Song of Sorrows and Fate: A Dark Fantasy Romance (The Broken Kingdoms Book 9)

South Fjord—Kingdom of Etta

The hair on the back of my neck lifted, but I made no mention of it, merely sat a bit straighter on my horse. I’d fought long enough not to be reckless and brush it away, but I wasn’t about to sound an alarm for shadows.

Folk tunes from young voices added a touch of levity to the fjord’s empty shores. I glanced over my shoulder, grinning.

Aesir tried to sing a higher tune alongside Princess Laila. The gods hadn’t blessed my boy with musical talent like Herja’s daughter, and his maturing voice cracked in a disastrous sort of screech, like a dying pheasant.

Mattis had joined on the patrol and kicked at my boy’s boot, laughing, while Stieg mocked him, to see the tips of my son’s ears turn pink.

“Horrid,” Laila said, ruffling Aesir’s pale hair. An official archer in the Ettan army like her mother, Laila was one of the few who could taunt my boy without him lashing out. Kari thought it was due to Aesir’s glassy eyes whenever he looked upon the princess.

Boyish dreams. He’d only turned thirteen, and Laila was already set to vow with Njord, a young warrior with a talent for flinging knives.

The son of an aleman and a princess would be vowed before the frosts. This was the Etta I’d always wanted, one where we were people first, and titles came second. Except when it came to bleeding Ari. Bastard was a damn king again, and after all these turns, he still took great pleasure in reminding me.

I carried his latest missive in the inner folds of my tunic. We’d stopped the patrol for post retrieval at the docks near the old quarries. Mattis and Stieg had a laugh at my expense when they saw the seal of the royals in the fae isles.

Saga had promised she’d have one made. I’d always thought we’d be the grandest of friends, but there she was, siding with her damn husband and allowing him to make horridly regal seals.

A clock toll ago, I’d been plotting to woo the aggravating Southern king in grand tales of my heroics to bring Ari down a notch or two, but the prickle of unease on my neck had chased away all bright thoughts.

Now, I was left with sharper attention and a heaviness in my gut.

I laughed a great deal, but I’d been born into the household of a First Knight. Respect for instincts and the blade had been whittled into the marrow of my bones from my earliest moments.

As we rode, I kept checking the tricky burn towers arranged every hundred paces along the shoreline. The other kingdoms had the same. Took us the better part of four turns to get the warning flare right. Niklas about keeled over from the countless revisions to his potent elixir, but we’d tested the signal until we knew it was sound.

With the kingdoms separated as they were, we needed to devise a way to get word swiftly to one another if that battle lord bastard ever returned.

Once lit, the torches on the tower burned in blue flames. Through Niklas’s elixirs set to trigger at the burn, the flame traveled along our towers, the seas, then would light the towers in the East with red flames, and the South with green. The West would burn black on a single torch nearest Calista’s tenement building.

The Mad King of the West had never responded to our outreach after the battles of the isles. Truth be told, we didn’t think much of the royals in Calista’s tattered kingdom, other than her.

If the king of the broken West wanted to live apart, we’d see our feral little storyteller was warned separate from him.

My fingers twitched. I was being ridiculous. Stillness was the only sound of the shore. There were no ships on the horizon. No threats. I was overreacting because of my boy and the other young faces in the watch tonight.

Half a dozen sons and daughters of nobles and warriors were strapped with short blades and daggers. Their bony limbs barely able to hold the blade for longer than a dozen swings. The eldest hadn’t reached fifteen, but other than my own son, the youngest was the one who had me most concerned.

Prince Aleksi kept pace on his black gelding alongside Aesir and Laila.

The boy wasn’t yet twelve, but was built like he had a turn on Aesir. Alek was a forest fae abandoned by the Southern clans at his first breaths, found during the battles of the East, but he looked as Night Folk as the rest of us. Dark hair shaved on the sides like most of the young ones his age. Sun toasted brown skin like our clan, but his strange bronze eyes were the only hint that he might have different fae blood.

The prince had practically crawled to my feet, pleading to take him on the patrols. After I’d heartily pointed out to Sol how much his son valued my approval, I’d agreed, on the condition the prince was joined by his fathers.

One of whom caught my gaze, and frowned at once.

Damn Torsten. We’d spent too many bleeding turns in close proximity; he knew what each flinch of my face meant.

I turned forward again. As expected, five breaths later, a pearl stallion rode to my side.

“What is it?” Tor grumbled. The man was still a bear who grunted and groused, even with his consort, even with fatherhood, even with peace all this time.

I swatted at him. “Nothing, you fiend. Get back, this is my patrol to lead. You’re here to watch your sapling, nothing more.”

“Hal,” he said. “We’re Shade. I know when something troubles you.”

The Guild of Shade never truly died, I supposed. We did not spend our days chasing the Blood Wraith, but there was a rooted sense of kinship among those of us who had. Stieg and Junius included.

I let out a sigh. “Sometimes I wish you’d learn to be oblivious.”

“Think of all the times you’d have lost your head if I had,” Tor said.

“I take offense, Torsten. I have impeccable instincts, and I’ll have you take note, those who’ve tried to kill me thus far have utterly failed.”

He rolled his eyes and looked down the shoreline. “Your hand has not left the hilt of your blade for half a clock toll.”

Damn his observant eyes. Despite calling attention to the grip on my seax, I didn’t remove it. There was a heat in the air. One that settled like heavy stones in my belly.

“Just the rumblings of the gut, Tor,” I told him. “Puts me on edge. No doubt we’ll be descending on dock squabbles, nothing more.”

I tilted my head toward the faint light of the dock houses where shippers, merchants, and fishermen slept before early hour journeys to the coves, or late-night arrivals from sea hauls.

“I’ve felt it, Hal. The feeling something is changing.” Torsten scanned the gentle sea before facing me. “Sol too. He even wrote to Cal about it a few nights ago.”

My brows raised. The Sun Prince had practically taken the woman on as a second sister, but to mention any hint of disquiet meant Sol had reached a breaking point.

Calista knew as well as the rest of us that unfinished games were still in play, hungry for more blood, but Sol rarely took it upon himself to remind her. Not when she’d struggled to find her fate words these last months.

Calista had a fierce need to protect us all, even if she’d never admit it. She’d want to write a tale for Sol, and he knew it. If he wrote her, knowing she would feel unease at being unable to aid his unease, then trouble was in the blood.

I focused on the shore. Nothing but night and pebbled sand was around us. One house near the approaching docks was alight with a few flickering lanterns. The rest were dark and sleeping.

“Keep sharp,” I told Tor, “that’s all I have for you.”

He wasn’t a man of many words. Didn’t need to be. With a curt nod, Tor subtly began tightening the protections around the youngest among us.

The young ones didn’t even notice, but Laila took note. Trained to have a brilliant eye, the princess naturally followed her uncle and took an outer flank. Mattis and Stieg kept their grins as the warrior youth chattered on about nothing, but both men had fought in our early wars. They knew the subtle signals when tensions were high. Both shifted hands to their blades, ready to strike should it be needed.

I caught Sol’s narrowed expression. We’d been friends since childhood; he knew me as well as Tor. With tight lips, he flicked the snap off his sword sheath.

On the border of the dock houses, I held up a fist, halting the patrol. Jests and taunts and songs silenced at once.

On the end of one dock, an iron approach bell tinged as the wind tossed the rope and clapper against the sides.

The sea guard wasn’t at his post. I drew my sword, scanning the shadows for movement. Nothing. The trouble was, nothing was perhaps the most unnerving of all.

“Shields,” I called out.

Grunts and groaning leathers rolled through the patrol unit in a wave. Wooden shields were positioned on the outer sides, creating a kind of wall around our unit, and in the center, all the young ones were quiet, their short blades in hand.

I took the lead.

“Daj . . .” Aesir began, but cut off his own words, remembering where we were.

I looked over my shoulder, giving the boy a smile and nod.

Once as a young fae, I went to hunt with the king and his sons. I returned to a dead mother and brother, and my kingdom under attack. I’d always wished I had one final smile, one final word, to cling to before they were torn into the Otherworld.

I never left my wife and four children without a last look. Titles be damned, for a breath, I was his father first.

Sol clapped a hand on Aesir’s shoulder. A mute assurance my boy wasn’t alone, for my son’s ease or mine, I didn’t know. Didn’t matter, for it brought a bit of peace to my racing pulse knowing the Sun Prince would shield Aesir like he’d shield his own son.

I smiled. “Hold steady and think of those tales to tell the girls at the dawn.”

His three younger sisters adored the boy, and Aesir always made himself nauseatingly heroic. He gave me a faulty smile. Kari’s smile. Truth be told, the only thing Night Folk on the boy were his dark eyes and tapered fae ears. The rest was pale and Timoran.

I pounded a fist to my chest. Aesir did the same.

With a nudge to my horse, I left the protection of the shields.

“Vidar,” I called out, scanning the docks for the watch guard. The heated sensation on my neck crept over my scalp.

Stieg and Laila moved into their positions on either flank. Without looking at the princess, I pointed to the higher knolls.

Laila whistled sharply, and her fellow archers broke our formation, ready to rain destruction over any threat. Another gesture, and Stieg whistled much the same, drawing out the men who followed his order toward the water’s edge.

I swung a leg over my horse. Another blade in hand, I stepped onto the docks. “Vidar?” Again, my call was left unanswered.

Something was wrong here. I rolled one blade, pointing the tip down.

The docks were empty, eerily silent. Halfway down one of the planks, a wave slapped harder than others and spilled water over the laths. My heart went still. Water, dark as ink, coated the wooden boards.

I held up another arm and flicked my fingers in a deliberate gesture. Movement followed. Warriors formed a line of defense at my back, shielding the docks on all sides. Laila gave a hushed command above us in the hills, and the taut stretch of bowstrings filled the night.

“Vidar, in the name of your king, you will answer, or we will take blades against you.”

Glass crashed in the dock house to my left. Made of smooth stones, it was a larger house where the dockers could drink warm ale and eat a meager meal under a roof to escape the cold winds.

Sword outstretched, I blew out a long breath, then kicked the door in.

It happened in an instant. A broad body rushed at me in a frenzied, but sloppy, attack.

My blade caught the belly of the man. He cried a wretched sound, almost more animal than human, and scrambled back into the shadows. The moment he disappeared, a knife flung at me. Much the same as the body attack, it was weak and poorly aimed. With a simple dodge of my head, it rammed into the opposite wall.

“Circle the young ones!” Tor’s voice rose over the cries.

I rolled my sword in my grip and struck. The edge of my blade cut into a chair when the bastard lifted it overhead. The bloody sheen of the moon soaked his features. Or what was left of them.

“Vidar?”

The Timoran watch guard’s blue eyes were wild and unfocused. Veins of black coated the whites. His mouth was scabbed in dried blood, and his teeth were dark with rusted stains. His leathery skin was battered in bite marks and blade lashes, and deep gouges were carved into his brow and cheeks.

He had enough wounds that he shouldn’t be standing.

“Vidar, it’s Halvar. What—gods—” I dodged again when Vidar made a furious rush for me. Bleeding hells, he wanted to tear me to pieces.

Stieg shoved into the house. At his back, dark figures stumbled about, hissing and swinging blades, lost in their minds. Vidar lunged for the warrior, but Stieg had the watch guard pinned to the ground, his dagger rammed through his shoulder in the next breath.

I used the back of my hand to wipe my mouth. Vidar writhed on the ground, spitting and lashing, desperate to be free of us.

“He’s lost his mind.”

Stieg wasn’t listening. His eyes were wide with horror as he looked over my shoulder. With time to focus, a ripe tang of blood curdled in my nose. My insides weren’t squeamish around blood. I’d seen enough torture and gore to stand steady through it all, but this . . . this drew me to place a fist in front of my lips to squelch the vomit.

Innards, limbs, bone, all of it painted the walls. Bodies of dockers were soaked in gore. Piss and bile had dried on days-dead corpses.

They’d been shredded in ways almost identical to the bloodlust of Valen when he was lost to a curse, in the days before we discovered that torturing him could keep him safe from others. Days where I’d watch my friend, my brother, shred folk with his axes.

This was too similar.

“He did this.” Stieg looked back to Vidar. “He devoured them.”

Vidar was a mindless beast. The same as the Blood Wraith. Calista was the only one capable of cursing in such a way, and she wouldn’t do this.

“This was Valen.”

Stieg grunted when Vidar tried to kick his ribs. “What?”

“Not now, but this was what he was like, untamed and cursed.”

“All gods.” Stieg had witnessed Valen succumb to a curse in the East, but it wasn’t the same. Elise had power over her husband, some strange connection that kept him less monstrous.

The battle lord was behind the hatred of our kingdom. He was the reason curses were given at all. This was a sign, a warning. A mockery at our turns of pain and suffering.

Anguish gathered in my gut. We knew, we bleeding knew peace would not last forever. The moment that damn moon turned red, the whole of the kingdom went on edge.

I lifted my blade over Vidar’s chest. The poor sod thrashed and hissed like a caged wolf. I stabbed the point through his heart, holding it steady until his body twitched and went still, at long last.

“Farväl en älskade.” I yanked my blade free, storming out of the dock house and into a battle on the shore.

Archers flung arrows into a crowd of feral folk. Blades cut them down. All were Timoran, their pale features visible under the blood.

Our former enemies were turned against us once again. Dammit. They didn’t deserve this. They deserved peace as much as Night Folk.

“Sol, Tor!” I roared. A man lunged at me. My sword rammed through his throat. He spluttered on his own blood and fell when I wrenched the blade free. “Sol!”

The Sun Prince was on his horse. Both hands on the hilt of his blade, he stabbed it through the top of a skull. Once the cursed bastard was dead, the prince faced me.

“Burn it.” I swung at another dock man whose eyes had gone the blood red of the Blood Wraith. “Burn it all.”

Sol whistled. Tor was fifteen paces off, but turned his horse back. Together, they slid from their charges and strode toward the huddle of cursed dockers. Misty black coiled over Sol’s palms as blue fire ignited on Tor’s.

Hand in hand, their fury tangled into an explosive flame. Sol pressed his hands onto the sand, guiding the blight. Blue flames collided with the cursed souls. It devoured them whole, leaving behind nothing but ash.

A swift, bloody attack that ended in flames.

Silence swallowed the shoreline. A rank wind laden in hot refuse and blood burned into our leathers and fatigues.

After a few moments, a cry of anguish came from my men. Gods, no. Someone had been injured, or . . . someone had fallen.

My pulse throbbed in my neck. Not a warrior, a friend, a youth—numbness found my fingertips as I shoved through the crowd, pleading it wasn’t Aesir. Pleading it wasn’t Alek, or, gods, pleading it wasn’t anyone.

A cursed docker was sprawled out three paces away. Two arrows stuck out of his chest, two more in his face. Laila leaned over the rock ledge, a frozen look of stun on her gentle features.

Relief rushed out of my chest when I caught sight of my boy’s light hair, sweaty and on end, but attached to his moving body. His breathing body.

“Aesir.” I pulled him against my chest.

The boy trembled. His blade was gripped firmly in one hand, and his other wouldn’t release the tunic of another man on the sand. “I-I-I tried to get them off, Daj. They kept biting him and . . . I tried.”

I froze, a bit of horrid stun stiffened my grip on my boy. As though turned to bleeding stone, I couldn’t tear my gaze off the bloody face, the body twisted and mangled in the sand, the gashes in his tunic, the silver chain on his neck that his damn wife had only gifted him this last Jul.

I dug my fingers through Aesir’s hair and breathed him in. “You make me so damn proud, boy.”

“I couldn’t save him,” he said. The tremble in his voice gave up how desperate he was trying to keep steady. “He saved . . . he saved us, but I couldn’t save him.”

“There was no saving him,” I murmured, more as a reminder to my own sensibilities that there was nothing we could have done. There couldn’t be anything we could’ve done, or I’d swim in the guilt of this blood until the Otherworld called.

“Once their teeth are in, there is no saving anyone,” I whispered. “He chose right. He chose to defend you and the other young ones. We’ll . . .” I clenched my eyes against the sting. “We’ll send him to the gods with honor.”

Aesir let his forehead burrow into my chest and his narrow shoulders shuddered. I shielded him, doubtless he wouldn’t want his fellow young warriors to see. They’d all learn soon enough, tears were as plentiful as blood during battle.

Sol, Tor, Stieg, and three more warriors mutely lifted Mattis’s body off the sand.

They carried our regent, our friend, to the Sun Prince’s horse. It was a sign of honor, of respect, for a royal to walk a fallen Ettan defender back to his family.

Every Ettan warrior slammed a fist over their chests. All I saw was Siverie. Elise. Valen. I saw the way Mattis had defended my favorite Timoran Kvinna from the beginning. He’d been her friend and confidant when he was a mere carpenter in Mellanstrad.

He’d loved Siverie through betrayal and war. He was a good man. A good friend.

He’d saved my son.

Away from the unit, I lowered to one knee. I kissed my fingertips, traced Mattis’s name in the sand, then closed my eyes. A silent prayer rolled over my thoughts, a plea to the gods to write Mattis Virke into the sagas of the brave. I prayed House Atra would never cease speaking of his sacrifice. I prayed the gods would welcome him into the great hall with cheers and the sweetest of ale.

I flattened my palm over his name. “Farewell, my friend. Save me a place and we will share bawdy tales again one day.”

Back at Aesir’s side, I kissed the top of my boy’s head, uncaring if any of the youth saw.

“What’s your word?” Torsten was stalwart and stoic when he returned to my side.

I kept my hand on my son’s shoulder, watching Mattis’s body fade into the night on the Sun Prince’s horse.

“Send the signal. He’s returned.”