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

Jarl stiffened. Fear flashed in his eyes, but he fought mightily hard to bury it beneath commands. “Go, you bastards! Stop them!”

Three of the patrolmen in the room rushed into the bones of my ruined house, knocking the holy man as they went. The wicked clergyman whimpered and slid into the corner, praying to the father of the gods for protection.

“Långsom död!” Slow death. I spat again at the clergyman. He had no business praying to the gods. If they were even watching, doubtless they’d like what they saw.

Jarl snapped his fingers at one of three remaining guards in the room. One patrolman blinked away from his fallen brother and looked to his captain.

“Get her feet,” Jarl commanded.

I thrashed and kicked. Jarl slapped me across the face twice. Coppery blood soaked my tongue, and my skin glistened in heat from the blow. My skirts had gathered around my thighs from the tussle and from Jarl’s wandering hands. A few more nicks and bruises stained my skin after he’d pinched and tormented me.

Glass shattered and a black arrow pierced the window, thudding into the patrolman’s chest. Jarl startled back as the guard dropped with a wet gasp. His limp body tumbled over the bed, pinning me back onto the mattress. I shouted out in fear and desperation. His heavy form made it hard to breathe, while his blood dripped in hot, sticky veins down my neck, into my unlaced bodice.

Jarl stared at the scene with horror, then tightened his jaw, and darted for the door to the room.

“Coward!” I cried out, tears of rage on my face. I arched back, desperate to be free of the dead guard, his weight gaining with each moment. My ribs ached; my chest pitted.

Cursed gods! I’d suffocate beneath a dead man before anyone reached me.

The clergyman whimpered through tears and scrambled on hands and knees toward the door. He wouldn’t get far. A cry of pain answered him when the door smashed open. The holy man clutched his skull, a line of blood trickled down his face.

Jarl froze, three paces from the door as it fell off its hinges.

The room went still as death. Not even my panic beneath the body could survive the tenuous pressure that came when the Blood Wraith appeared in the broken doorway.

The clergyman sobbed, begging for mercy. Legion noticed him first, then his slow gaze found Jarl, next me, tied to the bed. When the scene clicked, it was a frighteningly, perfect moment. Though, I ran from him, I could not deny I reveled in what his gaze told me would happen next.

I’d seen the bloodlust in the Wraith’s eyes. Red, glowing, inhuman. This look was different. Black, simmering rage. The look of a mortal man defending what was his with his life.

He took out the twin battle axes. The strength of his grip curled villainously around the weight of the iron. A metallic tang in the air sent a wave of nausea through my insides.

The way his eyes gleamed, I imagined the vicious curl to his lip beneath the cursed red mask. He kicked at the clergyman, forcing the fool back into the room. The man held up his book of sagas as if it might protect him.

“You’re outnumbered, Wraith!” Jarl sounded pathetically weak. He backed up to the broken window, then signaled to the two remaining Ravenspire guards to raise their blades.

They wrung their hands around their weapons nervously.

Legion hardly paid them any mind and kept his eyes on Jarl. His voice was low, a rumble of darkness. Not the voice of Legion Grey. “Ah, you can count.”

It happened in a blur.

Legion drew in a fast breath, raised an axe over his head, and slammed the curved edges deep into the back of the dead guard on my body. I screamed with what little air was left in my lungs. With a great heave, the axe serving as a kind of hook in the corpse, Legion dragged the body off me, then set to his bloody work. One guard rushed him. Legion opened the Ravenspire seal on his gambeson, deep and swift. He stepped on the guard’s face once the patrolman fell in his own blood.

The second struck, less sure, almost accepting this was his final moment.

If the Blood Wraith had mercy in killing, he showed it on the young guard. A swift slice to the throat and the guard fell.

Legion’s shoulders rose in sharp breaths. For a moment he studied me on the bed, saw the state of my dress, my tethered limbs. He pointed a bloody axe at Jarl. “Who touched her?”

“They arranged forced marital vows!” I blurted out. Hells, no denying I wanted them to suffer.

To my surprise, Legion pointed his fury at the clergyman at his feet. His eyes were hot embers now. He swung his punishment into the holy man’s neck. I jolted at the sound of the man dying.

Despicable he may be, but death was still sickening.

At the doorway, Halvar and Tor rushed in, masked and bloody. But Siv followed, a dagger in her hand. When she saw me, her eyes widened. She’d come for me. They all had. Even after I’d abandoned them. I still didn’t understand why. Legion needed something, so perhaps a selfish motivation, but I could admit in this moment I’d never been more relieved.

Jarl straightened at the window. Alone and at a precipice of fight or die. Hatred boiled in his eyes for me, but he slid his sword free from its sheath. “She is mine to take. But let me live, and you may have a piece first.”

Halvar chuckled, lifted his crossbow, and gave a little nod at Legion. “Wrong thing to say to the likes of him.”

Jarl sneered. “You want her, Wraith? Interesting.”

I saw Jarl’s sword before I heard my scream. He swung it to kill me.

A hiss of air and a dart flew over my middle. Jarl cursed, clutching his gut, and staggered back. His sword dropped out of his grip.

Time slowed, and the captain’s sword kept falling, aimed at my body. The Guild of Shade chased after Jarl, who leapt, dart still in him, from the open window. Siv came to me. The burn of the cutting edge of Jarl’s blade struck my exposed thigh before it clattered on the floor. A graze, but deep enough to draw a swift rush of blood.

Another breath and Legion was there, kicking the sword across the floorboards.

I winced when his hand pressed on the gash. Siv hacked the fetters off my wrists and ankles. The moment I was free, I grappled for Legion’s shoulders on instinct, forgetting the truth of who he was for the smallest moment. He pulled me to him and adjusted my gown, so my legs were once more covered.

With a swipe of his hand, he tossed back his hood and tugged on the red half-mask. “Did he touch you?”

“S-Some.” I couldn’t stop trembling now that it had ended.

“Halvar, Tor!” The Blood Wraith’s voice had returned. “Get after him. Bring him to me. I will give him the ending he deserves.”

Then, Legion jolted. His shoulders curled around me with quickening breaths. He shook his head, the red in his black eyes brightening.

Tor cursed. “He lives another day, Legion. You’re out of time. We need to go. Now.”

Legion met my gaze with more ferocity than I’d yet seen. I held my breath. His arms tightened around me, but I was unsure if he planned to gut me like he’d done the rest, or if his intensity meant something more.

“You will come without incident,” he snarled.

Stay and meet my fate with Jarl and Ravenspire, or return with the Blood Wraith and the Guild of Shade; the ones who frightened me and kept me safe in the same breath.

“Dammit, Elise,” Tor hissed. “Choose. He cannot force you, but we are out of time.”

Legion winced, a kind of growl tore from his throat, and he curled forward again.

“What’s happening to him?”

“If you want to survive, we leave now,” Tor said, his finger in my face.

I nodded in the same moment Legion straightened. His jaw was clenched, and he clearly tried to keep his breaths even as he took my arm and lifted me off the bed. At once, he abandoned me, and staggered with a quick step from the room.

More than in the kitchens of Ravenspire, something was happening to Legion, and I had a hungry need to make it stop.

“Halvar, keep Elise and Siverie with you.” Tor was already at the door, his expression pained. “I’ll ride ahead with him. If I give the signal—”

“I know,” Halvar said somberly. “Run.”