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

Foolish steps, Saga. My hand covered the rune tattoo, and I could practically hear Riot’s voice chastising me.

What good were instincts if I did not heed them?

Maybe it was pride that caused me to think I could slip through the huddle of Bracken’s greatest admirers unscathed.

The king had created new trade routes between the East and North. Naturally, merchants, smiths, and shipwrights worked tirelessly to prove their loyalty. Not out of any true loyalty from the heart, but to prove they were the shippers the king could trust, all so their coffers remained filled with royal coin.

I was not the only one to stand on the side of Queen Astrid in the East, but I was the one to pay the price for many.

By the hells, even Astrid could walk the streets of Alvheim with her head high, but me, I’d been one of Bracken’s companions. A friend, if I kept friends. Seemed such a betrayal was more lethal than a mother standing against her son.

If only I could scream the truth to the stars, to the upper tenements, to any bleeding fae who’d listen. A truth that I would never wish harm on our new king. A truth that I had reason for standing on the side I did.

Only two knew the truth. One was a tyrant who had me bound, the other was Rune. He’d stumbled upon my secrets by accident, but kept them hidden beneath his harsh surface.

I still wasn’t certain why, nor if I fully trusted him.

But to anyone else, it would be pointless. They’d use me for their own gain, or never truly listen. Not to someone like me.

Now, my audacious confidence that led me to think I could stroll straight into the Borough with my head high had earned me a strike to the face, and my back pinned to the wall.

A docker called Einar, son of the most renowned shipwrights in the lower city, slapped a shaved wooden rod against his palm. Unimposing in stature, Einar made up for his slender shape by a cruel talent with beatings.

“I’ll ask again, where do you think you are going, snake?”

One of Einar’s companions hooked his fingers beneath Hodag’s crown of braids and tugged my head back.

“To the Borough. As I said the first three times, or did the words fail to enter the denseness of your skull?”

The rough scrape of his palm over my cheek sent a shock down my spine.

Gods. The sting across my skin drew horrid tears to my eyes. Keep the shield in place. They wanted to see nothing but ice, and I would grant their desire. I’d feel nothing, react to nothing, and hide everything.

Einar chuckled. His stupidly pompous brigade of lower merchants did the same, as though they had no wits of their own. Smiles faded. Einar lunged at me, and I was ashamed of the gasp that slid from my throat when he pressed the rod against my neck.

Brow to brow, he narrowed his eyes. “Your head belongs on a pike.”

Breath was becoming difficult to draw in the more Einar pressed the rod against my neck. A knee to the weak manhood between his legs. Thumbs to the eyes. Fingernails to the throat. Dozens of ways to attack bounced around my head, and I could act on none of them. My arms were pinned at my sides by his men, and my legs were spread by Einar’s knees.

He pressed his damp body close to mine. His breath was rank with old herb smoke and eel.

Black dots formed in the corner of my eyes. I’d faint, become helpless in their hands. They’d batter me. Rape me. Simple to do with the sparse fabric of the gown. The bastards would do whatever they wished except kill me.

Folk knew I was bound to the ambassador’s household. It was outside of anyone’s rights to end my life but for Ari Sekundär. But brutalizing me, they would take pleasure in it.

The sickening thing was when they finished, no one would care. No one would sympathize or soften the aches. The pain would become one more secret I would keep buried beneath the ice.

“Remember, snake,” Einar hissed against my cheek, “you deserve this.”

His hand tugged on my dress. I closed my eyes. I drifted to nothingness. Emotion was simple to destroy. I’d become proficient in it, or I was until . . .

“Remove your hands from the woman unless you wish to lose them.” A voice broke the night. Low. Dangerous. Familiar. “Although, I do have a thrilling desire to take them all the same. I find cutting a blade through the knuckles to be particularly satisfying, but I hear it is quite painful. Shall we test the theory?”

Einar pulled back, the pressure of the rod eased off my throat, and a fierce rush of breath burned into my lungs. I stumbled to my knees and pressed a hand to my chest until the air did not scorch like fire anymore.

My gaze snapped up. Ari stepped from the shadows of a stone arch marking the entrance of the shipyards. A wickedly beautiful fae with his dark golden hair braided off the sides of his face, fresh rune marks inked along his throat, and a fitted black tunic over the strong shape of his body.

By the gods, he was awful, and terrifying, and I could hardly look away.

Ari did not even glance my way, merely grinned with a bit of smugness at Einar. Fear clung to me like a cold robe, chills raised the hair on my arms as I took in the setting. Ari was one man and was not the king in this land. True, he had an honored position in the High Court, and no one would wish ill against a foreign ambassador. Not when said Ambassador’s king was known for his cursed battle axes and bloodlust. Even still, Einar and his lackies wanted to gain Bracken’s attention.

They hated me more than they respected Ari.

“Ambassador,” Einar said, a crack in his voice.

“Evening,” Ari replied pleasantly to an untrained ear, but underneath the lightness was darkness. A side to the ambassador no one saw, but one I sensed the moment I laid eyes on the man. Ari picked a bit of fur off his sleeve. “Tell me, what is it you think you are doing?”

“Keeping traitors out of the High Court,” one of the oafs who followed Einar blurted out.

For the first time, Ari dropped his gilded brown eyes to where I knelt on the cobbled street. There was a shadow in them. Hatred, disdain, frustration . . . something else. Concern?

Doubtful. If there was concern in the ambassador’s eyes, it was only because he despised being absent at the revel. He valued gazes on him too much to be gone long.

“I might sympathize with your efforts,” Ari said as he started to pace. “But the trouble is, you do not have the right to touch what is not yours.”

“She is a—”

“Traitor, yes, you keep saying that.” Ari paused and slowly tilted his head. “Tell me, where did you fight in the East? The hills? The shore? At the palace?”

Einar shifted on his feet. He cleared his throat. “I-I was not . . . I wasn’t in the ranks.”

“You don’t say.” Ari’s eyes darkened. “And here I thought you witnessed the betrayal from my serf firsthand to spew such vitriol that you would put hands on a woman almost like you might, how should I say this, force yourself upon her.” He tilted his head. “Trouble satisfying in the bedroom, is that it? Forced to force it? Don’t fret, many weak-spined men like yourself have trouble—” He lifted one finger. “You know, performing.”

Einar’s jaw dropped. Perhaps he was stunned by Ari’s maddening tongue, perhaps he was turning murderous on a man twice his rank.

I did not think much on what rattled through the dockman’s head. I was focused on Ari as a prickle of embarrassment heated the back of my neck. What was he doing? He kept flicking his eyes my direction, and knowing he understood the vile things Einar likely planned to do made me want to dissolve into the cracks in the road.

“If forcing my serf to take your soft manhood is, in fact, what you had planned on doing,” Ari went on, “you can understand my inquiry as to your battle positions during the war. You see, in my experience, honorable warriors do not have such pathetic needs as to ravage unarmed women in the shadows.”

“What do you care?” Einar scoffed. “It is well known you despise the whore. Let us make her ours, and I’m certain my daj will cut shipping tariffs for you, Ambassador.”

Hells, I was weak. The ice cracked, and a fierce panic throttled me from behind. It was no secret Ari did not care for me. He might come up with depraved notions by Einar’s suggestion and sell me out. Force me to be used. Why wouldn’t he? He’d been given free rein to make my life as miserable as he wished.

My fears were granted.

“Well, by the gods, if it will cut shipping costs, have her.”

“No!” I said, desperation heady in my voice.

Einar’s lips twitched and split to reveal the gap between his front teeth. He took a fistful of the fur coat around my shoulders. “Truly?”

Ari’s smile faded, and the hidden brutality reared to the surface. “No.”

It happened swiftly. One moment Einar had my coat in his grasp, the next moment he was crying out in pain, a bronze knife buried in the flesh below his collar.

Ari was not a small man. Most Night Folk fae were not, but he moved with a deft agility common among petite folk. He had his seax drawn and aimed at one of Einar’s men, then in the next heartbeat he kicked Einar’s feet out from him, so he landed with a wet slap across the cobbles.

Ari pressed his boot against Einar’s throat and leaned over his knee, adding pressure from his weight balanced on the one leg.

“I don’t care much for weak things,” he said, voice low. “But I particularly detest when weak things start to imagine they have a spine and try to take what belongs to me.” Ari leaned over, his face above Einar’s. He grinned viciously when he ripped his knife from Einar’s flesh and the docker cried out in pain. “The woman is mine for the next hundred turns. Touch her again and I will not hesitate to shove your severed fingers down your throat. I’ve no doubt it would be a delicacy for you. Perhaps a bit briny. Have I made my point?”

Einar gurgled beneath the pressure of Ari’s boot and made a jerky kind of nod.

Ari’s blithe smile returned at once. I gaped, a little stunned, reluctantly grateful, and perhaps a bit annoyed he’d earned yet another debt to hang over my head. The man was a force I did not know how to contain. He could go from savage to carefree in an instant, and it intrigued me as much as it frightened me.

“Good.” Ari pulled back his boot. “I hoped you’d say that. Now, scurry along before I inform the Borough guards you’ve attempted to destroy a king’s gift to a foreign dignitary. Nasty trouble that would cause, don’t you think?”

Einar scooted back three paces before scrambling to his feet. He used the back of his arm to wipe his face. Bits of his hair had slipped from the neat braid and spilled around the points of his ears.

“Forget this night, Ambassador?” Einar muttered.

A question, not a demand. My fingers trembled. How had a man not even born of this kingdom earned such a blistering regard that he could force compliance with a few flicks of his blade and a strategically placed boot to the throat?

“All is forgotten,” Ari said, but his countenance shifted as the timbre of his voice dropped. “Unless your balls try to descend and you get bold enough to come near my property again.”

Einar brushed the dust from his top, turned into the shadows, and disappeared with his crew into the arcades of the town, leaving me and Ari in suffocating silence.

His back was to me; the seax was still in his grip.

“You are, Saga.” Ari’s voice came sharp like a lash to the chest. With a slight turn of his head, he gave up his side profile, but nothing more. Almost as if he wanted to look at me but couldn’t bring himself to do it. “You are mine.”

Any gratitude I had for the man broke into tiny barbs, a constant irritant. I frowned. “Repeat those words all you like. I do not belong to you.”

Ari chuckled. There was little humor in it. As he sheathed his seax, he faced me. My swallow was harsh and rough. A collision of turmoil that always settled in the pit of my gut when Ari Sekundär held my eyes.

And he always bleeding did.

Unlike other men, Ari looked at me head-on. Those eyes burned into my skull until I was certain he could read my deepest thoughts, my every secret.

“Hold tightly to those wishful words. They’ll be true in a hundred turns, sweet menace.”

My fists clenched. “I asked you not to call me that.”

“You did.” One corner of his mouth curved up, and I despised the way my pulse quickened. Ari took a step closer. “But decisions needed to be made, and I was forced to make the grueling choice not to care.”

“Bastard,” I murmured.

“What was that?” He cupped a hand around one ear. “Defender? Protector? Irrevocably handsome? Is that what you called me?”

I let out an irritated sigh and worked my way back to standing. I’d not realized how close we’d come until Ari pinched my chin between his thumb and first finger. Eyes wide, my breath stilled in my chest. Rough stubble shaded the sharp line of his jaw. The color of his eyes were like tarnished coins buried in damp soil. Dark with rings of gold mingled in the night. I dug my fingernails into the meat of my palms when he tipped my chin, inspecting my cheek.

“He left a mark on you.”

“Yes, and as he said, what do you care?”

Ari narrowed his gaze. “Very little. This is a matter of pride. I do not like my pretty things tarnished.”

By the hells, he heated my blood and knew exactly what he was doing. The twist of his full lips, the horrid gleam in his eyes. He wanted to laugh; I wanted to scream.

I jerked my chin from his grasp. “Then permit me, Master, to return to the longhouse and hide away so I do not shame you further.”

“Ah, what a sweet thought.” Ari gripped my arm and dragged me toward the archway. “But, alas, you will give my prince and your princess the honor they deserve tonight. And this—” he tugged on the fur coat. “This will be gone. I afforded you a gown, and I’ll expect you to wear it properly.”

I pulled back. “The air has a chill.”

“No doubt a frosty creature such as you will acclimate. Take it off.”

“No.” I tried to back away, but he grabbed my wrist. I struggled against him. On this, I wouldn’t comply. I wouldn’t let him see. Not him.

Frustrated, Ari smashed my chest against his. By the hells, his body was made of stone. Shoulders to hips, planes of strength bolstered me up.

His palm curled around my throat. Not enough to choke off air, but enough to let me know he had the power here. “Need I remind you, a blood rite bound you to my service, and my agreement saved your pretty head from execution. The same as I have done this night. Take. It. Off.”

Ari tried once more to pull back the shoulders of the fur coat.

I was a fraud. A false warrior. Once I thought myself made of iron, but around this damn man, all the panic, rage, and fear I’d forgotten could exist, bubbled to the surface.

“Ari.” My voice was breathless and gave up my desperation enough it brought him to pause. I bit my bottom lip until I feared blood might spill over my teeth. “I have obeyed your orders from the moment I entered your household. But I will not obey this one. Do not force me to remove it.”

His brow furrowed. I anticipated his sharp tongue, a bit of mockery for my prudish modesty. I did not anticipate a discomfiting gentility from those gilded eyes, or the soft swipe of his thumb back and forth across my pulse point.

Ari blinked after a moment and dropped his hand from my neck.

I braced for his command, but the order would never come. Instead, Ari stepped back and shrugged. “Wear the coat then. I do hate when a woman pleads outside of my bed.”

I groaned. “Don’t place such images in my mind.”

“It’s true, sweet menace,” he said, the slightest hint of a laugh in his tone. “I’ve done a great deal wrong if there are no delightful pleadings for more pleasure, more touches, more of my hands and tongue.”

“And now, Master, I plan to burn my ears off.”

“At last, an activity we can enjoy together. I shall light the torch.”

I rolled my eyes and hated how it made him more pleased with himself.

He kept a pace ahead of me, and alone, with only the back of his head as company, I had time to unravel the small truths I often chose to ignore to his face.

The truth was Ari had saved me. Now, he’d granted my request to allow a coat to cover my body. He’d given me a touch of freedom to choose, and it cracked another fissure through the ice in my chest.

Ari saved me, but I would always need to defy him. He would always need to hate me, enough he stayed at a safe distance. For there was a part of me that feared he was not just my savior, but also the man destined to destroy me.