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

Whatever powder Niklas used to set off the blasts sent Castle Ravenspire into a frenzy. Below us Ravens and serfs collided as one half tried to gather to defend the walls, and the other tried to flee for cover.

We climbed over the rubble of the staircase, using my fury to bend more walls, break more pieces of the castle until we had sure ground to step.

“They’ll be setting the archers on the east hills,” Niklas said, informing us of Halvar’s battle strategy as we scrambled forward. “We were to meet them from the south gates, but that, obviously, is changing.”

“What about Elise?”

“And Tor,” Sol pressed.

“The queen leads with Ka—I mean the Nightrender—on foot from the north forests. Archers will aim first. But there are plans for your consort, older Prince. As I’m told, he uses fire well.”

Sol smirked. “Just well? He is terrifying.”

Niklas grunted and helped shove Tova over the last barrier of stone and debris. “Good. Then your water fae leads ships upriver. We shall have the castle at all sides. But for our missing mark, of course.”

“How long do we have?”

“Not long,” Tova said. “They’ll be on the march at Junius’s signal. Didn’t want too much time for these sods at the castle to gather.”

By the gods, we were doing it. We were at war. For too long such a thought had been more fantasy than a possibility. And I could not shake the tremble of fear of King Eli’s last prophecy. Damn Runa. Damn Calder. Doubtless they told me such a tale to spin me in doubt.

Elise would not fall here.

Runa. I’d kill her on her throne before she stepped foot on the battlefield. I’d half parted my mouth to suggest finding the false queen when a half unit of Ravens rushed past the broken stairs. At first, it seemed they wouldn’t stop to even look our way until the second to last guard shouted.

“Bleeding gods!”

I had one axe buried in his neck in the next breath. Sol took the last guard. My brother had never held my interest with the blade, but it hardly lessened his ability to kill. The Raven gasped, blood on his teeth, as Sol’s dagger entered the side of his throat.

But it was the arrows I could not ignore.

Swift. Sure. Deadly. One arrow pierced a Raven between the eyes, before I could take another breath two more lodged deep into the hearts of two others. By the time I wheeled around, Gunnar already had a fourth arrow notched and aimed.

He finished the last guard and faced me. “I told you I did not miss.”

“Hells,” Sol said. “Your father taught you that?”

Niklas clapped Gunnar on the shoulder. “I think it’s two abilities. One of fae, one of Alver. You control all those wonderful earthy elements in those arrows with your head, boy. Or that is my guess. I’d love to puzzle it out to know for certain. But later. War, battle, and bloody things are dawning.”

I’d never considered Gunnar might have two veins of the Fates’ magic. Herja was not Night Folk, but half her family was. She held the blood of the fae the same as her lover held the blood of an Alver.

Gunnar ran beside me, a new confidence in his movements, as we darted through the corridors of Ravenspire. Outside shouts of units assembling kept the inner walls free for us to run.

But one voice drew me to stop.

From an open window, Jarl Magnus shouted his demands, his orders, at his units. Ready for battle, he held tightly to a short blade, an axe on his belt. The fool planned to go against Elise. My sight shadowed in red. Fists tightened around my axes. One thought bled through my brain, his life leaving his eyes under my blades.

“Valen.” Sol shoved my shoulder. “Not now. Savor him later.”

Leave him? How? A violent need for his slaughter held me in place.

Sol muttered next to me, shoved my shoulder again, and in another instant, murky black creeped like a serpent in the grass from the window to the lawns, toward Jarl’s units. Everywhere the black touched the earth transformed into something wizened, dried, and dead.

“Move!” Jarl shouted, catching sight of the syrupy blight.

“No!” I shouted at my brother. “He is mine.”

Sol’s eyes darkened the more he pushed his fury, ignoring me, watching as Jarl fled out of my sight with his units. The backline of his guards was not so fortunate. My bloodlust faded with Jarl out of sight, and as Sol’s poison slithered beneath the feet of the guards.

They gasped and clutched their throats as black veins sliced across their skin. Their eyes lost color, faded to a silky darkness, until they could no longer draw a single breath.

Dead. Like the earth beneath them.

“Fascinating.” Niklas shook his head with a smile.

Sol struck the back of my head once we started running for the back gates again. “You keep your bleeding head. Finish this and find your queen, Valen. Be the damn king.”

Parted for turns and he still knew how to reprimand me better than anyone.

Torches lit the night. Smoke from bon fires roared over the towers of Ravenspire and around the outer gates.

We wove through satin canopies covering tables of sweet fruit and berry wine, abandoned now. The back gate was tucked behind the gardens, beyond the backdoors of the old schoolhouse where I fell in love with a Timoran.

“Niklas!”

The Alver blew out a breath of relief and took the lead. From the shadows, Junius appeared, dressed in a flowing blue tunic, dark hair braided off her face. Her soft brown eyes brightened when she caught her husband’s quick embrace.

I moved forward and stole her away the second he released her. She chuckled in my arms. “I never took you for a warm sort.”

“It is good to see you,” I admitted.

Junius pulled away, one hand on my face. “Glad to see you put your bleeding head on straight and took the crown. A thing I always told you to do. Niklas will tell you, it is wise to simply listen to me the first time.”

I smiled. For the first time since parting from Elise, I smiled in earnest.

“I’ll remember that.”

“Let’s go,” Tova whined.

“Where is this place you insisted we find?” Niklas asked.

“A few lengths through the trees.” I used the point of my axe to direct us. Niklas hurriedly explained to Junius we’d be altering whatever plans this Nightrender had in place, and we cut into the shadows of the forest.

“Valen,” Junius called out. “How do you plan to get by those creatures no one can see but you?”

“Creatures?” Sol said in a gasp, quickening his pace.

“Fury guardians,” I said. “Beings cursed to defend the tomb. They are the ones who bleeding killed me. Broke my curse, of course, but when we returned again, only Elise and I could see them.”

“Perfect,” Sol grumbled.

Gunnar gripped his shoulder. “After all that has happened, did you think this would be any easier, Uncle?”

At our backs, the shouts of Ravenspire faded into the night. Smoke from their pyres clouded the moonlight, but when we reached the thorny walls of moonvane and rune pillars, silence swallowed us. As if we were the only ones remaining on the land, sounds of war died. All that remained was the somberness of the Black Tomb.

The mounds were lit by torches. Tattered flags of the Lysander crest were windblown and scattered across the thick grass.

I held up a fist, stopping the others at my back. My eyes scanned the gently sloping land of the tomb. The stone blood circle. It seemed almost peaceful, as if this place did not call for death.

“Elise went into many of the tombs,” I said and pointed to one near the center. “But Ravenspire kept the storyteller in that one.”

“The girl?” Sol stepped to my shoulder. “Even in madness I spent a great deal of time with her. Hells, she could talk.”

“Did she say anything about the tomb?”

He paused, then nodded. “She spoke of her other cage. Called it a well-guarded grave.” Sol rubbed the sides of his head. “It’s difficult to wade through, I was not always aware of her, but she often spoke of how it frightened her. She told me once when they left her in the dark, she felt something.”

“What something?” Tova whispered as she pushed forward. She crouched, knife in hand.

“I don’t know. More like she was not alone in there, and it frightened her because she saw nothing. The child was one of many storytellers, and only knew of us in our present state. She did not know much of the war between King Eli.”

“Yet she led us to this moment,” I said.

Sol smirked. “She was no friend of Ravenspire. I don’t know if she did it because she had a good heart, or if she wanted to irk them.”

I didn’t care what Calista’s motives were, she helped break the fury curses, she helped us bring this battle to fruition.

“Good place to start, I’d say,” Niklas said. A soft, steady beat of drums broke the silence. His jaw pulsed. “And we better hurry. Our friends are coming. I have every intention of standing with my guild.”

I had every intention of standing with my wife.

Axes in hand, I rolled my shoulders back. “Prepare for the fury guardians. If you are blind to them, I will do what I can to guide you around them.”

“Fighting blind,” Tova muttered under her breath, “my favorite way to fight.”

Gunnar notched an arrow and took a gulp of whatever elixir Niklas had given him in the phial. The Alvers readied their blades, Niklas a few vials, and Sol stood at my shoulder, blade in hand.

Two steps into the Black Tomb the shrieks of the guardians awakened.

“Do you see them?” I shouted.

“I see them,” Sol said through his teeth.

“Run to the mound. It takes blood,” I said as the shadowy guardians raged. They rose in their haunting shapes, golden fiery blades at the ready. Their cries were pitiful, desperate, wicked.

“Go!” Niklas tossed one of his pouches in a murky cluster of the shadowy guardians.

A bright, spark of white ignited the tomb in a hissing mist. The guardians shrieked and faded. No time to wonder, no time to ask. All I could do was thank the Fates they’d brought us tricky allies with magic that rivaled our own.

Shadows would dissipate at the strike of our blades, the points of Gunnar’s arrows, but they came without end.

I hated this bleeding place.

After slashing at too many, Sol cursed the gods and dropped his blades. Blight coated the palms of his hands. The poison filled spaces between the guardians, devouring moonvane, grass, trees, but also the fury keeping the guardians attacking.

Their shrill cries rattled in my skull, but I laughed. Sol’s blight devoured them the same way it devoured the earth.

With a breath to act, I reached for Gunnar’s hand and sliced him with the edge of my axe.

“What are—”

“Blood.” I did the same to my hand. “Niklas, we will make for the door. Hold them back when Sol breaks.”

The Alver gathered vials and pouches, handing them to Tova and Junius. “Move quickly and don’t bleeding lock us out.”

I let out a long breath, focused. We’d have moments. A few heartbeats.

“Sol! Now!”

My brother dropped his hands, blight fading, and wheeled over his shoulder. Gunnar sped beside me as Sol caught up with us. I slammed into the door of the mound Elise had once entered. My blood dripped over the basin near the door. Gunnar splayed his bloodied palm beside mine. Bursts of color and fire erupted around the guardians as the Alvers used the elixirs to give us time. Sol used a thick thorn from a dying moonvane branch to slash his hand.

The guardians hissed and spat their rage when the heavy door slid aside and we toppled in.

Niklas, Junie, and Tova sprinted for the door, shadows at their backs. When they reached the entrance, they flung inside and helped slam the door behind us.

Gunnar slid down the wall until he met the ground and let out a nervous laugh. “This place is like a nightmare.”

I nudged his head. “Welcome to the world of your mother’s people.”

He snorted and gathered his bow again. Niklas and Sol scanned the space. There was a small cage made of iron bars. Doubtless Calista rotted in there many times.

“How did they get her inside without the right blood?” Sol asked, eyes on the cage.

“I don’t know, but Elise opened the door once. We thought it was royal blood.” Perhaps there was more to the storyteller than we knew, or perhaps it had been done by false kings in the past. “I don’t think that is the door the prophecy spoke of anyway.”

We dragged our hands across walls, searching for anything that might lead us to a door, something that might hide lost fury my mother never wanted Eli to find. Sod, dirt, and packed clay was all I found.

My fists clenched and unclenched.

“Blades, books, no door.” Sol slapped a leather-bound book of parchment closed. “We might’ve chosen the wrong mound.”

Drums pounded fiercer in the distance. We were on the losing side of time.

“Unless we are not looking low enough.” Tova lifted her strange eyes from where she kneeled on the floor. She pulled back dusty woven rugs and revealed a row of blackened rune symbols scorched into the floorboards.

We scrambled over to the space. Niklas and Sol ripped back the rugs. A clear circle surrounded the runes, but it looked nothing like a door. No hatch, no breaks in the wood. From a pouch on his hip, Niklas removed an empty vial. “You say blood is the key here. Hurry.”

He gestured to the opening in the vial. There wasn’t a need to explain more before Sol, Gunnar, and I held new open wounds over the top until the bottom was covered in our mixed blood.

Niklas swirled the vial, then tipped it over the runes. I held my breath.

Nothing.

At first.

A few silent, wretched moments passed before a flicker of red heat brightened the line of runes. As it had the day my curse broke, blood swirled across the surface of the wood. The runes burned brighter. A heavy groan and shudder rippled through the mound; I let out a curse when the boards dissolved away as sand on the shore and widened to a tunnel below ground.

“All gods.” Junius gaped at the pit.

My pulse raced in my skull. I took hold of one axe and glanced at my brother. With a nod, Sol took the first step into the dimness. I followed, Gunnar at my back. The Alvers kept a cautious watch as they slowly descended a few paces behind.

A cold wall of earthy smells with an underlying rot burned my lungs. The tunnel expanded into a cavern. No light, no openings, nothing but stone and earth. Niklas clicked what sounded like glass stones together and soon a spark of pale fire ignited over the lip of one of his glass vials like a candleflame.

Sol scoffed. “You Alver folk are wise to keep around.”

“We are impressive,” Niklas said, a little breathless as he moved the flame around, studying the marks on the walls.

“Valen,” Sol whispered a few paces into the cavern. “What is that?”

I followed his gaze. What little light Niklas’s trick provided revealed something in the center of the open space. Dark shapes, possibly a table? I snapped a finger and held out my hand until Niklas gave the flame to me.

Together, Sol and I approached. My foot struck a barrier, a stone ring around the long shapes. With care we stepped over the edge of the ring. Part of me expected a new wave of guardians to pierce us with their blades, but nothing changed.

Until Gunnar joined us and all at once fierce wind hissed through the long tunnels, igniting a ring of torches, brightening the tunnel in ghostly shadows.

I looked around, axe at the ready, fury burning. No guardians came.

“Who are they?”

Gunnar’s voice dragged Sol and I back to the center of the ring. It took a single heartbeat for my mind to accept what I was seeing. Then a jab to my chest stole the air from my lungs. I was not the only one. Sol fumbled next to me. He used my shoulder to keep upright; I braced against him.

“All, the bleeding, gods.” The words came in soft, slow gasps.

Two stone tables were placed in the center of the ring. A gilded shimmer of fury shielded the surface, almost like a glittering canopy over two bodies.

“What is it?” Niklas hissed.

I went to one, Sol went to the other. My throat tightened, choking my every breath. Her face was peaceful, pale, burdened. The shallow rise and fall of her chest made no sense, how . . . how was any of it possible?

“Valen?” Gunnar pressed gently.

I shook my head and reached a trembling hand through the glowing shield over her features. It kissed my skin with a shocking warmth, a fury that spoke to my own.

I looked at Sol. He was on his knees, hands on the edge of the second table, breaths harsh.

“The true king and queen,” I whispered. “They are . . . our parents.”