Den of Blades and Briars: A dark fairy tale romance (The Broken Kingdoms Book 7)

Word did not travel well in the South. It was one blessing of the night.

Townships and differing courts all held a bit of suspicion for each other. Arrogance, spite, and trickery kept them in a strange dance of peace and sinister games. Various tales would be told, and every court would claim to know the true story.

It would give me time. Time to think and act and plan.

None of the trouble in the upper hills had reached the docks, leaving me with the freedom to rush along the cobbled paths and wooden planks without much notice. The night watch was well into their ale at the tavern near the water. Folk let me pass and thought little on my haggard breaths.

Until I rounded a bend and slammed into another body, soft and strong with hair that tangled around my face.

I nearly fell forward, but I caught her around the waist, balancing us together in an off-center embrace.

“Saga?” Her name slid through my teeth in a hiss.

Saga glared and shoved me back. “What the hells have you done?”

I didn’t have time for this. “Get out of here, Saga. Go.” With a deliberate step, I nudged her aside, and carried on down the path to the trade corners of the docks.

Saga’s steps followed.

“I said leave me.”

She muttered under her breath but refused to listen. The hair on my neck lifted. Unease and suspicion clung to my heart like a plague, poisoning me against any trust.

Knife in hand, I pinned her to a damp wall. My hand curled around her throat as I aimed the point of my dagger between the rib bones beneath her breast. “You did this, didn’t you? You still work for the former queen and have set me up.”

Saga swatted the knife away; fire burned in her eyes. “I had nothing to do with this.”

“Then be gone. Go.”

“Do not go to the ships.”

“Leave me be.” I released her throat and turned away.

“Ari.” Saga pulled my arm, forcing me behind a large, rotted crate of old rigging and burlap grain sacks. “Look.”

I cursed vehemently, too many obscenities to count. Rune was at the docks, a seax gripped in his left hand, his impressive wings extended. He spoke to the crewmen on the remaining three trade ships. Beside him were other winged guards, armed and scanning the shadows.

My chest cramped. Rune was not personable, but I had earned the friendship of Torsten Bror and the Nightrender, the surliest of men, and always imagined I’d done the same with Rune and Bo.

“Bo will already be tracking you,” Saga whispered. “Bracken wants you brought back alive, but . . . there is no telling if the guards will have an accident. I know how they work, Ari.”

“You brought them.”

“Stop with the accusations and listen to me. I did not bring them.”

“Then why are you here?” I snapped, patience waning.

“I have no choice.” Her palms shoved against my chest.

I grew more murderous with each passing moment. With one hand I gripped the hilt of my knife so the point aimed at the damp cobblestones, and with the other I gripped her hair, wrenching her head back. My face drew close to hers; her breath warmed my lips. “Explain.”

“You bleeding idiot,” Saga said. “I am bound to you. Compelled to be here. I have no choice but to be at your horrid side. Congratulations, Ari, you’ve damned us both.”

I untangled my fingers from her hair and pinched her chin between my thumb and first finger. “You lie. You are not always at my side.”

Saga shook my hand off her face. “We are never parted for long, and even you must admit you feel compelled to drag me about your dreary business.”

“Then run to Bracken,” I snapped. “Demand he release you from your fugitive master.”

“You are not this dense. Tell me you have more brains.” She slammed a palm against my chest as if she could not help but take her frustration out on me. That, or she could not help but touch me. I didn’t mind either way. “Ari, if I return, they discover the bond pulls me to you, and I will be used to find you, to track you. I will be your downfall.”

“How true that is,” I grumbled.

“You have at least given me a handful of choices in my servitude.” Saga looked away, her jaw pulsed. “I would rather not return to be used and forced, then traded to a new master to finish out my sentence while they pluck out your eyes from boredom.”

“It would be a pity,” I said before I could stop myself. “I’ve been told my eyes are lovely as fresh honey.”

“Really? After what I told you, all you took from it was your damn eye color?”

Wit and clever words used to mask vulnerability were a difficult habit to break.

I sighed. “No. I heard you. It is a mark in your favor that you find me to be such a magnanimous master.”

“The gods curse me.” Saga looked like she might change her mind and turn my blade on herself after all. “The point is, I am compelled to be here either way. But your prince saw me leaving and—”

“Gunnar? Is he safe?”

“He’s safe and doesn’t believe you did this,” she said. Another mark in the woman’s favor. She could’ve lied, could’ve tormented me with cruel words from Gunnar she made up on her own. “I don’t know what this means,” Saga went on, “but he told me to remind you of the missives.”

Air sucked out of my lungs like a fist to the innards. Calista’s note. I looked to the docks. She’d warned me, she’d warned both me and Gunnar not to seek out our folk. By the damn hells, had she seen this trouble?

If we reached out to the North and the East, she’d hinted harm would befall those we loved.

My fists clenched and unclenched. Should I believe it? Yes. The girl had never spoken untrue, and she would likely never admit it, but she viewed Elise and Valen, and Sol Ferus especially, as her own people.

As her friends. She wouldn’t do anything to harm them.

I dragged my fingers through my hair. “What am I to do? How do I keep this from my king, from Gunnar’s parents?”

“First, we flee from here. To stay in the open is reckless and foolish.”

“Flee? I am not some pup with its tail between its legs. There are sinister—”

Saga’s groan cut off my words. She gripped my arm and yanked us into a damp alleyway.

Crouched behind a stack of shipping planks, she curled her hand around the front of my jerkin and pulled me closer. “Forget your fragile pride. I am not insinuating you ought to be a coward. I am telling you to find a place of cover before you are snatched. Borders will be closed by dawn. There is no leaving the isles.”

This was not the first time I had been backed into a corner. It would likely not be the last. But this act was personal; a clear show the union between kingdoms was not welcomed, nor accepted.

I closed my eyes, thoughts spinning like a spindle. Bracken would be trapped between two jagged blades. He would need to appease his folk by bringing me to face the Court of Hearts, but I knew he desired to see the unification of lands. He would not slit my throat, but if I made it back to him alive, he might be forced to imprison me for a time while they investigated.

Someone here had slaughtered a royal, then pinned it onto the representative from Etta. Valen, Sol, Herja, hells, the whole of our kingdom would see it as a slight. They would retaliate. I had confidence my king and queen valued me enough that if I were imprisoned amongst it all, the warships of Etta would meet the Southern shores.

I could not afford to be behind iron walls.

“Ari?” Saga let her hand fall to my shoulder in an unusual show of reassurance. Or perhaps she was merely annoyed by my lack of action.

I lifted my eyes to meet her gaze. “I cannot be taken into the High Court, but if I cannot reach my folk, then I must find a way to find out who did this.”

Saga sat back on her heels. “Then we take cover until we can figure out what to do.”

I cursed and lifted my gaze to the stars. “Speak true, Saga: will the Court of Hearts bring harm to Gunnar, Frey, or Stieg to get to me?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“You don’t believe so.” With a groan of frustration, I dragged my palms down my face. “That answer isn’t good enough, and I don’t know if you’re sincere. We ought to do a rite.”

“What?” She pinched her mouth into a pale line. “Which rite?”

“I don’t know.” Hot anger I’d not felt since war threatened my folk in the North bubbled in my veins, reaching for a throat to crush with harsh words and sharp knives. I steeled myself, and kept my fists curled tight to stop from slamming my knuckles against the cobblestones. “Fae of the isles are always doing rites, are they not? Glamourize us with a rite of fealty, of devotion, of unquenchable love for me so you will not betray me.”

“The first actually exists,” Saga said, holding up a finger, “the second I’d never agree to, and the third would not work since there is nothing to love about you.”

I waved her away. Now was not the time for a battle of words. “Then fealty it is. How is it done?”

“I am already bound to you.”

“Bound to me, yes. There were never any words spoken about true loyalty or not slitting my throat now that you have me alone and vulnerable.”

“This isn’t necessary and—”

I slammed my open palm against the slick stones of the alley. Saga jolted in a bit of surprise and went silent. My voice slipped from my throat like a viper’s teeth, harsh and jagged. “It is necessary. I’ve seen enough betrayal to know I would sooner slit my own throat than take another step into the shadows with you.”

For the first time in a great many months of sneers and taunts, Saga did not argue. She did not make an attempt to slice me. Perhaps she simply understood the reasons.

With a curt nod, she kneeled. “I’m . . . I’m not particularly skilled.”

I realized in the moment I had never questioned Saga on which court she was born to. Truth be told, I could not recall a time when I’d witnessed the woman’s glamour at all. There were some fae who had little ability and were given a harsh title called a tömma, or empty one.

She did not have pale eyes like the Court of Stars, nor fangs or gray skin like many in the Court of Blood. Forest fae, perhaps? Lord Hawthorne and Lady Yarrow were known to be endless revelers; no doubt a sober, utterly frigid soul as Saga would not find a place in their court.

It was no wonder she’d become one of the unmovable guards in the Borough.

“Can you manage it?”

She nodded, but there was an unfamiliar bout of nerves leaking from her every breath. “I’ll need a drop of your blood.”

I wasted no time and pricked the tip of one finger, then handed my knife to her, hilt first. She took the blade and did the same. In few words, Saga directed me to paint one stone with blood in a particular rune shape for honor, then Saga added her blood in the rune for reliability and trustworthiness.

The bind rune glistened on the stones, nothing remarkable, and not exactly a rune demanding fealty.

“It’s one for no lies,” she said sheepishly. “The best I can do.” Saga rubbed her palms together, then held one palm over the top. She lifted her gaze. “I need you to speak the rite with me.”

I leveraged onto my knees and hovered my larger hand over the top of hers, ignoring the heat of her skin, the spark of strange want and attraction to a woman whom I was convinced I did not care if she lived or died.

“Binda oss samman eiwa och tiwaz,” The words slid over Saga’s tongue like a song, a sad melody with a lightness buried under somberness.

She narrowed her eyes and used her chin to gesture at my hands when I was struck by a sensation of awe at watching her use glamour for the first time.

I cleared my throat and did my best to repeat the rite incantation. Strangely, not long after I fumbled the first words, it was as though my chest cracked and my insides reached out to take her power into my own. My words collided with hers, fitting into the nooks and crannies of the other, like I was a mill, and she was the water.

Each incantation scooped up warmth from her blood and fitted into mine.

Our hands touched. Her slender fingers laced with the calluses hardened onto mine. Her glamour was singing in the melancholy tune through my fury. An ebb and flow of something golden, something warm, that filled me completely. It took root in my chest, then branched through my veins to my skull, my toes, my fingertips.

Below us, the bloody bind rune glittered like silver starlight.

I paid it little mind. My eyes were pasted to Saga. She stared back, baffled, almost frightened. All at once I was too hot, too aware of her skin against mine.

As abruptly as the discomfort came, Saga pulled back. She shook out her hands and blinked her stare to the cobbles. “It’s done.”

“What exactly is done?”

“We are bound for the next three sunrises to protect each other, and to never lie or betray.”

The truth of the words slung around my shoulders, an odd comfort. When I thought of telling her a lie, one like she was hideous to look upon, even the thought burned into my tongue like a cracked peppercorn.

It was enough for me to believe a true rite had been done, and we were out of time.

“Strange to see you use glamour,” I admitted.

“It is nothing to boast about; the rite was simple. Most fae folk in the isles learn basic rites to get by.”

“I intend to test it now.” I curled a hand around her wrist, holding her close. “I’ll ask again, will anyone harm my folk? Your first answer was less than satisfactory.”

She hesitated for a mere moment. “Your young prince is protected by the Court of Stars since he is betrothed to Eryka. Frey and Stieg were with him before I ran. They will likely be questioned, but viewed as the prince’s guards, not yours.”

The truth rolled over me in a smooth wave while my stomach churned with sour acid. What a damn nightmare. Trapped in a foreign kingdom with a woman who very well wanted me dead. I could not serve my prince, and I could not send immediate word to my king. If this was an attack on the alliance, for all I knew, a deeper plot was in play to attack Etta, possibly even the Eastern folk.

“We’ll travel off the roads,” Saga whispered. “Deep in the Mossgrove, there are plenty of caves.”

I curled a hand around her wrist and pulled her against my chest again. “If you try to betray me, I will kill you.”

“For three days, I cannot.” Saga glared at me. “But more than a rune rite, my bond to you compels me to be at your side or I cannot breathe. It does not take much imagination to guess what would happen if you were to find yourself dead in the next century. I am helping you for no other reason than I wish to keep breathing myself.”

I chuckled darkly. “You would weep over my funeral pyre and beg the gods to return me to my body should I meet the great hall.”

She snorted in disgust. “If I were not bound to you in such a repulsive way, I would . . .”

Her words tangled over her tongue. She shot me with a glare.

I gripped her jaw abruptly, taking too much pleasure in the way she gasped. “You cannot lie to me, can you? You cannot tell me how much you’d sing praises over my death because it is not true.” I lowered my voice to something dark, something threatening, but honest. “Curse me, praise me, it matters little, for either way my name passes over your lips, and I am satisfied.”

“You’re a bastard.”

“Wrong, my parents were very much vowed.” I released her face only to grip her wrist. “But I am your master. Now, pick up your steps or be left behind.”

The way she looked at me as I strode past into the darkness, I was certain if a tracker fae did not slit my throat first, Saga would soon enough.