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

He was wearing the black satin mask again. In the upper hall filled with the instruments, Silas was alone, facing the window. The light from the moon glimmered over the surface of the masked cheek from where he sat on the bench, thrumming a small lyre.

His dark hair was loose down his neck, falling to his shoulders. He’d removed the cloak and thick leather belt around his waist. Dressed only in a dark tunic and trousers, he almost looked free in the darkness.

Then again, perhaps he was.

I winced at the thought of Silas locked away, watching the world live on without him, with only shadows as his company. My heart cinched in a fierce need to defend him, to shield him from the call to loneliness and solitude.

With gentle steps, I crossed the room, heart racing. He didn’t turn, didn’t seem to know he wasn’t alone. My fingertips danced in anticipation, the need to touch him was fast becoming desperate the closer I came.

One pace from his back, I paused to admire the way his long fingers took to the strings of the lyre. Hardly a thought, more rote motion, and the sound was still a sweet melody, smooth and calming.

I held my breath and reached for the mask. The moment my fingers touched the edge, Silas froze. His breath was rough, but he didn’t turn.

“I want to see you,” I whispered. “There isn’t a need to hide, not from me.”

I eased the mask away from the damaged side of his face. The scar was angry and deep, a beautiful reminder that every step this man had taken was for the benefit of my life.

I ran my fingertips along the edges of the puckered skin. Silas shuddered.

“Does touching it hurt you?”

“No.” His voice was a gritty rasp. “It’s . . . just new.”

Touch was a long-forgotten memory for him, and it broke pieces of my heart even more. Slowly, I slid my arms around his neck from behind, hugging his body to my chest and let my cheek fall to the back of his head.

“There is a bond between us,” I whispered. “I saw it in Ari’s sleep. I saw it burn like a golden flame. It’s burning again.”

“There is always a choice.” The words slid between his teeth as though they were jagged glass in his throat. “Always a choice, Little Rose.”

“I’ve taken long enough to make my choice.” I tilted his face and waited for those tortured eyes to hold mine. “You’re my Whisper. My voice in the dark. You’re mine.”

He released the lyre and carefully adjusted on the bench so he faced me, my legs between his knees. Silas raised his hands hesitantly, but soon brought his large palms to rest on my hips.

“This ends the tale, Little Rose. I do not know the outcome. You do this, there are no backward glances. Accept the bond, then you belong to me. The way I have always belonged to you.”

Gods, he was . . . intense. There was a touch of madness in his eyes, and I didn’t want to change it. I wanted to know it, embrace it. I wanted to see all the layers of my Whisper the way I suspected I did as a child.

Back then, the bond between us wasn’t filled with the burn of desire and need the way it scorched in my veins now, but I recalled a personal love for a nameless boy in my shadowed memories.

“The Norns keep trying to take credit for bringing me back to you,” I said, a smirk on my mouth. “But the truth is, Silas, we bested those stupid fates long before they found us. You were mine before the world broke. You’ve been mine through the lifetimes. You will always be mine.”

I kissed him.

Silas jolted, but in a few breaths, took what control I thought I had and claimed it for himself. This kiss was fierce, brutal, almost punishing. Different than the one we’d shared on the Row, this was a kiss laden in promises, of desire, of unshakeable devotion to what we had always been.

Bonded, deeper than the heart. He was mine to my soul.

Silas must’ve felt the same, for something snapped in his docile, nearly hesitant movements. He pulled away, eyes dark with desire, and tangled my hair around his hands. Silas tugged my head back, altering the angle of my mouth before crushing his lips back to mine.

His tongue was warm, needy. The taste of him was like clean rain, a new delight I would cling to until my last breath.

I wasn’t experienced. No mistake, neither was Silas, but my body responded to every brush of his fingertips. I arched into him, desperate for more. Without a thought, I leveraged each leg onto the bench, straddling his hips.

“Dammit,” he breathed out against my lips.

“Don’t like this?” Gods, I felt I might peel out of my skin if he pushed me back.

Silas’s eyes burned with a touch of frenzy. “Like this? Yes, I like this. You’re rocking against my damn cock.”

My cheeks heated. It was a new word. A little seductive. A little filthy. I liked it.

To torment him a bit more, I slid my knees wider, lowering my core over the strained length in his trousers, and swayed my hips.

Silas coughed. His fingers dug into my skin until his marks would be left behind.

I liked that too.

He groaned and guided my hips over his shaft. “Hells, I’m going to lose my control at any moment.”

A sly kind of grin split over my face. “I’m in favor of this plan, Whisper.”

No, I wasn’t experienced, but my body knew it wanted him. It craved him. I dragged one palm down his chest, the flat planes of his stomach, to the laces of his trousers.

Silas moaned and tightened his mouth, almost like he was in agony, not pleasure.

My hands trembled when I unthreaded the top lace.

“I rarely feel safe in this world,” I said softly against his mouth. “But the moment I saw you in the dark, the moment you took my hand, it was as though all the fears faded. Even for a moment.”

Silas studied me. He’d given me freedom to touch and tease til now, but dark want in his eyes spilled over. He scooped under my thighs, lifting us off the bench. I let out a shriek, and grappled to hang onto his shoulders until my back struck the woven rug over the floorboards.

“I’ve clung to a fading reality,” he said, dragging his lips across my throat. “Sometimes I do not know what is real, but you have always been my guide in a confusing existence. You are my beacon in the night.” He lifted his head and peered down at me. Silas brushed his thumb over the ridge of my cheek. “I would wait a thousand lifetimes for you.”

My eyes fluttered closed when he tugged at the shoulder of my tunic with a touch of uncertainty. Silas kept glancing at my face, as though reading my countenance. My stomach twisted in nerves, but my heart yearned for more.

I touched the scar on his face, holding his gaze, urging him to go on.

With the sleeve pulled off my shoulder, Silas kissed the bony ridges. I unlaced the next row on his trousers. The crown of his length split through the top seams.

I swallowed. All hells, he was thick and hard. How would he bleeding fit?

Silas kissed his way back to my mouth. I held the back of his head, holding his mouth to mine, needy for more of his taste. His hips settled between my thighs, and I moaned, seeking the pressure, though it seemed too much, too fierce.

It was as though the surface of my flesh was set ablaze. Heat pooled between my legs, throbbing and pulsing in a way I’d never experienced.

He dragged his teeth along my bottom lip. For a moment he lifted his head, face flushed, breaths heavy, and held my gaze, perhaps looking for any hint I wanted him to stop.

He wouldn’t find it. I gripped the bottom hem of his tunic, sliding it over the carved muscle of his back. Silas grinned a little viciously when he shifted, aiding me in removing his top.

Bleeding gods. Muscle and strength was carved across his chest, his shoulders, the slope of his back. I wanted to touch every divot, kiss every surface.

“Is . . . is this strange for you?” I asked. “We’ve . . . we’ve grown, but we haven’t touched really since childhood.”

Silas held one side of my face in his palm. “You were my only friend, Calista Ode. You are still that, but you became the beat of my heart. To touch you is my greatest honor. It is the dream that has kept me living.”

What the hells was he thinking, talking in such a way? I’d be blubbering in a pool of my own damn tears if he kept it up.

I tilted my head and kissed him, silencing that horridly beautiful tongue of his.

Silas shuddered as my fingernails dug into his bare skin. One of his hands slid my tunic over my head. Cool air bit at my naked flesh. Instinct drew me to try to cover, until I saw the liquid heat flow through Silas’s eyes when he drank me in.

His palm splayed over my belly, frozen. I licked my lips and gripped his wrist, slowly guiding his hand up my ribs, between the cleft of my breasts.

“Gods.” Silas groaned, dropping his forehead to mine when his palm covered my small breast. He gripped my hip with his other hand, holding steady as he plucked at the peak of my nipple.

“I want to taste your skin,” he whispered, a soft admission, one lined in hesitation.

With my palm, I nudged his face to the other side. “I want you to.”

I cried out, trembling under his larger form when his tongue lapped at the hardened point of my other breast. He rocked his hips against the boiling apex between my thighs. The weight of his thick length added a new ache to my core. A frantic need, an obsession to join with him in every way.

I tucked my thumbs into the waist of his trousers and tugged.

“Silas,” I breathed out in a rough gasp. What was I trying to even say? I shook my head and simply blurted, “Please.”

He lifted his head from my chest, tugging at my nipple with his teeth before releasing me. “Open these legs for me.”

With one hand, he pushed one of my knees to the side, spreading me out beneath him. Silas helped my trembling hands shove his trousers down until he sloughed them off. He sat back on his knees and had my pants off in a few rough tugs.

“Calista.” His dark eyes roved over my nakedness, head to foot. “You’re . . . I-I hardly know where I want to start. I want every bleeding piece of you.”

“Promises, promises,” I said. “I’d rather you prove it.”

“Careful what you ask for, Little Rose.” The silky darkness of his voice rumbled through my bones, my blood, to my very soul.

While I settled back on the rug, Silas kept me locked in his heated stare. The tip of his tongue slipped out, wetting his lips, as he watched me recline on my elbows and slowly let my knees drop to the sides.

If I did not feel his passion, his affection to the deepest threads of my heart, I might fear him by the way he looked at me, the way he prowled over me like I would not survive whatever he had planned.

Silas fitted his hips between my thighs. Unable to stop, my body snapped in an arch to feel him, to kill any distance between us.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered against my neck.

“I think it’s inevitable.” I bit my lip and slid my hand between us, curling my fingers around the fullness of his length and stroked once, twice, until the man panted into the crook of my neck.

“Tell me . . . you’ll tell me, right? If I hurt you?”

“Silas.” I hooked my ankles around his thighs. “I want this with you. No one touches you but me, and no one will ever touch me but you. You can’t hurt me, not really.”

When he propped onto his elbows, a furrow gathered between his brows. I rubbed it away and guided the crown of his length to the heat of my slit.

In a painfully sensual crawl, he nudged into my dripping center. All gods. My body stretched and adjusted to pull him in, but when he was met with resistance, he hesitated.

“Please.” I kissed him. I kissed him for all the turns I could’ve had with him. I kissed him for the pain he’d endured watching helplessly from the dark. I kissed him to prove how this choice was mine. Not fate’s, not a bond; he was mine because I chose him.

He rolled his hips in a quick thrust. Silas cupped my head and held me through the whimper of pain when a sharp burn shot through my center. A hot tear fell from the corner of my eye. He kissed it away.

“All right?” he rasped.

I nodded, digging my fingernails into his hips. I slowly arched against him, the movement soothing the burn.

Silas met my rhythm; slow to build, but it wasn’t long before our pace quickened to a frenzied rush, and the slap of skin against skin echoed through the music hall.

My body quaked in his hold. When he pressed his body down, I arched up. Like we were determined to melt into each other. His length filled me from root to tip, and every thrust sent bright shocks of tantalizing pleasure surging through my veins.

“You’re mine,” he gritted out. Silas bit down on my bottom lip, quickening his thrusts.

To form words seemed too great a task, but the haggard whisper slipped out with each thrust. “I’ve always . . . been . . . yours.”

The candlelight, the heat, the rush of our bodies, it all burned together until a tremble of delicious warmth flowed from my skull to my belly; like molten ore, it spilled between us until I shattered. I cried out his name. My claws left red scratches across his arms as I lost control.

“Silas,” I gasped. “Hells. Bleeding gods. There.” My body squirmed and writhed outside my control. “There, gods, deeper.”

His breaths were ragged pants. Silas straightened his arms and rolled his hips, in rough, furious thrusts. What little control he had left snapped. He pounded into me, wringing out every last drop of my release until his body shuddered. His breath caught and his face heated in a beautiful twist of pleasure.

I rattled the palace with my cries. He was beautifully silent but for the sharp, rough gasps against my cheek as the heat of his release spilled into me.

When his muscles began to quiver, Silas sank over me, both of us gasping and holding onto each other like the darkness might tear us apart all over again. With a sweet kiss, Silas rolled onto his shoulder.

He glanced down and cursed. “You’re bleeding.”

I looked at my thighs. True enough, a small splatter of blood was there and on the rug. “I hear it’s normal.”

Silas frowned and hurried to his feet, abandoning the room through a side door.

“Where are you . . . wait, where are you going?”

He was already gone. Horrid panic cracked my throat. Ridiculous, but his swift abandonment ached like a jagged piece of glass ripped through my chest. He . . . he took all of me and simply left?

I leveraged into sitting and hugged my knees to my chest. I couldn’t even think vicious thoughts about him, the ache was too cruel.

When the first tear fell, a sort of growl came behind me.

Silas stood in the doorway with a clay bowl and white linen. “I knew I hurt you.”

I wiped the tear away, letting out a delirious kind of laugh. “No, I-I-I thought you just left me.”

“Leave you?” Silas pinched his lips and knelt beside me, setting the bowl filled with water on the rug. “No, I . . . I figured—assumed—it’s my duty to care for you since I hurt you.”

Gods. This was it. This was the sort of devotion, attention, and compassion that had all my damn queens falling head over feet for their kings.

Naturally, Silas wouldn’t be accustomed to explaining his actions to anyone. He’d been alone, a trapped observer of the world outside.

Time, that was all we needed. We were together now, both of us content to stay holed away in our own spaces. Perhaps, together we could learn each other until we knew every flinch. We’d come to know every grin. Until I never questioned his quick departure after his length was pulled out of my body.

Soon enough, I’d come to know it meant he’d return with something to worship me even more.

He dipped the linen in the water, then scooted between my legs. “May I?”

My teeth dug into my bottom lip. I nodded. Silas lowered to one elbow, sprawled out onto his side, and cared for me gently. I could not recall a time I’d been so exposed, yet been so safe, so valued.

When he’d cleaned my skin, he pressed a kiss to the inside of my thigh, close to my center. I drew in a sharp gasp and a groan at once. He chuckled and rolled onto his stomach. “Do you like that?”

Like that? His lips . . . so close to the most sensitive places on my body was a new, delirious need I didn’t anticipate. All I could manage was a crooked nod as I slid my palms down my body, over my breasts, my belly. Silas watched, a heated shadow in his eyes, until my palms reached my own thighs.

I held my breath and pushed my legs open, wide enough his broad shoulders fit between me, wide enough the cool air brushed against my slickened center.

“Bleeding hells,” he cursed under his breath. Silas dragged his lips over one thigh again, his rough palms sliding up my bare skin. “Are you hurting at all?”

I shook my head briskly. Not entirely true. There was a delicious rawness to the flesh between my legs, but I loved it. Embraced it. The sting was a mark he’d been there and fitted my body to his. The way it was always meant to be.

“Are you certain?” he whispered, his breath caressed the folds of my slit.

I whimpered and dug my fingers through his hair. All I could choke out was, “A little.”

“Hmm.” Silas dipped his head. Gods, his nose ran along my arousal. “Then, I ought to keep my hands off.”

“I hate that decision.”

He chuckled. “But my mouth can be gentle. I’ve always been curious about this.”

I lost my breath when his lips kissed my entrance. Next, his tongue swiped out and licked me from one end to the other. Unbidden, my body arched into his lips. This sort of thing had never been a thought. I felt a bit naïve, but I didn’t think much more than bodies slapping together could be done.

Silas seemed uncertain on the first lick, too, but as if the taste of my flesh on his tongue fueled him, he gripped my thighs, pulling me closer.

“Gods,” he said on a breath. “We should begin and end this way every damn time.”

I wanted to laugh. We both were exploring together, and no mistake, we sounded like fools at each sensual discovery, but I couldn’t move. His tongue claimed me, deep and thorough. The scrape of his teeth sent shivers up my spine, but when he sucked against the tender apex of my core, I shattered like glass bursting into dust.

“Silas.” His name slid out in a long, drawn moan, a damn near sob.

I writhed and gripped his hair, seeking for something steady as I rocked against his face. How he could breathe, I didn’t know, but the way Silas kept devouring me through the wave, I didn’t think he was in terrible distress.

My body jolted as the swell of heat faded. My arms flopped to my sides, my legs went limp. Every piece of my body was spent.

Silas sat back on his heels, grinning. Slowly, he crept over me, then pressed a gentle kiss to my lips.

“I choose you, Little Rose,” he whispered. “I always have. Fate be damned. I would choose you even if the Norns told me it was the wrong path.”

I stroked his cheek, the cruel scar that twisted one side of his face. I kissed the raised skin from one end to the next, then kissed his mouth for good measure.

“I choose you. You’ve always been my Whisper, the song of my heart.”

He brushed my damp hair off my brow, kissing me there, then looked at me without a shadow in his eye. I hooked my leg around his waist, and opened my lips to tell him the thoughts in my head, the rampant need to tell him that my heart was his, that I felt it more than I felt the urge to breathe.

I didn’t get the chance.

All at once, the ground shifted. The palace walls shook.

“What . . . is that?”

Silas clutched me to his chest but looked toward the window. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Wait.” He sat up and looked to me. “Stay here.”

He hurried to the window and seemed to freeze there.

I snatched my discarded tunic and scrambled to my feet. “What is it?”

My voice strangled in the back of my throat.

Against the black night a light, like a golden flame, had burst around Hus Rose. From us. In the distance, the shape of the land seemed to be crumbling, breaking, changing.

I clung to Silas’s arm. “What’s happening?”

“Accept the first bond,” he whispered, brow furrowed. All at once, he tugged me against his side, eyes dark. “We’ve accepted it and found our way back to each other, and I think the tale we started has ended. The kingdom is going back to the beginning. That was where our fated tale was always meant to conclude. Where all our fates were meant to meet.”

“Wait, what do you mean, all our fates?”

Silas didn’t answer, merely looked to the strange crumble of land in the distance, then looked to me, waiting for me to understand.

“All hells,” I whispered when the realization struck me like a blow to the head. The world had once been one. “The kingdoms. They’re breaking once again.”

My kings and queens, my thieves and crooks. Their lands were shattering.

Silas took my hand. “The words. Calista, the words you wrote in the cellar. This is how we help them, how we can help them.”

All gods. The tale that came had something to do with the crowns of fate. We hurried to my discarded trousers. I fumbled with the two pieces of parchment and selected the second one.

“When shields fall, a heart will call.”

Silas muttered under his breath, pacing. “What shields have fallen?”

It was unexpected, such a swift, coherent thought. “Mine.”

He faced me, confused.

“My shields.” I touched the scar on his face. “I’ve accepted my path, I’ve stopped resisting the past, and . . . you. I chose you.” I studied the other words. “As the land of your enemy restores. Silas, this is the final step, as you said, our tale is ending. From here, fate is unwritten. We need to lead them. We’re supposed to be a beacon to the fated crowns. They’re crumbling, but . . . this might mean we can lead them to us before that bleeding snake returns to his land.”

Silas blinked, then pressed a furious kiss to my forehead. “Then, sing with me. Sing that first tale, Little Rose. The tale of four gifts and four queens. It is time they stand as one.”

So rarely did I create a twist of fate without my quill and parchment, but there was something burning within me, like an ability I’d long forgotten.

Wrapped in his arms, the heat of seidr flooded my veins. His voice, my words, it tangled in one burning flame between us. Like in Ari’s dream, it was as if those golden bursts of light were splitting in brilliant ribbons from our hearts to distant lands.

Hidden from us, perhaps, but there was an unmistakable fire igniting between us as we fought through the push and pull of fate to weave a final ending of a centuries-long story.

To bring four crowns of fate to the final battlefield.