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

The night was eerily still. Once we stepped through the archway it seemed we were cut off from the rest of the world. I could no longer see the lights at Castle Ravenspire, nor smell the cinnamon from Lyx, only this place with its musty earth and damp grass.

I gawked as we passed beneath the legs of an ancient jotunn giant made of dark granite. The symbols were beautiful and heady with old beliefs. Night Folk were honored here. Amongst the gods were different folk carved from stone. Some with curled horns on their brows, others with round eyes and triple jointed fingers. Some with delicate wings. I touched the pointed ear of a pixie girl staring into the basin of a stone fountain. A sense of despondency tightened in my chest.

Old Etta must’ve been wonderous. Night Folk, Ettans, maybe even the gods, walked among each other.

How far we’d come from it all.

“Elise,” Legion said, interrupting my thoughts. “We will stand watch. But if royal blood is needed to open the way . . .”

I glanced at the burial mounds and nodded. “I’ll start going through them.”

He kept me locked in his sights. “Be careful.”

“Promise me the same.”

A quirk at his eyes led me to think he’d grinned beneath his mask. I looked to Halvar and Tor, but they’d already slunk into the night, searching for trouble.

“Siv,” I whispered. “Stay safe.”

She drew in a sharp breath and tightened her grip on the dagger the Shade had returned to her once we arrived. “I will. You, too.”

I didn’t waste any more time and rushed toward the first knoll. The doorway was sealed. No knob or latch. A heavy slab of stone, too heavy to move. But at the door there was a stand with a gilded chalice on top. Tethered to the chalice was a stiletto knife. I frowned, but soon understood.

Royal blood was needed.

Thank the gods it seemed only a small amount would be asked. I’d never thought of spilling my blood intentionally.

I gritted my teeth and lifted the knife. Like a frightened child I let the point hover over my palm for a few heartbeats before I sliced the pad of my palm. I winced but squeezed my hand until the drops started to fall into the chalice.

At once, a scrape of stone on stone echoed into the night and the slab moved aside, only enough to slip through. The idea that I might be trapped inside crossed my mind only once before I hurried through the gap into the dark.

When the slab didn’t move, I breathed easier. The only light came from the moonlight in the courtyard, but the smell was enough to know this was indeed a burial chamber. And I’d disturbed it. There were five wooden boxes in the tomb, each with a blade at rest over the top.

I kneeled and pressed a hand to my heart. A warrior’s respect. Whomever was laid to rest here, had fought with honor and would be revered by the throne. I stood and peeked at one of the blades briefly—curiosity too much to resist. A vine of thorns was etched down the center of the blade with an eclipse of the sun and moon in the center. This was old Ettan. So, these would be honored Ettan warriors.

I bowed my head once more and left the tomb. The moment I stepped outside the slab grumbled back into place. There was half a dozen more, but as I studied them, trying to find which one might hold more than death, one stood out among the others—a center tomb with dead moonvane shrubs.

I took a step on the path that would lead to the center tomb and the silence of the night tilted. A wretched, gnarled shriek sprang from the dark. My heart leapt to my throat. I drew my knife, eyes wild and wide. Tor’s roar sounded the loudest and the first. I whipped around, scanning the darkness.

Next, Legion shouted, and the clang of steel followed.

A bitter cold wrapped around the night, and on the slope, I caught sight of Siv. She was fleeing and fighting in the same breath. Fighting what? Then, a glimmer of something gold came into view. Three hells—shadows surrounded her, but when she turned and fought, they took shape. A human form painted in night held a glittering sword. Though the shadow was made of mist, the blade was not.

Legion came up behind Siv’s shadow and ripped an axe through the back of the . . . ghost, an apparition? I didn’t know what to call them, but it dissolved.

Another was there to meet them both.

“Elise!” Legion shouted. “They’re fury guardians. Go! Hurry!”

His voice deepened. The rage of battle seemed to draw out the voice of the beast within. Though these shadow guardians never bled, the desire to kill them would be alive. The creature cursed inside him might be spurred to life all the same.

I rushed toward the tomb. Otherworldly screams followed me at my back. I shouldn’t have looked, but one glance over my shoulder and three phantom shadows rushed at me. Halvar blasted a dart into one and it burst into drops of dew. Tor took the others with a swing of his sword. Another shadow warrior appeared at his back and swung its fiery gold blade.

The third spectral still chased me.

I bolted for the moonvane tomb, hands trembling. The hair on the back of my neck stood as I reached for the stiletto blade. My fingers shook. The cut ended more jagged than the first.

Behind me the shadow shrieked. It lifted its blade that seemed made of embers. I screamed and smashed my hand over the chalice. When the first smear of blood touched the edge, the heavy slab slid away, I swung the tomb’s knife at the phantom and caught the shadow on what might be its shoulder. It burst into thousands of bits of night.

I leaned back to catch my breath against the tomb. Easy enough to kill but when one died, more appeared. An endless amount of darkness that could rise up in arms against us. The others would fatigue before they were victorious.

I hurried into the tomb.

This was vastly different than the last. Musty damp soaked the walls, but it was absent the scent of death. And in here there were oil lamps in each corner for light. This was not a place of burial, but more a prison. Bars walled off artifacts and books and scrolls and . . .

My eyes widened when bright green eyes locked on me in the dimness. A skinny girl peered out through the bars. She was dressed in a white frock and had hair that hung to the small of her back in long russet waves.

At the sight of me, she backed away.

“Who are you?” I asked. Was she fae? Who would lock a child in a tomb? My eyes widened. “All gods, are you the witch?”

The girl narrowed her eyes. “That’s not a nice word. Storyteller, thank you very much. It has a better ring to it, don’t you think?”

By the gods! I rushed to her cell, searching out any kind of lock and key. She chuckled bitterly. Such a small, underfed girl. Her eyes were a little sunken and her cheeks were hollow.

“You won’t find anything,” she said. “Only a certain key can unlock me and the king’s fae must do it.”

“The king’s fae?”

She snorted. “You don’t think the wretches up in the palace don’t use some dark fae from time to time? They say they slit ‘em across the throat, but they have their uses, like tossing me in here when I misbehave. Out of sight in a tomb they can’t even see. Pleasant, right?”

I stared at her bewildered.

She spoke strangely. Rough and accented, but rife with bitterness.

The girl studied me again, and a smug grin spread on her face. “Wait. I know you. The kind heart.” A bit of thrill brightened her eyes. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

I curled my fists around the bars. “Tell me what you know! Please, help us. There are shadows and—”

“Oh, yes,” she said with a scoff. “They’re worse than fleas.” She clapped her hands rapidly. “Pop, pop, pop. Always there. Those fire swords they’ve got—they hurt like the hells before they kill you.”

“Then it’s a good thing he can’t die.”

She chuckled, but I thought it came more from nerves than humor. “Outside the tomb, maybe. But in here, power like that doesn’t work.”

“Girl!” I shouted, a new rise of panic in my chest. “Then help us! You knew this would happen, you predicted it. Tell me what you know.”

She looked wholly like a child once I raised my voice and a bit of guilt sped through me when she pointed at the cage beside her. “It’s a crest, like a symbol or something. It was made by a Night Folk smithy and is the key.”

“A crest?”

“It’s what you want.”

I ran to the next cage and rattled the bars but could find no lock again.

“Blood, kind heart,” she said. “You’re a royal, aren’t you? Willing, royal blood opens it.”

I fumbled for my knife and opened one of the marks on my palm again, then gripped the bars. The rattle of metal rang in my head, but the cage opened for me. Inside were stacks of books and scrolls. I tossed them aside in a flurry of paper and parchment.

“Hurry, kind heart,” she said, apparently unaware of my true name. “You’ll lose him. The guardians will bring out the beast and make it stay.”

“If you’d tell me what I’m looking for exactly this might go much—” I stopped. A scroll fell back and hidden beneath it was a slender box.

I tore into the box and let out a maddened kind of laugh. On a velvet cushion was an iron crest of runes.

The girl clapped ironically. “Well done.”

“But now what?” I said, irritated. “How is this done? How does the curse end?”

Her face contorted and I was reminded of her youth. She looked ready to cry. “Unraveling a new path of fate is more than speaking the words. It takes a hells lot of sacrifice.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did you put this curse on him?”

“No!” she said a crack in her voice. “But . . . someone like me did. She wrote him a new fate. That’s what I do beyond telling stupid bits of fortune. I rewrite destiny.”

The ground tilted in my haze. “You wrote him into the curse. Wrote the terms. Made it so his fate was to transform.”

“I told you I didn’t! I am the fifth Storyteller to be dragged into this cell. And the first four—dead. Once they got a taste of our fate spells, though, these kings have hunted us ever since. Made sure their plans were fated to happen.”

My eyes widened. “The coup. Did you—”

“No. That stupid ghoul of a prince has his own fae to do tricky, bloody things. But I’ve been forced to write other things for other folk. Things that make folk powerful and dangerous.”

“But how did you know about the curse?”

She gestured at some of the stacks of parchment and books. “I wasn’t always in a cage. I read about it.”

“No,” I said shaking my head. “You know more. What part have you played? You knew me right away.”

She hesitated. “I knew he’d be important—your beast. Sometimes I get these feelings, these things I just know. He’d be the one to help me, so I helped him.”

“What did you do?” I repeated.

“Understand, he needed to get into your house somehow. So, I thought it out. Sorry your father got sick, but it had to be done.”

My eyes widened. “You . . . you’re the reason my father is ill?”

She grimaced and her eyes went glassy. “I don’t like hurting people, but I needed to write a path to you and the rest would be up to him.”

“But why me?”

“Because the last Storyteller called the king’s niece a kind heart!” she shouted. “Right before they cut her into the Otherworld. Well, I sure as hells wasn’t going out the same way. I decided to do something about it. Fate wanted a way to get willing royal blood, by the gods, I’m wise enough to know it’d take a kind heart. Like any good story there is always an end, so I wrote one, a simple one—the beast would find love and be set free.”

The wind knocked free of my lungs. “Love is his way out?”

She shrugged. “Or something like it. You had to care enough to be here. He had to care enough to give you the choice. Good enough for me.”

“Why would you help him find the answer?”

“I told you. I know—have seen—if he is free, it will begin a change that will heal lands beyond this one. It might give me freedom, or my brother. They took me from him and . . . all I want is to see him again. But we aren’t free. Always hiding. This could start something, could change the world. Small and simple things can bring about greatness.”

“You wrote that.”

“Saw it. Like a glimpse into the eye of fate. Call it a curse or blessing, but I saw it and know it. So, I moved things along as best I could without getting caught. It’s a good thing the dead king didn’t know what the beast in the curse of crowns looked like, or the role I played, or I would’ve been more than a trick at fetes.”

“The curse of crowns?”

She shrugged again. “It’s what the first storyteller titled it. Not that catchy if you ask me.”

I didn’t care if she was a child, there was no time! My heart in a frenzy, I slammed my fists against the bars of her cage. “How do I break it?”

She recoiled, eyes wide. “Sacrifice! I told you! There is a seal of the original royals, it faces east, just beyond this tomb. They are called the true heirs of this land’s magic. That’s where it must be done. The crest must be placed in the center, it’s all very symbolic and vain, but I don’t make the rules of this land and their fury. Once it’s placed, you make the sacrifice.”

“More blood?”

“No, kind heart,” she said softly. “It’s more. Life must be given for a life.”