Den of Blades and Briars: A dark fairy tale romance (The Broken Kingdoms Book 7)

Behind me, I locked the door and slid down until I was on the floorboards. I hugged my knees to my chest, trembling.

A flood unlocked in my mind. Voices, sounds, faces, screams, they all battered my skull like a stealth attack that took me from behind. I’d forgotten so many moments. Why? How had they all returned now?

I pulled my tunic sleeve up, staring at the rune mark, desperate to focus, desperate to understand it all. No, Riot, he . . . he couldn’t twist fate. He’d cursed me with cantrips and spells and old glamour and . . . somewhere in the darkness a soft voice, a woman, was pleading.

See what he’s done to her, Riot. See how he’s maimed our sister.

Sister. I clutched my head and buried my face in the tops of my knees. Not her sister, but like a sister for she’d vowed with . . .

All gods. The voice, the woman, she’d vowed with Riot. I could practically see him now, sitting in the corner, a woman I’d considered my dearest friend on his lap. What was her name?

And I had arms around me too. Arms that were supposed to love me, but . . .

My hand trembled as I slid the sleeve of my tunic up one arm. There were newer welts from Astrid’s recent beatings, but beneath them were pale pink scars. Marks left behind from wounds long ago.

My shoulders, my spine, my breasts, my belly, they were so much worse. A map of destruction would forever mar my skin. Pain I could not recall . . . until now.

The Skald’s tale had brutally torn open a bolted door on forgotten moments.

Images of men came to my head. Many. Some that smelled like brine, others that had the sweet cedar hints from the noble court. They all were the same, unfeeling and selfish. Memories of pain, of pleading, of a sneer from the one who’d vowed to cherish me as he took silver from others after giving them my body.

I closed my eyes when shouting, distant and unintelligible, drowned out the anger of the woman.

I saw a hand tear into the chest of another man, then pulled back bloody fingers curled around something, something I couldn’t make out. I wanted to scream as memories hovered on the brink of recollection, but I could not grasp it all.

You will never have her again. A harsh voice said as through a thick door. Distant, but vicious. Frightening as it sounded, I wanted to draw closer to it as if it brought a comfort to my soul.

Then wicked laughter filled my head.

Little Raaaven. Do you remember? Try, my love. Bring me back to you.

A tear dripped down my cheek when I opened my eyes.

The tale . . . it was true.

I knew the bonded brothers. One, a king of fate. The other, his trusted knight. As if this place, that Skald, had been positioned to bring the pieces of my story together, I knew them.

Riot was the king of fate.

Not all marks of love are as they seem.

His symbol. His bleeding royal crest.

Riot had written the mark to remind me of myself. To remind me when my past would be shrouded by ice and darkness, that I’d been his to love and protect, and he had. He’d battled his own—gods—his own Lord of War.

A man who’d used and broken me. And now as my heart grew warmer, he grew closer. The shadow voice in my head, the monster, he’d found me.

Ari returned to the room when the sun was setting. I huddled beneath the quilt on the bed, sickened by the shadow of a past I still could not piece together fully, and prayed he would not check too hard to see if I were truly asleep.

My face was coated in tears, no doubt splotchy and red. Gasps and sobs were strange sensations, and I was unaccustomed to the jagged pain slicing through a chest at the sense of betrayal.

I wished I could go back to feeling nothing.

I wished I could find the one who’d left me so weak and cut out his heart instead.

I wished Ari might lie next to me and simply be close.

Deny it all I wanted, there was a soothing presence to the irritating man. He dug under my skin, and there were moments like this where I didn’t want him to dig out.

“Saga?” he whispered. The bed gave on his side. I guessed he was kneeling to look at me. I let out a breathy sigh and softened my eyes to appear like I was lost in slumber.

Ari didn’t move for a moment, then my heart jerked when his rough, warm palm touched my forehead, looking for fever. Almost like he cared.

With a sigh, he pulled back and the bed shifted again. I kept my eyes closed and listened to the shuffle of papers, the soft hum of his voice as he whispered plans on our travel once the storm cleared to no one but the dusk. He ate and drank alone, then stripped his boots, his top; I kept my eyes closed as Ari crawled into bed.

I was stiff and unmoving until he sprawled out onto his stomach and rested one of his hands on my forehead again—as if my temperature might’ve changed. He pulled away, satisfied I wasn’t dying, and let his fingers, instead, tangle in my hair.

His touch was a flame. His presence a conundrum of irritation and reprieve. But with him close, I was at last able to bury the horrid memories long enough to fall asleep at his side.

“Don’t. Leave . . . leave her!”

A jolt shook the bed. I blinked through the salt crust tangling my lashes together.

“Please, leave her.”

I bolted upright at Ari’s plea. The quilt had fallen off his side of the bed, and he was shuddering next to me. His eyes were closed, his jaw taut, and his face was contorted in utter agony.

He moaned, twitching, the flex of his back muscles pulsed as he strangled one of the downy pillows under his body.

“Don’t.” His voice was soft, a painful whimper, then a mumbled, “forgive me,” followed.

His body was coated in sweat. Whatever nightmare had taken hold was torturing him from the inside out. A pang of guilt gnawed at my heart. I’d been using the sleep herbs on him for nearly a turn, and now on the nights I skipped the dose, it seemed the nightmares grew worse.

Part of me wanted to give him a little to help him sleep, but I was running low. If I was to keep Ari ignorant on my ability to shift I needed to use them sparingly.

“Ari.” For a moment I shoved resentment aside. I forgot taunts and jabs at his constant running mouth. All I wanted was to take the look of pain from his sharp features until he wore that smirk that let me know he’d won a battle of words.

I rested a palm on his shoulder and gave him a little nudge. He only moaned through a broken sound in the back of his throat.

“Ari, wake up.” I shook him harder. “Ari—”

All at once his amber eyes snapped open, dilated and fierce. It was less than a breath, too fast to even scream, and Ari had a hand pressed on my heart, my body pinned beneath his and a bleeding knife he’d pulled from under his pillow at my throat.

“Ari.” Turns in the guard had heightened my instincts, and I had a split moment to grip his wrist and keep the blade from landing a killing blow.

His body grew heavy over mine. His hips were nestled between my thighs, and a piece of my mind wanted to like it, a piece wanted to revel in the heat of his skin, but a greater piece was trapped. Locked in a position where I had no control.

Air came to my lungs as though I breathed through a narrow hole. Blood pounded in my skull. I tried to kick, tried to demand my body to flail and fight like the bleeding warrior I’d been trained to be. But a terror made of heavy chains and barbed rope held me in place, like a threat that should I move, more pain would come.

The knife to my throat cut deeper. Ari’s eyes grew darker. Our chests butted against each other in short gasps, one from rage, the other from sheer panic.

I winced as the edge of his knife sliced the surface of my neck, but I kept my focus firmly on his wide eyes, his harsh breaths. He looked like a tormented beast, like black fire burned in his scathing glare. He wanted to murder me. Slowly.

No. He didn’t want to. A soft whisper in the back of my head cut through the fear long enough I started to gather my shattered wits one by one.

Would a man who wished me dead check my head for fever? Would he sleep nearest the door?

This was not Ari. Some terror in his head was threatening him, and Ari was nothing more than a man defending . . . someone.

“Ari,” I whispered. I needed to wake him.

He was frozen over me, his breaths remained stilted and harsh. I swallowed against his knife blade and did the only thing I knew to do. I reached a palm to the side of his face, holding his balmy cheek, and tried to bring him out of whatever horrors put him on the attack.

My hand left his cheek and trailed down his neck, then to his chest. The skin over his heart was raised and rough. I dared glance down and realized there was a white, shiny, jagged line in the center. The scar began from the notch just below his throat, carved across his chest, and ended at the top of his belly. A harsh wound, as if whatever had dug into his flesh kept altering the path until it was made of sharp back and forth lines.

His breaths started to slow, and I let my gaze catch his again.

“Ari.” I dragged my fingernails down his strong back like a lover might.

Shadows faded from the rich amber of his eyes. His grip loosened on the knife, his voice was soft, still like he dreamt as he whispered, “Saga.” Almost a plea, a prayer, like he cherished my name.

His body sank against me. The pressure of his hips, his length, pressed against my core, and I was ashamed to think it was not a horrid sensation. Truth be told, the more I focused on ridding Ari’s mind of the Mares, the less I thought of my own fears of being trapped beneath him.

The more I wanted to hold him closer.

I was not skilled in reading emotions; I did not have a great deal to compare feelings to. In the isles, folk lusted and reveled and obsessed over their partners. But I’d witnessed Eryka and the young prince look at each other with devotion. I saw much the same in the eyes of the king of the North as he slaughtered folk in the East searching for his queen. Or the shadow king when he broke through the gates of the Black Palace to reach his wife.

There was more than obsession in their eyes. And that look the foreign royals held was too close to this odd stirring within me. A rush of protective instincts flared when I knew Ari was in distress. A need took hold, one that wanted to bring back the insufferable smirk on his face.

“Wake up.” I stroked his cheek. “Ari, wake up.”

Ari’s eyes widened when he took in our position. My legs spread, his length thick and heavy in his trousers, his hips between my thighs.

“What in the hells!” He reeled back. “I’m so sorry. Dammit. You should’ve stabbed me.”

“Ari.” I reached for him, taking his face in my hands again. “You were dreaming, that’s why I woke you.”

I left out the part where I almost didn’t.

Ari rolled off the bed to his feet and dug his hands into his hair. A wash of horror pinched his face. “I wouldn’t . . . Saga, tell me I did not force myself on you. Tell me I didn’t.”

“You didn’t.”

He paced in a frenzy. “Swear to me that’s the truth, for I’d rather eat my blade than be a man who hurt you.”

I smiled. “I swear, you didn’t hurt me. If you had, you know I would’ve stabbed you.”

It was then he took note of the blade on my pillow. At once, he tossed it aside, the clatter of steel shook the eerie silence of the moment.

Ari sat on the bed; his shoulders slumped when he looked at me. “I’m . . .”

He shook his head and glared at the small scratch on my throat.

“It’s fine,” I said. The truth. My heart was in my throat, but I wasn’t bothered about the knife. I was ridiculously unnerved that I’d wanted him so fiercely, and it had been my name slipping through his dreamy lips, like he might’ve wanted the same.

Ari’s arms trembled. His thumb ran over the gash on my throat, but paused when the tip touched one of my own taut scars that was hidden beneath my tunic top.

I’d do anything to keep focus away from the scars. I didn’t want to remember the shadows of the past ever again.

He didn’t say anything, simply let out a sigh and positioned himself half onto the mattress and half on me. An unspoken understanding passed between us. I doubted we’d speak of this nearness in the morning, but for now we would let it be.

Ari rested his head on his arm and kept the other hand possessively draped over my middle. I bit back my nerves, and rolled onto my shoulder, so we were nose to nose.

“You swear you’re all right?” he asked softly.

“You’re slow with the blade. I’m fine.”

“Like everything else, you’re wrong. I’m remarkable with a blade.” He grinned, but not wide enough to show his teeth. Ari touched a few strands of my hair that had sprawled out on the mattress. “Would it be too much to ask if we forgot this ever happened?”

I hesitated. “Until I need to use something against you.”

Ari laughed. Finally, a glimpse of the carefree grin returned.

Unbidden, my fingertips touched the scar on his chest. He stiffened when I met his gaze. “What happened?”

Ari rolled onto his back and stared at the rafters for a long pause before turning his head to look back at me. “I will tell you mine, if you tell me yours.”

With care, his fingertips tugged at the neck of my tunic, revealing the barest glimpse of the scar trailing down my lower neck.

How would I ever trust such a tale with a man who had no qualms telling me how menacing I was to his existence? I was foolish. A moment of tenderness did not erase the months—the turns—of biting words sparred between the two of us.

He’d likely insist I deserved it all.

“No.” The rite was fading. At dawn we would be able to lie, betray, maybe kill each other. In the moment, half-truths and barbed masks to shield my desire were simple enough to drag out. “Let’s not pretend we care, Ambassador. It will make all the work we’ve put into detesting each other worthless.”

If he touched me, even if he dragged his gentle fingers through my hair again, the façade would crumble. He’d see the desire in my eyes, the want to be safe there, with him, in the burdened lines of my face.

Ari did none of it. He pulled away, like I’d scalded him, and gave me a tight-lipped nod. “Well spoke, sweet menace.”

He said nothing more before he rolled over, his back facing me, and remained there until dawn chased away the dark.