Curse of Shadows and Thorns: A Dark Fantasy Romance (The Broken Kingdoms Book 1)

From the gray dawn to blue dusk debauchery rang in the halls of Castle Ravenspire. King Zyben promised celebration and he delivered mightily.

With Mavie and Siv on my flanks, we strode through the courtyards, the corridors, the banquet halls, lost in entertainers, open trade markets, tables of exotic fruits and meats, glazed breads, and ale. I laughed when we discovered the Eastern Kingdom’s brӓn had been added and bid my friends to try some. Mavie required a horn of water to cease coughing.

While my friends laid out on the grass beside me, eating wild lingonberries, I read more excerpts of Queen Lilianna, imagining her walking these very grounds. Two turns after Prince Sol’s birth came the young Princess Herja. The healers called the child miraculous, wonderous, a blessing. But Lilianna had a dream she believed from the All Father of gods about another child. For three turns more she worked with Night Folk, drinking remedies and pungent herbs to help her conceive.

. . . the silver of moonvane blooms across Etta tonight. Another son is born. A boy of the night, Prince Valen Krigare Ferus . . .

I read of the prophecies from court poets and philosophers, of the mystical shrubs of moonvane blossoms the people believed were blessings from the gods at the new prince’s birth. The corpses of the high shrubs, once believed to have healing powers, still stood across New Timoran. Dry and brittle and dead.

Moonvane had gone extinct with the Ferus line, I thought. An ache bloomed in my heart, but I still smiled reading Lilianna describe her dark-eyed babe when Mavie nudged me to move. Too many crowds were gathering to stay sprawled out on the lawns without being stepped on. I tucked Lilianna’s journal away and joined them in the fading sun as revelers danced about the courtyard.

By dusk I caught the glimpse I’d longed for all day. Legion, across the courtyard. With the guards surrounding the whole of the courtyard, my uncle made it known that Legion wouldn’t be forced to spend his waking hours following silly women. In fact, I thought King Zyben had begun to treat the negotiator more like a personal advisor than anything.

Drawn to him like a moth to its flame, its destruction, I looked. I watched. Through a band of minstrels flicking lutes and pipes and lyres. He wore a gray tunic, armed with knives, with a sword. A knight from fae lore.

Legion paused at a cart of whalebone jewelry. He studied a comb shaped into a silky winter blossom while Tor and Halvar watched a troop of acrobats bend, twist, and flip with ribbons and batons around a Foolish Storyteller. The fool wore a gilded mask and curled shoes with silver bells. His verse and limericks captivated his audience with a bawdy tale of the far north where a righteous princess tumbled with a rake.

“A wicked darling, make no mistake.

The highest born chose the lowest rake.

Such a cruel lovely tipped her crown and sang: Methinks tis time,

To bend the knee and toss ‘til the ground doth quake.”

The fool tossed handfuls of glitter powder at his audience and danced among the flailing ribbons of his troop, applause and laughter from the nobility encouraged more and more.

I’d stopped watching.

Across the spectacle, Legion abandoned the comb and caught me in his sights. Where I stepped, he mirrored.

No one noticed our furtive glances.

On the side of Legion, Tor seemed ready to pounce at any moment, his misery at being in such a crowd apparent in his scowl. Halvar laughed and drank up the whole of the festivities. Siv and Mavie were much the same. I faced a plate of spiced figs as Mavie indulged, giggling. Siv studied the gates, tracked the guards on watch in the towers. When I glanced again, Legion’s grin said a thousand mischievous things.

A serf tapped his arm and reluctantly, Legion looked away.

My heart quickened when after the serf scurried out of sight, Legion and his posse crossed the courtyard, aimed at us.

“Oh, oh, Halvar, Herr Grey,” Mavie said, unapologetically unlike the serf girl from home. “You must try these.” She held up a silver platter of the figs.

Legion gave a subtle bow to his head, as if Mavie had a title. I smiled, warmed by the respect. Mavie and Siv were dressed in gowns again and looked every bit as noble as the crowd.

“We would love nothing more,” Legion promised. “But we’ve been summoned to Kvin Lysander inside.”

“My father will run you ragged even from his bed,” I said, a catch in my voice.

“Worried for me, Kvinna?”

“Very.”

Our words were heavy with the storm we’d created last night. Legion grinned, bowed his farewell at us, but as we passed, our fingertips brushed, then curled around each other for a secret, forbidden moment. Not enough, yet satisfying in a way that when Halvar was my guard for the night, stating Legion was again occupied by my father and the king, I imagined the moment over and over again in my head until I fell asleep smiling.

The next day was much the same. Music and melodies were accompanied by performances and drink. Mavie convinced Siv to watch a girl, no taller than my hip, walk a rope tied from one tower to the next.

I was not so fortunate.

“Kvinna, I grow greedy for a moment of your time.”

I didn’t even fight the urge to groan when Herr Gurst and several of his advisors, all wearing the same worried look as if their heads might be lopped from their necks at the next word, barricaded my retreat.

“I cannot speak to your negotiator, always otherwise engaged, and it is tiresome fighting for a moment with you.”

“Herr nothing good comes easily.”

He grunted, affronted. “Well, that may be, but I desire a turn with you.”

He held out his arm and the advisors adjusted, giving me no choice but to accept or deliberately deny him.

I trusted Legion would not pick this man for me, tradition and society demanded I had no power to deny him an audience during the process.

With a grimace, I took his arm.

Gurst let out a long, breathy sigh and sauntered slower than a frozen stream through the celebration. As though he wanted everyone to see who held his arm, as though he were a bleeding king.

“My estates boast grander . . .”

And I stopped listening, held my breath, and kept my attention on the bright colors and scents around me. My feet ached by the time we rounded the first courtyard. Gurst strolled so leisurely it gave folk time to accidently smash my toes more than once. I was offered murmured apologies from the advisors; Gurst never noticed.

As he guided me toward a second courtyard where dining tables were set with light foods for snacking, a tight grip took hold of my arm.

My heart flipped in my chest.

“Apologies, Herr Gurst,” Legion said, coming from nowhere. His golden hair had been braided on the sides, holding it off his brow and the shadow in his eyes seemed brighter. “But Kvinna Lysander is needed by her mother.”

Gurst protested, until a meeting with Legion Grey became more pressing. “Herr Grey, permit me to discuss—”

“Apologies, again,” Legion said as he tugged me away. “I am to speak with Kvin Lysander, and as we both know, I am at his bidding.”

We disappeared around the corner and into a narrow alcove in one of the stone walls. A laugh burst from my throat. Legion’s smile went wide, and he tried to muffle his own amusement.

“Three hells, I’m not sure I would’ve survived another moment with that man. Many thanks for rescuing me,” I whispered. The size of our dark space was small enough we were forced to stand against each other.

Legion’s smile faded into something more or less than that. A challenge.

“I am here to be of service,” he said.

My ability to breathe was stilted when his hands ran up my waist again, until he caressed the curve of one breast, teasing the shape of me.

By the gods, my head spun in a beautiful haze.

“Legion.” I ran my palms over his chest.

“I’ll get the rack for this,” he said, pressing gentle kisses against the curve of my neck.

“Then, we ought to stop.” I wanted his lips on mine but understood the hesitation. I could not speak for Legion, but should I begin, I doubted I’d stop.

Out in the open was too great a risk.

He smiled, but kept his head tilted, his face buried in my hair. “I’m not sure what would cause more pain.”

I closed my eyes and let my hands explore the muscle on his shoulders, his back, simply being close. He hesitated for a moment, then emboldened, palmed my whole breast in his grip.

The sigh of pleasure from my throat drew a grin across his face. Legion began to tug at the neckline of my dress. All gods, to feel the rough touch of his hand on my bare chest was a dream I’d not realized I needed.

Until our choice to stay like this the rest of the afternoon was robbed.

“Legion,” Halvar hissed beyond the alcove. “All gods, where the hells is he?”

Legion lifted his head, slowly dropped his hand, and stepped aside.

I sighed. “Gods, I thought I liked him until now.”

A demure gleam lit in Legion’s gaze. A simple moment and still my chest rose and fell in sharp gasps. I could not stop this, a feeling of rushing toward the edge, where below, destruction awaited. This would not be allowed, no matter the praise for Legion’s abilities. Never mind I knew little of him, never mind his sole duty was to find me a husband, then step out of my life. Still, I could not deny a need to be near him had bloomed within and I could not dull it.

Legion lifted my knuckles to his lips and left them with a kiss. “I must go.”

“I’ll leave after you’re gone,” I assured him.

“In my absence, do wise up and avoid crown chasers, Kvinna.”

I rolled my eyes, and when I looked again, Legion was gone, at the mercy of the royals and nobility. Why was he constantly summoned? Had he caught the eye of the king and now my uncle desired to have him in his employ? Though, it would be an advantageous move for the tradesman in Legion Grey, I wanted to shout that he could not be taken from Mellanstrad.

After all this ended, I still had grand plans to escape to the game halls, steal sights of the handsome trader, and perhaps steal a few more private moments.