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

We were always prepared for Ravenspire. They tried to breach the wall, but in every crevice, every gap, we had warriors at the ready. Now they held the hearts of more than a few Ravens in their hands.

I stood, buried in our archers, using fury to split the earth. To divide us further from the Ravens. The burn in my blood only deepened as the armies of Calder proved more cunning than I gave credit for.

With heavy bolts they shot rope across the ravine I’d carved. Like spiders to a web, Ravens worked seamlessly weaving rope and tethering it to thick trees, readying to shimmy across the gap.

“Cut the damn ropes!” Halvar shouted.

All around our folk worked on trying to pluck the bolts from the stone, or saw the rope, but some sort of coating glistened on the twine. It added a strength to the line and made it nearly impossible to cut.

We’d drop a few, but not all. There were too many.

“Halvar! The Divide—remember? The Divide!” I shouted at my friend. During the beginnings of the raids, we’d trained side by side. Dagar taught us to use our fury together, to utilize our strengths, all to protect Etta and bury the Timoran raiders.

Halvar paused and studied the space between us. After a few heartbeats, a smile cracked over his lips. A vicious kind of smirk darkened and brightened his face all at once when he faced me. “It could work.”

“Then go!”

“Back away from the edge of the wall,” Halvar commanded.

Archers dropped their bows and backed away. In a crouch, I spread my palms across the stone; the heat of fury scorched the pale stone with blackened marks. A crack fissured under my hands. Stone scraped over stone. Soil tilled in thick, rocky mounds as I broke our wall.

Wails and cries of surprise went up when part of the wall slid toward the ground as if I shaved it in half.

“Follow the king,” Halvar said at my back. “Go, you bleeding fools. Step only where I tell you.”

It took a few moments before the warriors peeked over the edge of the broken wall, and saw there were now levels, like a stone staircase, I’d carved along the side to take them out into the deep ravine.

“Cover him!” Elise’s voice rose at my back.

I grinned. She had a regal tone, and I did not need to even look to know my hjӓrta had two dozen archers at my back.

The Divide was a strategy to be used if the raiders ever crossed the canyons or peaks long ago. It would take all my fury; it would take unhindered concentration, but if we pulled it off, the Ravens would leave with massive losses.

Arms raised, my hands trembled. Fury pulled from my blood. From the bottom of the ravine, tall towers of rock and earth broke free and sprouted like stony fingers from the ground. The towers were flat on top, and wide enough our warriors could leap from top to top like steppingstones across the ravine.

We’d reach the other side, corner them, and they’d regret stepping into the sunlight.

Or, the better plan, they’d mimic our steps and join us on the tall platforms of stone and fight us there.

A thick Raven stepped forward; the captain of the unit, I presumed. He tossed back a hood, and for a few breaths studied each block of earth as it shot up from the ground.

At last, he signaled his warriors forward, demanding they cross the space on the stone towers I kept carving. My limbs ached, but I provided the Ravens with bits of stone platforms that were close enough it wouldn’t take much for them to step over the darkness below.

And they did.

“Hold,” Halvar shouted, and our warriors stilled wherever they were.

I took a place in the center of the ravine. The blocky pillar of earth I stood on was wide enough to hold four more men, but I was alone there. I could see all sides, all the steps that could be taken.

Steadily, the Ravens pursued us. Shaky at first, leaping from rock to rock, but their confidence gained, and they went faster.

“Ready, My Prince? King, I mean King. Hells, I’ll get used to it, I promise,” Halvar said, laughing a little maniacally as he raised his hands.

“Ready!”

“Go!” Halvar shouted, and chaos followed.

With most of the Ravens out in the open on the stone pillars, I waved my hand and crumbled their towers back into dust. Screams echoed on the long plummet to the jagged ravine floor.

“Fall back!” the captain cried. “Get back, you fools!”

Ravens scrambled to return to their side, to solid ground. Some pushed their own warriors off the ledges in their panic, but where a Raven would step, I would break the earth until the tower fell. Where an Ettan moved, I’d strengthen their footing with closer, surer slabs of stone.

We advanced.

Ravenspire fell to their deaths.

If Ravens did not fall from me bending the earth, Halvar took them by sharp, brutal gusts of his fury. No mistake, when we were finished, the bottom of the canyon would be soaked in blood and bone.

“Stop!” A bellow roared over the chaos.

My stomach tightened. Kvin Lysander, along with two Ravens, dragged between them what I feared would happen.

Sol.

Only this time, Sol wasn’t stiff like he’d been carved as stone. He wasn’t battered or lost in his own mind. No, the man before me, chained in heavy iron, grinned viciously. His blue eyes were filled with a rage I recalled only when Sol blinded the guard for taking Torsten away from him so many turns ago.

“Stop!” I shouted. My shoulders heaved, breaths came harsh and ragged. Fury ached in my veins, but I lifted my palms and shot a jagged spike of stone at Elise’s father.

He cursed and glared back at me. “Cease this, Night Prince, or we will toss your brother over the edge.”

I laughed, and something burst inside me when Sol did too. “Toss him. I will be there to catch him.”

“All these turns and Timorans grow stupider, do they not, brother!” The Raven behind Sol kicked him in the back of the legs, bringing the Sun Prince to his knees.

I clenched my fists and at my back, Tor cursed all the gods, spewing threats I doubted any of the Ravens considered credible. In time they’d be proven wrong.

Kvin Lysander was a bleeding fool until a sly grin carved over his face. “You want the Sun Prince. He is a weakness to you, so we know how to cut you at the knees.”

“They need us, Valen!” Sol shouted. A Raven struck him in the face. My brother laughed. What had changed? How had he escaped the catatonic state he’d been in not so many months before?

The hair lifted on the back of my neck. It could be a ruse, for all I knew they wanted me to believe Sol was himself, so I acted foolishly.

Painful as it was to stand back, there were too many lives to think of.

“Why else would we be alive?” Sol pressed.

“Shut up,” Kvin Lysander hissed at Sol. My brother ignored him.

“Use the brain I think is in there, Valen.”

Gods, my brother was still insulting me. But when a Raven went to strike Sol again, I didn’t hold back. One step later, a point of rock skewered the guard where he stood. The unit muttered and stepped further back toward the trees.

“Beautifully aimed,” Sol said, sneering at the other Raven at his side.

I looked at Elise’s father. “Touch my brother again, and I will have each of you piked before you can take a step.”

“I offer a trade, Night Prince. Your brother, for my daughter.”

In my heart, I knew the moment her father showed his bleeding face, Elise would be used as a pawn. Clever and vicious, the man knew how to threaten, knew how to tug at my heart.

Sol was the only one unbothered. I was almost certain he rolled his eyes.

“No,” I said, wholly aware a few murmurs rose at my back.

Kvin Lysander gestured with one hand, and the Raven at Sol’s side had him pinned face down in the dirt in the next instant. The guard ripped out a large, glass jar filled with what looked like black smoke and held it over the Sun Prince.

“He is coherent now, little prince,” Elise’s father said. “But one dose of this, and he will turn into the monster you saw before.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Sol grunted, his words muffled. “One life for many, Valen. One life for many. Don’t be weak!”

Sol didn’t deny something would happen to him should they dose him with whatever elixir they’d warped with fury, and he struggled as if the jar burned being so nearby.

“Valen.” Tor’s voice burned my ears.

I didn’t turn around. Couldn’t. I knew the pain he felt. When Ravenspire took Elise, I understood what it meant to watch the other piece of your heart be ripped to pieces.

Once more, though, I had no idea how to protect everyone.

“Night Prince, I’ll amend my offer,” said Kvin Lysander. “Allow me to deliver a message to Elise. From her sister. A warning, you could say.”

“I wish to speak with her, brother,” Sol said, his voice low, and rife in underlying meaning.

Her father snorted a laugh. “There. Would you deny your brother the chance to meet your whore? Would you deny a father the chance to behold his child before a family is divided forever?”

It wasn’t worth the risk. “Kvin Lysander, you are no father, and she is no whore. Send the Sun Prince here to speak with her, and we will not lift a blade. You keep your lives. I keep my brother and Elise.”

With a sneer, the bastard nodded his head, and the raven opened the jar, readying to pour whatever dark magic lived in the potion over Sol’s head.

“Stop!”

Cursed hells. I turned around. Elise stood on one of the standing towers of stone, eyes furious as she looked at me.

“Elise,” I warned.

She cut me with a gaze, then faced her father. “I will come to you, but you will not touch the Sun Prince, or I will tell King Valen to slaughter you all without a drop of mercy, and certainly no remorse.”

The woman had lost her damn mind. I lifted my palms, molding a narrow bridge from my place to hers, and stomped over to her. She never faltered, not under my glare, and that reckless strength was one of the many things I loved about her. But this went too far.

One hand cupped behind her neck, and I drew her close. “You are mad if you think I will watch you go to Ravenspire again.”

“And you are mad if you think I will allow Sol to be tortured in front of his people and his lover. If it were you over there, there are no lengths I would not go to stop your pain.”

Foolish, beautiful woman.

She rested a hand over my heart. “I will not go with them, Valen. I will not. But I can offer a respite, perhaps a bit of a distraction so we can free Sol.”

My jaw tightened as I looked over to where the raven forced my brother back to his knees. “I think Sol knows something. He’s being coy and irritating on purpose, but the way he asked to speak with you . . .” I shook my head. “No. It’s too risky.”

Her warm palm rested against my cheek, drawing my eyes back to her. “Valen, trust me, like I trust you.”

“It is not you I mistrust.”

“I know, but trust that I will not be so foolish to risk being separated from you again. But there are wise, calculated risks that could lead to getting your brother back. It is worth it.”

I closed my eyes, furious, and wishing she did not make sense.

“Moments,” I hissed through my teeth. “Moments are all I will give them before they die. They make one move, and—”

“It won’t come to that.” Elise frowned, then faced the edge of the stone. “Now, if you please. I need a path to get there.”

I let out a frustrated breath, then turned to our archers. “Keep your arrows on Lady Elise. Shoot and do not miss should they try to harm her.”

With care, I shaped an arched bridge of roots and rock and dirt from our tower to the edge of the cliff.

Before Elise stepped onto the bridge, I curled an arm around her waist, and pulled her back to my chest. My lips brushed against her ear. “I love you, and you ought to know you are fated to be the death of me if you keep doing these things.”

She bit her bottom lip, doubtless to fight a grin, then lifted one of my hands and pressed a kiss to my palm. “I’ll return soon, My King.”