SWNOVELS Song of Sorrows and Fate: Chapter 4
The Borough—Court of Hearts
The Borough was in chaos.
“Get my daughter out of here, now!” Ari’s sharp voice echoed down the corridor. He was near the great hall, but his voice was fierce enough it carried to the back chambers near the cooking rooms.
I hurried to help Mira with the cloak. Tears glistened on her cheeks. I took a pause to wipe them away with my thumbs.
“It’ll be all right, my girl,” I said. It was a promise, yet one I wasn’t certain I could keep. Not when I didn’t bleeding know what the hells was happening beyond our walls.
Mira lifted her eyes, holding mine for a few breaths, but soon they widened. “Maj! Maj, behind you.”
I wheeled around and screamed, shielding Mira with my body. The back doorway to the cooking room was flung open. In the frame billowed shadows, like a satin cloak, and in the center was Davorin.
The Davorin who’d stood arrogant in the Court of Stars before we’d backed him into the sea. His hair was glossy and thick again. His pale face sharp and youthful. His eyes glimmered in malice as he looked at me.
“Hello, little raven.”
In half a breath I had a dagger unsheathed from my belt, blade outstretched. “Come near me, and I carve out your heart.”
“I do love this new strength you think you have,” he said, laughing. “It will be a joy to rid you of it soon enough.” Davorin tilted his head. “Hmm. What a lovely little girl.”
My heart bruised my chest, but stronger than fear was rage. Horrid, desperate rage for even the mere glance at my daughter. To imagine Davorin close to Mira sickened me. It brought a wildness to my mind I couldn’t tame.
I rushed for the door in the same moment the main hall doors clanged open.
“Shit!” Ari’s rough curse struck me from behind. “Seal the bleeding gates, get this bastard’s head in my hands now! Saga, stop.”
Davorin’s grin widened at the sight of Ari. “I look forward to our reunion, Golden King. How sweet it will be. Enjoy memories of me.”
Ari cursed, barked orders at the blood fae and forest fae at his back; he sprinted for us, snagging Mira out of the doorway. I screamed my anger and threw the blade when I was close enough. By the time the point made it through the door, Davorin’s likeness was gone.
The shadows. Those horrid, unfeeling eyes. He was just . . . gone.
I doubled over, screaming my anger, my fear.
Ari’s hand snatched me away from the door. He filled the space, the heirloom blade in place. “Where the hells is he!”
“It was an illusion,” Magus said, touching the wood around the door. “A spell cast of some kind. You can see remnants. He’s not here, My King. I don’t know if he truly was.”
Ari raged and stabbed the damp soil with his blade.
Dressed in a loose tunic, hair tousled, I could see the fear and disquiet clearly. Mira whimpered, and I wrapped her tightly in my arms, holding her trembling body close. Ari let out a long breath and softened his eyes.
Still, there was a madness in his expression. One he’d never lost since the day Davorin slid into the sea.
The sight of the brilliant, emerald flames had snapped something in my husband. Full of words and jests, tender and brilliant, now he was the brutal warrior he kept beneath it all. Blood and vengeance lived in those eyes. As though he craved it.
Now, to see more tricks of Davorin after the flame, I was certain one more game, and Ari would snap into a man made of nothing but violence.
Tonight revealed a truth we’d all known could come to pass. A dreary piece of our tale we’d chosen to keep buried while we lived and loved.
It had shattered upon the first sight of that green fire.
His long Night Folk legs had him across the cooking room and next to me in six strides. His palm cupped the back of Mira’s head. She squeezed her arms tighter around my neck.
“Mira,” he whispered. “We’re going to the burrows now, like we always talked about.”
“No.” She sobbed. Born a natural fretter like her mother, Mira sensed trouble before the towers burst in the warning. She’d already been sleeping between the two of us from a slew of nightmares.
Now her dreams of shadows and losing her maj and daj were coming to pass.
“My girl,” I whispered. “We’ve talked of this. We’ve told you what happens if the green fire came.”
“No, Maj, no! You saw him, he’ll . . . snatch me up!”
“Listen to me, Starlight,” Ari said. Starlight, a name he’d always called her, a name that belonged to the two of them, since Ari always said she was born beneath the stars, and they brightened with delight at her birth. “No one will touch you. But I need you safe, Maj needs you safe, understand?”
Mira tightened her hold. Ari gave me a despondent sort of look for a few breaths, then hardened his expression.
I winced as Mira screamed when Ari, patience lost, peeled her away from my body. “Daj, no, no!”
Tears blurred my eyes. I reached for her hands and pressed kisses to her knuckles. “I love you. We’ll see you soon. I-I love you.”
My own sobs took hold. I failed wondrously at trying to calm my own child.
“Daj, don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me.” She reached for Ari now that Lord Magus and Lord Gorm had come to collect the princess with both Serpent warriors and blood fae watchers.
Ari kneeled, brushed her dark, messy hair out of her face, and kissed her forehead. His voice cracked when he spoke. “I love you. You brighten my heart, so I need you safe, and you will be safe in the burrows. No one can reach you there, not the man in the shadows, no one. We will see you soon. Be brave and we’ll go visit the vales, just you and I, very soon.”
He kissed her head once more, then forced himself to turn away. Mira’s cries were closed off from us when the doors to the great hall slammed. Ari’s hands shaped into fists at his sides. Silence suffocated us.
The flames came from the North. No mistake, his heart was broken in more than one way. True, he was no longer the ambassador for Etta, hadn’t been for turns, but his people were the ones to light the flame. His family was under attack. An attack that could only be from the man who’d nearly killed his wife. Who wanted the power we shared between us.
A man he blamed himself for not killing over ten turns ago.
I jumped in surprise when his fist slammed, knuckles-first, onto the long table, crashing goblets and silver plates together. I went to him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, biting back tears when he sank against me. His safe, strong embrace trembled around my waist, tight enough I thought he might snap a rib.
“There were no sightings,” he said, close to gasping. “We searched along the coast. Every court has seen nothing, then he is suddenly simply here. He slipped past me like a damn ghost.”
“It wasn’t real. You heard Magus.” I closed my eyes, stroking the back of Ari’s neck. “If Davorin shows himself in true form, then he will not live long.”
Ari dropped his forehead to my shoulder. “I cannot lose you, I cannot lose Mira. He wants you, and he will try to take her.”
“And he will die trying.” I trapped his face in my hands. “What have we always said, Ari? We knew this would come. We knew it. But we face it together, and his life is ours whenever he shows.”
Ari’s eyes were wet. His jaw pulsed in tension. “He won’t touch you again. I swore to you, he will never touch you again.”
He kissed me furiously. Ari’s hold was crushing and beautiful, like he was trying to squeeze me into his ribcage to keep me shielded through whatever was coming our way. Tongues and teeth, he kissed me for the thousands of moments we might face in blood and blade and battle.
“I love you,” he said between kisses. “You’re my sweetest menace.”
“You are my beautiful bastard.”
I kissed him until the door reopened to the hall and Gorm interjected himself without a second thought. “The princess is well-guarded and goes to the burrows until we know more.”
I wiped my eyes and hugged Ari’s waist. “Thank you, Gorm. Any word from Cuyler?”
Gorm did not show emotion well, but there was a flicker of worry in his eyes at the mention of his son. “No, but they will see the warning. It cannot be missed, I made certain it was strategically placed. If Cuyler fights as he was taught, no harm will befall the fate princess.”
Ari lifted my knuckles to his mouth, holding it there longer than normal, his eyes saying a dozen unspoken words. The true fear we had to admit—Davorin might have sights for me, our daughter might be at grave risk since he would want to torment us in the deepest ways, but I was not all he wanted.
He wanted the entire House Ode in his grasp, or bloodied and dead.
He wanted Calista.