzied faces filled the hall. Elder Klok held up his arms trying to calm all the shouting and desperate opinions on how to proceed. Stieg and Casper stood beside Brant, Mattis, and Kari near my doorway. They stiffened when I stepped into the room, looking to me for guidance. I came up dry.

The only person who seemed at ease was Ari. He drank in the seat beside Valen’s.

At first glance, the former king might’ve appeared wholly unbothered by the events of the night, but if one took the time to look closer, they’d notice the untouched, full drinking horn at the king’s seat. As if he might come and indulge at any moment. They’d notice the way Ari slumped over, losing himself in his cups.

“We need to act now!”

My stomach twisted at the voice. Stave, red-faced and furious, shouted back at Elder Klok when the old man told them to be still.

“We will not be going anywhere tonight.” I surprised myself when my voice carried over the madness.

Stave’s slate eyes pummeled me against the wall. A wild, seething frustration marred his face. He held me there, locked in his disdain for several breaths before looking back to Klok. “We should act now, or we risk losing the king to Ravenspire once again. The princess is a warrior, she can lead us—”

“The queen,” Ari muttered through a hiccup. “I think you mean the queen.”

From the corner of my eye, Herja came into view. She leaned against the wall, silently watching the conflict. Would she push me aside and lead here if enough of the people wished it?

Valen’s request was for me to raise these people. I did not know his sister, nor her desires toward the crown. But while Stave started his rant about action again, Herja remained silent. Her eyes landed on me, a soft smile on her lips. Almost like she wondered what I might do next.

Stave narrowed his gaze at Ari, then flicked his eyes to me. Bold. Foolish. “I serve the Ferus line. Their blood brings life to this land, they are the gods-chosen to heal Etta. Not a royal of our enemies.”

For too many months I’d allowed Stave and his hateful stares bubble under my skin, adding to the layers of inadequacy I already carried for the crown. Tonight, my blood burned in such anger the room shaded in a crimson heat.

Taken in a bit of madness, I hardly noticed the dagger in my hand, but I let it fly. The point sailed the short distance between us and lodged deep into the wall, a hairsbreadth from Stave’s ear. I crossed the room, lost in the same maelstrom of rage, and shoved another knife I carried across the small of my back against the soft skin of his throat.

“Enough, or I cut out your ability to speak.” Each word peeled from the back of my throat. “I will hear your dissension no more; it is well past time for you to choose your place and serve your queen.”

The room went silent.

For the first time Stave looked at me with a degree of reverence, maybe fear, but he clenched his jaw.

I pulled the knife back, a line of fresh blood beneath his chin, and I faced the stunned council.

Except Ari. He showed no stun, and once again grinned through a long drink of his horn.

“I am the queen of Etta, and my crown is not up for negotiation. You stand with me, or you are nothing more than a snake in the grass, and I will crush your head.” I turned back to Stave, voice harsh and fierce. “Disloyalty ends now! We will act, we will burn Ravenspire to the ground if needed, but tell me now, do you stand with your Timoran queen who bleeds for this land and it’s king? Or do you see nothing but your enemy in my face?”

One breath. Two. More. Tension gathered like a storm on the horizon.

“Bow to the queen!” Halvar roared. He took the knee first, Tor following straightaway. They hung their heads, fists crossed over their hearts.

It was a wave of kneeling. Mattis, Siv. Next, Kari, Brant, the Guild of Shade.

Herja’s smile widened. “I stand with the Ferus line the same as the fool in the back.”

I hated the idea of killing Valen’s sister, but if she betrayed us now, I would not hesitate. When it came to freeing him, I could not afford any added risks.

But Herja turned her smirk to Stave. “I stand with my sister, Elise Ferus. The hjӓrta of my brother. I would give my loyalty to no one else. And you are fortunate you have such a forgiving queen. Had you spoken to me in such a way, the point of that knife would be pierced into the back of your throat, not a slab of wood.”

At that, Herja lowered to her knee. It took no time for the rest of the hall to bend the knee. Stave lowered his head in, what I hoped, was a bit of shame.

After the room spent a few heartbeats on their knees, I embraced the fire in my blood and nodded. “Rise. And let us begin.”

I barked orders for the council to gather our weapons, to prepare our warriors for battle. A new wave of confidence took hold. The frightening strength Valen often showed came out in me, and I reveled in it. Without a sure plan, I would not see my husband again. And I refused to accept that outcome.

By the hells, I refused to accept it.

“Halvar,” I said.

“My Queen?” His voice was playful, but attentive.

“You will lead us in our strategy. Work with Brant, Stieg, and Mattis—develop a plan of formation around Ravenspire. Where we strike, what weapons to use, what bleeding time of day we move. I want any detail marked and noted. I want every blade of grass on the lawns of the castle covered.”

Halvar dipped his chin.

I had one final request. “Ari, Casper. You will board a ship tonight. Sail to our friends in the east with haste. Use water fury until you cannot stand, until you cannot breathe, I don’t care. But get to Junius without delay.”

Ari rose at once. “What message do we deliver?”

I had already started scratching my directive on a battered piece of parchment, but as I wrote, I repeated the missive out loud. “Tell her we need them now. Tell her, we need the one she calls Nightrender. His fate is here with us, so our battle might finally end . . . as his begins.”