SWNOVELS Song of Sorrows and Fate: Chapter 37
The sea fae scattered as Valen’s fury carved through the cobbled roads of the fortress.
Davorin shouted a command, and a row of sea fae lined up along the shore. Like they were prepared for the earth bender to act, with a low, eerie hum the fae lifted their arms. The tides thrashed and rose in a fierce wall of water at their backs.
“Walls!” Halvar shouted in the same moment the sea fae tossed their arms forward and the crash of violent waves slammed onto the land. It filled the cracks of Valen’s broken’ earth. It offered new canals for sea singers to poke their heads from beneath the roads. Merfolk and their jagged teeth sneered from the narrow rivers of sea flowing through Raven Row.
Gentle songs from the singers called to our folk. A few staggered forward.
“Inge.” Malin’s thieving companion snatched hold of his wife’s arm. “Stop.”
His woman battled against him, pleading for relief. “Jakoby, don’t you hear them? How beautiful.” She moaned in a wave of pleasure.
“Kari.” Halvar pointed a finger at his wife when she dropped her blade. “Kari, hold there.”
Elise rushed to the woman, but even my Kind Heart was wincing against the lure of the song. I knew the damn feeling. Bleeding sea singers.
“Seal the ears from the tides!” Eryka shouted on the parapet wall beside Gunnar. Her eyes were a foggy white.
“Listen to the star seer!” I shouted back. “Use those plugs for your damn ears! Sirens and sea singers are among us, you sods!”
The trouble with plugging the ears deep enough to avoid the song of the sea was we had to pause. Blades had to be shifted. It gave the sea folk time to move forward. With a trembling roar, more sea fae rushed down the Row.
The bastards could practically walk on the water carving through the streets. They slammed into the shields of the front line of warriors. Sea singers kept their calls, and others brought their blades.
Steel collided. The slice of cutting blades against leather and flesh trembled through my chest. I jabbed at the belly of a man twice my size. He cut at my throat. I dodged, and when I righted again, Silas’s blade had cut through half the man’s neck until I could nearly see bone.
Davorin roared for more sea fae to take the watery canals, then bled into the soil between the cobbles. His dreary shadows overtook sea fae. The battle lord used their bodies to drift closer to Hus Rose. One by one he’d seize control, kill and brutalize our warriors, then slip into the next stupid sod.
Until he came up against my Shadow Queen.
Malin spun around, blade in hand, the glow of her ring bright on her finger. The sea fae chuckled darkly. Davorin’s voice bled from his throat. “A queen of devotion.”
“Malin!” I cried her name when Davorin swung a blade at her.
She was quick on her feet. From somewhere in the fighting, Kase called for his wife. Shadows coiled around sea fae, ripping them away. Still, he was too far.
Malin swung her blade, catching the sea fae in the chest. The moment the point broke the flesh, Davorin spilled from the fae’s mouth and finished the bastard off with a slice to the sea fae’s throat.
With a violent kick, Davorin shoved the body away. Over his shoulder, I caught sight of the narrowed eyes of the boy king. For a pause in his own fighting, the sea king took in the dead fae at the feet of the battle lord, then lifted his hatred toward the back of Davorin’s head.
His lip curled, then Erik Bloodsinger dove back into the fighting.
Malin’s blade slashed against Davorin’s. He laughed, delighted. The battle lord struck, she parried. He kicked at her leg, Malin cut at his throat.
A promise was made long ago to a dying memory queen. I vowed her line would live on, I vowed her sacrifice would be worth the pain and loss. I revealed the faces of Malin Strom and Kase Eriksson.
They brought her peace.
I wasn’t about to break that promise now.
I dodged a strike and tried to get closer to Malin.
“Little Rose.” Silas cursed and shoved me aside when another of the young sea fae appeared from the edge of a canal. A boy who’d been nothing but mist before, all at once, was there, knife in hand. As though he’d materialized from droplets in the damn air.
He had smooth, dark skin, ferocious, stormy eyes, but the boy looked wholly terrified. Like he was attempting to find someone else and found me instead.
He jabbed his blade, and only then did I take note of the way one arm hung limp at his side, the way his body was battered. Did his sea magic tear him apart when he turned to bleeding mist?
Silas lifted his sword, the fae boy flinched.
I did not revel in the thought of killing young fighters who, no doubt, were forced to be here. It seemed, nor did Silas.
“Leave here, boy. Live another day and remember who let you go.” Silas shoved the boy into one of the deep canals before he could swing a blade, then gripped me under the elbow. Silas didn’t try to stop me from racing toward Davorin, he merely joined me.
By my side. As he’d always been.
Davorin had a hold of a curved blade from the sea and cut at Malin’s neck, only this time she stumbled backward. With one knee, Davorin pinned her down. “I wonder what will happen when one gift is wiped away?”
“No!” I cried out. “Malin you are a queen of fate. Your tale is here. It’s here.”
I closed my eyes, the hum of power bled in my blood.
“You have the words, Little Rose.” Silas’s soft voice was there.
I clung to him. Somewhere amidst the chaos, the bastard of a battle lord called for our necks. What was happening, I didn’t know, all I knew was my blood was on fire. I knew Silas was near.
I knew a promise needed to be kept.
“Shadow Queen!” I called, eyes clenched shut. “The beacon of a crown beckons you through. Step from darkness and take back what has always belonged to you!”
Words said before. Words I’d promised during a different time, a different battle. They were a reminder of what games had brought us here. Silas’s deep, soothing voice blended with mine until the heat of our heart song coiled like mists of gold.
A few sea fae gasped. Some backed away.
Others were entranced enough to approach, possibly to kill us. They could try. I felt as though I might be able to melt their bleeding brains should they dare touch me. When I opened my eyes, Davorin looked at me with hateful resentment, then lifted his blade over Malin again.
Only now, she was grinning. The ring burned like a golden flame on her finger. Even her golden-green eyes were alight in something new. She ripped a blacksteel knife from her boot and tried to slash the point across Davorin’s leg.
The blade didn’t seem to do a bit of damage to his flesh, but it startled him enough he shifted to one side, giving Malin room to kick him off.
She spun the blade in her grip and rose to her feet. “You thought you could pin me down and he’d sit back and let you?” What Davorin hadn’t noticed was the coiling darkness around their ankles. Malin sneered. “Then you do not know true devotion.”
The sea fae shuddered around her. Some collapsed in screams and fits. I grinned. Their nightmares were attacking their damn minds.
More shadows surrounded Davorin and Malin, growing taller. Thicker. Until Malin held out a hand. From the shadow wall, Kase emerged with Kryv, with Ettan warriors, with Niklas, a handful of his Falkyns, and their crooked blades.
Kase tilted his head. His sword rolled in his grip as he looked at Davorin. “You’re afraid your wards won’t hold?”
Wards? What wards?
Kase’s eyes flicked to Davorin’s skin. Barely visible beneath his tunic were inked symbols. All hells, did he have some kind of protection against him?
If he did or not, that didn’t bother Kase and Malin.
“Shall we find out if they do?” The Nightrender locked his fingers with his wife. Together their power was fierce. The magic of that cursed ring combined with his wretched gift of fear and darkness billowed like a dark wave over the battlefield.
The stun was delicious to behold.
I laughed with a new kind of cruelty as Kase’s wave of nightmares rose higher and higher.
Davorin let out a roar of frustration and dissolved his murky body into the soil at the same moment Kase and Malin flung their arms out and pulsed the darkness against the sea folk.
In a sickening crunch of bone, countless sea singers, merfolk, and battle fae twisted in unnatural angles.
They tumbled to the ground, convulsing.
Those whose fear of death hadn’t taken their lives screamed as the fiery gold of Malin’s mesmer dug into their eyes, their ears, their noses. They shuddered and pleaded for it to cease. Still holding tightly to Kase, Malin balled a fist, and dozens of brilliant webs of her mesmer crawled back to the glow of the ring.
The sea fae fell. Most with horrified expressions and a look of stun in their glassy eyes.
Doubtless, she’d robbed them of the memories to even know their own names.
In the next breath, Falkyns and warriors took those trembling fae to the Otherworld with swift swipes of knives and swords and a few curious looking powders. Niklas took a great deal of pleasure in painful deaths.
“He’s unnerving,” Silas muttered, watching the Falkyn lead laugh as he dusted a sea fae’s mouth with an elixir that seemed to thicken until the poor bastard suffocated on his own tongue.
“He is.” A grin split over my mouth. “We need to remember the gifts, Silas. That is how we fight this battle—everyone must remember their gifts.”
He offered me a poignant look, then nodded. “Those words matter. Keep those words, Little Rose.”