Crown of Blood and Ruin: A dark fairy tale romance (The Broken Kingdoms Book 3)

My friend,

I have done as you asked. Illusions have been believed. Vicious fury has been dealt. My warriors, my friends will seal the entrance as you instructed. They stand ready to sacrifice for their kingdom. To wait for the time the gods-chosen will rise.

My family is scattered, and all trust, all hope lies within you now. Your assurance that one day I will look upon their faces remains my solitary light. I hope there comes a day where I shall walk the gardens with H, where I will read until sunset with S, where I will laugh until my heart aches with V, where I will feel my lover’s kiss. But if next I wake it is in the great hall of the gods, so be it.

I go now, to sleep. May the Fates be with you.

Your eternal friend,

—Lili

“Your parents?” Junius stepped beside me, her eyes on my mother’s face.

My mother.

She breathed.

She lived.

But she didn’t move. Didn’t make any hint she knew this sanctuary had been undone. My thoughts reeled. For weeks I’d scanned the strange missives from my mother with Elise. In the final one, when she said sleep, I assumed she spoke of death.

A heady panic rose through my heart. “No.” I whipped my head to Sol. “No. I . . . This is wicked fury. I-I saw our father’s bloodied body at my feet.”

The memory was one I buried deep in the recesses of my mind.

“Valen,” Sol said, his voice heavy. “As did I, but . . . he’s here. He breathes.”

Illusions have been believed.

No. Our mother, she . . . she wouldn’t have deceived us. Or had she meant the false king had been deceived?

I dragged my fingers through my hair, pacing beside the edge of the table. What were we supposed to do? Was this even possible? Illusions lived in pieces of fury. I was not convinced I was seeing the truth.

“All right.” Niklas held up a hand, stopping my furious steps. “Let us keep our heads. A war still rages, and we must act. What do we do?”

I shook my head, looking at my mother’s face again. “I’ve never seen this.”

“They appear to be sleeping,” Gunnar said. He studied my mother’s face. “Maj looks like her.”

I hardly heard him. Too many thoughts tumbled in my head. Until Sol cleared his throat. This, this was why Sol deserved the crown. His stun took him for a few moments, then he collected himself, and faced the cavern with a calmness I couldn’t find.

“Fury sleep,” he said. “Dagar often spoke of it. A dangerous strategy. Fury can place one in such a state of sleep, they are unable to wake unless one has the correct element chosen to end it. Sleep could grow endless.” Sol took in the room. “Look at this place. Look at what they wear. Their court gown and cloak. They were placed here as a burial.”

“By Eli?” I suggested.

“I don’t know, he might’ve thought they were dead. They were enemies, but I have no doubt he held some respect for Daj to bury him as a king, and some twisted love for Maj.”

The idea that King Eli would keep my father alive did not make a great deal of sense in my mind; he must’ve thought he had succeeded in killing the Ettan king to place him here. If ever there were greater enemies than Arvad and Eli, I did not know of them. Calista spoke of the storyteller who cursed me; if she had a role to play in my brother and sister surviving, perhaps fate had played a role in my parents’ lives.

“We can speculate, or we can wake them and get some bleeding answers,” Tova’s brisk voice broke through my stun.

“I don’t know how,” I snapped. “You heard Sol, we need a token, an element designed to break such a sleep.”

A thrum of drums sent a chill dancing down my spine. Beyond the tomb a boom shook the ground. Niklas glanced at Junius. I understood the shadows in their eyes. We were out of time. Our people were beginning their fight.

“This is the fury,” Sol said softly. “The fury locked away. She said the land would rise when it was unlocked. Valen, when the heirs open the door. We can wake them.”

“How? Tell me how and I will do it.”

Niklas sighed and held out his hand. “Hands. Give them to me. Yes, all three of you.” He twirled a small knife in his fingers. “Might as well stay true to what’s worked so far. Blood.”

Blood of the heirs. When I looked at Sol, the small twist of a grin on his face hinted he’d thought the same as me.

Niklas gathered drops of blood from us and handed me the vial. “I’m unsure what to do with it from here. I know it is difficult to believe, but this sort of magic is something I’ve not seen.”

I took the vial, as unsure as the Alver on what to do. My hand shook as I hovered the vial over the glow of fury hovering above my mother’s face. I watched thick drops fall straight through, splattering across her cheek.

After a pause, I handed the vial to Sol. He did the same to my father.

We waited.

I hardly breathed.

Sol cursed. Gunnar stared forward without blinking. Nothing changed, and an ache of disappointment bloomed through my chest. I closed my eyes, desperate to find a new way. Blood would be the answer, I was sure of it. How much, though? Was there a chalice, another basin, we needed to fill?

I would . . .

Thoughts faded when a soft touch curled around my wrist.

My eyes snapped open. The gold fury had faded, and I was met with the sharp blue of familiar eyes.

A strangled cough ripped from my throat. I blinked as through a daze.

My mother studied me, almost as if she did not recognize me, then a slow, cautious smile played at the corners of her mouth. Her hand abandoned my wrist and touched the side of my face.

“You are a beautiful sight, my son.” Her voice was dry and coarse.

I covered her cold hand against my cheek and smiled. “How is this possible?”

She didn’t answer. Both of us looked to the other table. Sol laughed. All gods. My father had sat up, using one elbow to brace himself, and hooked an arm around Sol’s neck, holding him close.

“Arvad,” my mother breathed out.

Sol stepped aside, and at once my parents’ locked gazes. Their movements were slow, perhaps a little weak, but in a few breaths King Arvad and Queen Liliana found a way back to each other’s arms.

My father kept checking her face, brushing her hair aside, as if she might disappear.

“Valen.”

I blinked my gaze back to them. My father looked at me. I shared his eyes, most of his features. The man had taught me how to hold a blade, how to value my mother, my family. He taught me of my fury. And he was here. Alive. Reaching for me.

Much like my brother, it took a matter of moments before his arm was curled around my neck, pulling me against him. We stood at the same height, but in the moment, I felt a great deal like a small boy. My fists curled around his gambeson. I buried my face against his shoulder.

“You’re alive.”

“You think that bastard could kill us?” he whispered.

I scoffed and pulled away.

“Herja.” My mother’s voice strengthened. “Where is Herja?”

“Alive,” Sol said, taking her hand. “But not with us.”

“Then how—”

“Gunnar.” Sol signaled for our nephew who’d scurried to the edge of the ring, a look of fright on his face. “Come here.”

My mother studied him as the boy approached. She took in his golden hair, the ugly welts across his forearms, the blood on his hands.

“Herja’s son,” I said. “Gunnar Strom.”

Now it was our parents’ turn to be taken back. My father rested a hand on my mother’s shoulder as she reached for Gunner’s cheek like she had mine. “Herja’s son.”

“Maj spoke of you both,” he said, voice low. “Often.”

“I expected battle and bloodshed if ever I woke, but not a new boy to love,” my mother said, smiling at him.

Niklas cleared his throat, his eyes on me. With a silent nod he brought me back to the crushing reality we faced. We could not stay here.

“There is a battle,” I said. “We must go. Our people are rising against the Timorans as we speak. We must go to them.”

My father faced me. “You raised armies?”

“Valen did,” Sol said with a touch of pride. “He is king.”

Inadequacy reigned here. I stood before my father—the true king—and my brother, the expected king. “I’ve kept the crown polished for you,” was all I said. “But they need us.”

My father took hold of my mother’s hand and gave her a nod. “This is the final stand, as we always knew it would be.”

She pressed his palm to her face, tears in her eyes.

“How are you alive?” I asked again before I could kill the questions.

My father guided us away from the stone tables. “It is such a long tale, with so much sacrifice. The swift explanation? King Eli grew too strong; we’d suffered too much betrayal. We needed to take drastic measures to protect our people, and our land.”

“A prophecy at your birth, Valen, had come to pass,” my mother said over her shoulder as we ran. “Where the land of my childhood would destroy the land of my heart, but the heirs of both would find a way to heal it. A dear friend with the talent to twist fate wrote the path to bring a halt to the war, then she rewrote a new path where we could return to the battle stronger. But it meant convincing Eli our children must not be killed; it meant convincing him he was the lone king. That your father and I were dead. Once the war ended, this land would be in a state of sleep, waiting for fury to rise again.”

My mother and father had put this in motion. This intricate game of fate and blood. All for this moment. When the heirs of both lands would face each other on a battlefield. Both believing the land belonged to them.

I pushed the stun away. There was a battle we needed to win, then more questions could be asked. “Sol, do you have the strength to use your fury against the guardians?”

“I’m offended you even asked.”

“No.” My father stopped us, his stern, deep rumble a thing of my memories. A sound I never thought I’d hear again. “We go to the stone of the sanctuary. Those guardians—we’re not leaving without them.”

“What?”

A sly grin curled over his lips. “You want an army, King Valen? You shall have one. Move swiftly, it will take all five of us to rid this place of the final curse.”

Niklas and his fellow Alvers had said little, but once we’d returned above ground, they were the first to the door of the mound. He held out a hand and gathered a few final pouches he had tethered to his belt. “We shall distract them. Run to where you must go. We’ll fight them off.”

“Don’t die,” I told Junius. “There is too much fighting to be had still.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she said. With a mute nod, Niklas, Tova, and Junius slipped out the doors first.

The creature within me breathed in the tang of blood, carried on the wind, I yearned to join whatever fight had begun. Wished to look upon Elise. To fight with her. To keep her breathing. A yearning for another had never been as fierce as it was with Elise. Like those surrounding me, she was my family. My heart. I would not rest until these bloodied hands touched her. Even once more.

Smoke filled the breeze. The wicked glow of fire flicked high against the velvet night. As soon as Niklas entered the open space of the Black Tomb the shrieks of the guardians raged. Their ashy bodies rose from the shadows, from the soil.

“Go!” Niklas tossed one of his elixir pouches, setting off deafening booms and blasts as the Alvers took up the fight.

“Quickly.” My father took my mother’s hand and sprinted toward the stone circle at the top of the slope.

At our backs the shrieks of the guardians descended upon us. The Alvers tried to fight them, tried to keep them, but more and more slipped around them, aimed at us. I’d raced to this spot too many times. Enough to have my bloodied hand ready to touch the symbol. Gunnar and Sol bled as much as me, and we paused as my father sliced my mother’s palm before he sliced his.

“Together.”

All at once, the five of us pressed our palms to the stone. Swifter than the night I died, the night I broke the focus the guardians had on Elise, a flash of blinding light burst from the stone. The dome surrounded us, then split into hundreds of sharp skeins of light. Each point struck a guardian through the place a heart might be if they breathed.

The guardians wailed, shrieked, then faded beneath a second, final burst of light.

The guardians were gone, the mounds making up the Black Tomb collapsed. But we were no longer alone here.

All around Niklas, Junius, and Tova, darkly clad bodies sprawled out over the grass. Like a battle had been waged in a moment’s time and hundreds were dead.

Until they moved.

Groans and gasps rose from the field as every figure shuddered, and slowly clambered to their feet. Men. Donned in furs, seax blades, axes, and daggers on their belts. Shorn heads with braids down their skulls, or runes inked on their scalps. Some with tapered points to their ears, some with beards braided to their chests.

Warriors.

Two men approached. They bore the symbol of the Ferus line across their chests. Long blades clacked against their hips. Their eyes were dark as pitch, and their smiles were familiar and white.

“Kjell,” Sol said in a long breath. “Dagar.”

Tor’s father stood in front of my brother, but soon had him against his chest, the same as our father had done. But as consorts, Torsten’s family would be Sol’s as much as Torsten was ours.

My mouth hung open like a bleeding fool as Dagar Atra grinned and lowered to one knee, fist over his heart. “Night Prince. It is good to set eyes on you again.” Then, Dagar caught my father’s eye. “Arvad. Lili!” He hurried to them, embraced them. “By the hells, it worked.”

“It worked,” my father said, one hand cupped around Dagar’s neck.

“Our armies . . . were the guardians?” My head was beginning to ache with all the fury I knew nothing about.

My mother touched my arm. “If we ever met this day, we would need an army. They were willing.”

“You did this, didn’t you? All of it.”

She winced. “I saw no other way to survive but to curse the land. I tried to save so many, but . . . I could not save everyone.”

“The queen protected the courts,” Dagar said. “Sacrificed greatly for your family’s line to live on. It was the only way to keep what was left of Etta alive.”

“By hiding it with fury.” My mind resisted this. Twice I’d crossed into this cursed place, twice I’d walked over my parents beneath my feet. All this time, all these turns, our people have been alive and hidden in plain sight. “Why did you attack us then?”

Dagar barked a laugh. “We had no minds, Night Prince. Only instinct. Defend our king and queen from discovery.”

“The curses were placed with great care, Valen. Many lives were lost to give us a chance to reclaim our land,” my mother said. “I knew my children would be divided but had every faith you would rise together again. Etta needed to survive for this battle. This is where fate wanted us to stand with you.” She looked to Dagar and Kjell. “Our Night Prince has raised an army that fights for us now. Hear the drums.”

“An army?” Dagar said. “Made of what?”

“Night Folk, Ettans, folk of the Eastern Kingdom, a few Timorans who despise Ravenspire,” I said.

“And if you are here, then who leads them?”

“Halvar and Tor.” I paused. The names of their sons settled differently. Kjell grinned and looked to Sol, who nodded. Dagar’s jaw tightened, he blinked too much, then cleared his throat and pointed a small smile at the grass. I stepped closer, voice low. “They lead beside the Queen of Etta.”

“The queen?” My father raised a brow.

“My wife.” I swallowed past the scratch of smoke in my throat. “A Timoran by birth; an Ettan by heart.”

No one spoke. What did they think? Would they, after all this, hate my mother’s homeland too much to accept Elise? I’d only gotten them back, but there was no bond, no blood that would keep me from my wife.

“Then we go to the queen.” My mother stepped forward, a knowing look in her eyes, a grin that said a hundred things. “Now my son, as king, what is your word for our armies?”

A heady relief ignited a new fire to my veins. Fury coated my palms; without trying the ground shuddered as I scanned the field, the warriors, once thought dead and gone, now at the ready to fight for Etta once again.

I lifted my chin and raised my voice. “Etta rises against the people of Timoran. They fight at Ravenspire now! Take up your arms, we go to war.”