Curse of Shadows and Thorns: A Dark Fantasy Romance (The Broken Kingdoms Book 1)

The Guild of Shade brought the horses taken from Ravenspire previously. Between the three of them and Siv, the guards from Jarl’s unit were nothing but meat and blood as we abandoned the shell of the Lysander manor. Siv took her own horse, but Halvar placed me in front of him.

Legion and Tor had already disappeared into the night.

Halvar sped us at a difficult pace. My body ached, but I said nothing. I’d not complain when they’d risked life and limb to save me.

“What’s happening to him?” I shouted against the wind. “Halvar. What is wrong with him?”

“He’s changing. Once he found you missing and when Siv told him you’d returned to Mellanstrad, he didn’t take the dose he needed. Just left.”

“Needed for what?”

Bevan said he needed the potion, that he could not skip a single dose, and he’d abandoned it to chase after me. To save my neck from my own recklessness.

“I pray to the gods you don’t need to find out.” Halvar kicked the flanks of the horse and picked up the pace.

I closed my eyes, braced, and didn’t say anything more. When fear should be there, all I could think of were moments when the Wraith was Legion. When he sat quietly and read with me in the library. When he kissed my missing fingertips after I told him how I lost them—the pain in his eyes. How it made sense now.

I feared him, true, but whatever was destroying him made me ache for him more.

The ride was endless. Branches pummeled my skin as Halvar pounded the horse through briar-tangled roads, on uneven paths, overgrown with roots and rocks. And every moment he needed to pull back and slow our pace. I cursed the delay.

He took us to the same alehouse, the trellis I’d used on the side of the house still broken, and only a few lanterns flickered in the windows. The instant the horse came to a stop, Halvar kicked his leg over and dropped to the ground. He said nothing before darting inside, a knife in his hand.

My heart had grown so violent it felt like it might break out. Siv’s horse snorted behind me, gasping from the strenuous ride. Though my body protested and had molded and stiffened to the shape of the withers of the horse, I forced my leg to swing around.

Something smashed inside the alehouse. Wood snapping, I thought. Then a roar of pain that shook birds from the trees. My palms quaked as I tethered the horse to a post near a trough.

Another cry of pain and I snatched Siv’s hand when she came to my side.

Both of us, wide eyed, stared at the open door of the alehouse. I heard men shouting. Halvar cursed.

Legion needed help, but at my first step, Siv pulled back. “Elise, no. We . . . we don’t know what’s happening.”

“He’s suffering!” What more did she need to know? I tried to shake off her hand, giving her the choice to stay outside, but she didn’t let go. Together we stepped into the alehouse.

A grisly scene played out.

The aleman had a two-pronged fork in his hand and kept jabbing the air at the Guild of Shade—no—at Legion.

With a fist, Legion knocked another table, cried out, and doubled over as if he had no control over his own body. Tor wrestled with him and used his knife to cut off Legion’s tunic until his bare back showed. “A little longer. Hang on a little longer.”

Legion shouted hatred and pain and fear in reply. Halvar had gathered rope and chains and danced around when more furniture reeled across the room.

A hand went to my mouth as Halvar lunged and wrapped one of the chains around Legion’s neck. The Blood Wraith roared his rage and swung at his Shade, but Halvar tugged on the chain, so Legion was wrenched to his back. Both Tor and Halvar leapt on his arms and pulled them out to his sides, then tied the rope around his wrists and secured him to the ale counter. Dark veins coated Legion’s skin. Like wicked, gnarled roots sprouting up his neck and face, they reached for his blood-red eyes.

Halvar shackled Legion’s neck, choking him. Hurting him.

“Leave him be!” I screamed.

The distraction lifted Tor’s gaze, loosened his grip on the rope to Legion’s arm, and earned a strike to the face from the Wraith. Tor spit blood.

“Damn you!” Tor raged, using the chains to pin down Legion’s throbbing arms. The muscle seemed too swollen for his skin. Sweat and trails of blood drenched Legion’s face, his mouth. Even the beds of his nails looked black and bloody. “Sven! Take them away!”

For a somber man, Tor shouted a great deal now.

The aleman dug his fingers into my arm, then Siv’s, and dragged us—stronger than he looked—to the stairs. As I passed, I caught Legion’s gaze. The glow of the Wraith’s eyes, hells red, black veins around the sockets, his mouth, and his temples.

When he locked on me, he sneered. He snapped his teeth. An animalistic desire in his eyes. No mistake, he’d devour me should I step any closer.

Stunned, taking me to the garret proved easier for Sven. Below, the battle waged and the aleman practically threw us into the room.

“No matter whatcha hear,” he grumbled. “You don’t leave this room. If you want to keep your heads, you don’t leave. Not until the sun.”

At that he turned and slammed the door. Over the roars of agony, the bolt clicked.

Rogue Agitator and shamed princess clung to each other in the darkened attic room. Shivering, jumping at every shriek, groan, and snarl.

“What is he?” Siv breathed out.

“I don’t know.”

An ailment. This was no ailment.

This was a bleeding curse.

For hours I listened to Legion’s raspy curses at his guild. Glass broke. Tables crashed.

I tried to visualize what was happening below me, but every imagining didn’t match the sounds. The havoc was inconceivable.

Siv wrapped herself in a quilt. She shuddered and closed her eyes at each crash and cry. Torture enough to hear it, I let tears fall for Legion who was enduring it.

Then, the cries shifted. Not his voice exactly, something rough and brisk and deadly, but buried in it all was his deep timbre.

“Please,” he begged. “No more. Please.”

A piercing, guttural sound followed.

I swatted at the new wave of tears and bolted to my feet. Why would they hurt him? He was begging them to stop. When would it end? Couldn’t they see it was enough!

“Please!” His broken voice shattered me.

I was out the door in an instant. Siv hissing my name at my back. They wouldn’t torture him, not anymore. He couldn’t bear it—selfishly, part of the truth was I couldn’t bear it.

In the aleroom, Sven nursed a gash on his wrist, and Halvar leaned, exhausted, over the back of a chair. Only Tor remained standing, and he slashed a knife back and forth. It glistened in blood.

Bile jumped to my mouth. By the gods he was carving Legion’s back, his arms, his shoulders. On his knees, arms flayed and in chains, Legion could not fight him. He simply had to endure the ruthless jabs of a blade in his body.

Blood pooled around his knees, his boots, his skin . . . everywhere.

“Stop! Stop it!” I cried and made a mad dash to him.

Halvar jumped in my path, his arms around me, but he wasn’t the one who stopped me. Legion whipped his head around and I turned to stone. My blood went cold and heavy. Teeth, the size of my thumbs, curved over Legion’s lips. A ring of yellow swallowed up part of the glowing red in his gaze. His fingernails, on those hands that loved gently, were jagged, pointed, and an ugly, rotted black.

Fear pierced me when instead of the cries of pain and pleas to stop, this face, this creature, grinned a vicious kind and laughed. The rumble of it shook me to my soul.

“Elise you must leave,” Halvar begged. I’d never heard him beg and it shook me to hear him so desperate and pained. Blood had dried in his fingernails, his hands pink and dark with the stains of Legion’s wounds.

“Why do you do this to him?” I sobbed.

The lips of the creature curled at my pain, like it reveled in it.

“Get her away,” Tor said without looking at me.

Halvar dragged me away when the beast who’d taken hold of Legion’s body tried to rip the chains from the hooks that held him fast and in place. He shouted for me to return, shouted terrible things in words I could hardly understand. He wanted to shred me apart. The creature yearned for blood and begged for it until the pathetic pleading returned, drowned out as Halvar pulled me back up the stairs.

“Halvar,” I said and ripped my hand away. “What are you doing to him?”

“He is cursed with bloodlust,” Halvar said breathlessly. “He must have blood when the change happens. If we do not do this and control how much blood spills, then he will tear himself apart, or . . . others. Go. Please. It will end at the sun.”

I didn’t argue with Halvar. I was too sickened, too discomposed to imagine seeing Legion in such a state ever again. It was a curse. A vicious, cruel curse. He relived it, told me he did. Each last moon, he’d said. Every twenty-two days, Legion would succumb to this, and my heart cracked. But what drew it out before the last moon?

I didn’t enter the room, not yet. He was chained and controlled, so I slid down the wall and hugged my knees to my chest.

If I had any brains, I’d run. When his mind went right again, I doubt he’d pursue me. Logically I knew I couldn’t help him. How could anyone without fury save him from this curse?

But to leave him would mean leaving a piece of me behind.

It had happened outside my control, but I cared about Legion Grey. Not the monster downstairs, but the man inside it. The man I knew.

He lived each day knowing this horror would take him again and again, yet when he’d been with me, he smiled, he teased, he comforted. I shuddered and let my face burrow in the tops of my knees. He could be violent and vicious, but even if he’d been pretending, the entire time he served as my vow negotiator he fought for my needs and wants.

A good man lived underneath the lies.

This beast was not him; this beast was what he’d sought me out to help him with. My stomach dropped. When you see the beast within, let him in to let him go.

The tips of my fingers prickled with a rush of blood. The witch girl. She’d said it twice, she’d never written it. By the gods, she’d mentioned choice the same as everyone else. Choose Legion, the Blood Wraith, a beast.

Let him in to let him go.

Curses were things of legend, certainly I didn’t have any knowledge how they were undone, but could it be so simple?

Choose him . . .

To free him.