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

The trouble with drifting back to bitter glances and resentment was I’d discovered how it felt to have Saga’s body pressed to mine. Warm, soft, and strong. She smelled of damn blossoms and grass after a clean rain.

How was I supposed to forget blossoms and soft curves?

We’d yet to speak more than a few grunted words to each other. When sunlight broke over the room, we’d danced around the wash basin as if touching the other would leave a permanent welt. I’d proffered a few remarks about being on our way before the noon sun, she’d agreed with a curt nod, and that was how we found ourselves scowling over porridge with slivered walnuts and a dusting of the red flecks of sweetspice, a garnish made from leaves in the Court of Stars.

Saga’s hair was stringy and dry looking, but I’d given her the homeliest illusion to her face as I could imagine. Even beneath the mask, I had too many thoughts of touching the slope of her throat again.

I was a bleeding fool who never learned a damn lesson.

I hated her and wanted her with every draw of air. In truth, I could not remember when I’d felt such a pull toward a female. Hells, even the one time I’d been in love it was not this primal, like a thread kept digging deeper, drawing me back to this woman. A fitting name, menace.

Saga was a menace.

One I’d like to strip naked, so I could taste every surface.

“Welcome to stay.” The matron paused at our narrow table and poured more goat milk over my porridge without asking permission. “Still nasty rain to come.”

“It is a dreary thought to leave such a place as this,” I said, grinning. “We’ve lived like kings, my dear lady. But we have our vows to attend. Not a thing we ought to miss.”

The matron snorted a laugh through her crooked nose. “Suppose you’re right.” The fae woman nudged Saga, snapping her from moping into her bowl. “You have yourself a witty one, girl. But a man who knows how to use his bleeding tongue, well, he usually knows how to use his tongue if you follow.”

She winked. I laughed. Saga wore a look that revealed she was planning countless ways to use her wooden spoon to scoop out my eyes.

“I’m going to pack.” Saga shot from her seat, avoiding my gaze.

“Pack what? We have, at most, two items each.”

“Then I will pack those bleeding items. We needn’t dawdle here if we’re to reach the Bridge Isles before nightfall. Or do you not care if we’re exposed?”

She was right, and it was irksome. The isles were exactly as their name dictated, a bridge between the Court of Hearts and the Court of Blood.

I knew Bracken’s realm best, and planned to trek deep crags and crevices if needed until we could find a way to pass through the reeds and sea trees to the side of the blood fae. Not the simplest route, but the safest if we were to avoid the Borough guards.

I sat back in my chair and waved her off. “Then go. I’ll settle our account here.”

Saga flipped around, her straw-like hair swishing around her waist. I rolled my eyes. Accused of slaughtering a princess, trapped in a foreign kingdom, and forced to lust after a traitor. I did not know which god I’d pissed on, but they despised me.

Annoyed, I tossed back the last horn of mead the matron kept pushing on us and used my sleeve to sloppily wipe my mouth.

I’d barely returned the horn to the table when the door to the tavern slammed open, the heavy wood rattled against the plank walls.

“Easy does it,” the matron’s shrill voice snapped over the heads of her patrons. “You break it, you’ll be payin’.”

“By order of the High King, you will permit us to search your rooms, Lady.”

I had the misfortune of standing in the back of the room. My face was not my own. I was not my normal broad self, merely joints and slender limbs, still I froze at the sound of Bo’s voice.

The tracker had dined at my table more than once. His thick body and blistering dark eyes were always a tad intimidating, but watching him cut down the center of the tavern, blades laced across his waist and shoulders, was horrifying.

He sniffed the air and scanned the room.

Dammit. Bo could scent a hare on the thickest frost; he could spot a fox in the lushest brush. He’d found us. Out of practice as I was with my fury, I would not be able to hold illusions for the entirety of the search.

Two steps behind, Rune appeared, his wings extended, a hand on the bone hilt of his blade. Borough guards invaded patron tables as the guests scurried from their seats to move aside. Bo’s black hair was loose around his face, and it only added to the feral gleam in his gaze when he stood in the center of the room and shouted, “Princess Signe is dead.”

He allowed the words to settle through gasps, a few instant sobs.

While Bo spoke, Rune scanned the room. I ducked into the shadows, slowly creeping toward the stairs. I’d lived in shadows most of my life, and knew how to disappear. Still, I stretched an illusion to distort my small corner until I could be free of the room.

“She was ravaged and slaughtered by Etta’s ambassador.”

I clenched my fists through a rush of anger. I was many things, but I was not a fiend. The crimes I stood accused of were the most heinous I could imagine. To think folk who’d known me for turns now believed such things was a rusty shiv to my ribs.

“May the gods keep her,” the matron said, dabbing at her inky eyes.

Bo wheeled on her. “We have reason to think you are harboring the man who murdered our princess.”

The matron’s eyes narrowed. “I’d as soon cut off his bleeding manhood. Search the rooms and come back to me with new words.”

Dammit.

I had no time to creep slowly. The moment Bo gave the signal to the guards, I used the chaos to sprint up the staircase. I withdrew the illusions before I reached the door. Strength would be needed. We had moments, mere moments, to slip away before the Borough guards would be hacking at our necks.

I spun into the room, slammed the door at my back, and slid the weak rope lock over the latch.

“What the hells are you . . .” Saga started, the new tunic half shoved into my satchel.

In three strides I was across the room, one hand on her wrist, pulling her toward the window. “No time, sweet menace. Out. Now.”

“Ari, what—”

Out of patience, I gripped her jaw and pulled her face close to mine. “Bo and Rune have found us. Now get your ass out that window.”

Saga’s eyes went wide, and she had the sense to go quiet. With haste, I strapped the satchel over my shoulder as the sound of heavy boots pounded on the floorboards outside our room. I sent Saga out first. She gripped the gabled peak of the sod roof with white knuckles.

“By the hells, you fight in wars, yet fear heights, woman?”

“Only because I do not have wings, you bastard,” she said a little breathless.

“Grow your spine faster.”

Shouts came from the door. I slid one leg over the windowsill. One more breath and the door was kicked in.

Foolishly, I glanced over my shoulder, all so I could meet the furious gaze of Bo.

“Ambassador!” he roared, “You will halt in the name of the king.”

I sneered, impossible to stop it, and winked. “Not my king.”

Bo shouted the commands to take me, dead or alive, and the guards moved in. I was already out on the ledge. Saga had managed to clamber up to the ridge of the roof. Wise. We’d cross the peak of the house and stay off the ground until we reached the end that put us closer to the Mossgrove.

Saga cursed and gripped the ledge. Fury pulsed in my fingertips as I cupped my hand beneath her boot and hoisted her up onto the thick wooden ridge. “I hate to repeat myself, but I’ll be needing you to move swifter if we’re to live through this day.”

“Speak again and I kick your face until your nose snaps.”

Saga pulled herself the rest of the way up, then spun around and reached a hand for me. I’d half expected her to flee to save her own neck.

“Ari! Halt.” Bo was half out the window. From the ground, Rune and a few select warriors were spilling out the front door.

“Rune, you do not need to do this!” Saga pleaded with the warrior.

Why? Out of Bo and Rune, the latter was the most unflappable. I clasped Saga’s hand and raced along the flat spine of the roof, but at the end, a cluster of Borough guards awaited us to drop.

“Ari!” Saga tugged me back when two archers aimed their arrow points at our hearts.

I opened one palm. The archers fired. Saga clung to my hand when instinct caused her to duck her head. The arrows never came.

Frustrated shouts echoed around the tavern when a thick night blanketed the yard. Darkness like a cloud of smoke swallowed us whole. Not my most inventive illusion, but it gave us time.

“Go!” I wheeled Saga back a few steps, then without a thought to consult the woman, sprang off the ledge.

She let out a wild shriek as we tumbled onto the slats of the tavern’s livestock pen. The dried boughs and straw roof groaned and the slats gave out. My foot punctured a hole in the roof, trapping me in place for moments we didn’t have.

“Off.” I kicked at a curious goat beneath me, trying to gnaw on my boot. “You damn creature, off.”

Saga smacked the back of my head. At first, I thought it was unintentional and her arms were flailing in her panic. But when she hooked her arms beneath my thigh, the scathing look told me I was irritating even as we ran for our lives.

“Must you make every—” she grunted as she tried to help free my leg, “everything . . . difficult.”

My foot slid out of the hole, tossing Saga backward. Illusions had faded during the concentration on the broken roof, and an arrow sliced the air next to my head.

“Damn them!” I cursed all the gods, keeping my head low, and took Saga’s hand once again. “Jump. Go. Go.”

She had no choice before I shoved her off the side of the pen onto a stack of damp hay. Saga spluttered but had the sense enough to scramble out of the pile without a pause.

“Ari!” Bo peered over the tavern’s roof.

“You keep shouting my name!” I called to him. “As if it will convince me to stop and wait for you to kill me.”

“Stop!”

“I did not kill the princess!” I snarled.

“Then let us find the answers.”

I chuckled bitterly. “That would assume I trust you. I’m afraid, in this moment, I only trust myself.”

Bo narrowed his black eyes and gestured for his archers again. I leapt off the pen into the hay and rolled until I skidded onto the gritty dirt pathway through the yard.

On the streets, patrons of the tavern peeked out the windows, watching the pursuit. Some gnawed on greasy fowl bones, others sipped their horns of ale. None took part in either side, as if the guards and their fugitives were all part of the entertainment.

Bastards.

“Ari, the guards!” Saga pointed toward the path that would take us into the Mossgrove. Already, a dozen guards had blades drawn.

My hands trembled. Fury was taxing and taking its toll. Illusions had a way of dulling my senses and slowing my thoughts, but I saw no other choice. I could not barrel through guards; I could not turn around or I’d be met with even more. We were surrounded.

A cover to escape was the only option we had left, but the only thought I could manage was wishing Valen were here with his fury to bend and break the earth. He’d swallow the guards up with his shifting bedrock.

Maybe if I could be a little like my king . . .

I winced against the ferocious burn of fury. Bile burned my insides. I spit it out and tried to hold my focus. Only a little longer.

“Ari, what are you . . .” Saga’s voice faded when she came to my side, a makeshift blade in her hand from a jagged wooden slat.

I didn’t know what had her so stunned. My head was blanketed in shadows. I curled over.

“Ari, we must run! What are you doing?”

To run meant moving. I could not imagine moving again before I slept at least four nights without waking.

“Incredible.” Saga’s breathless whisper caused me to crack my eyes.

No wonder I couldn’t move. All across the yard folk screamed and ran for cover. The walls of the tavern rumbled. Guards scrambled. Illusions had them believing the earth was splitting, readying to swallow them hole. Spouts of steam burst from crevices. Jagged pillars of stone arched toward the sky. Deep scars fractured, creating deadly ravines.

If I had the strength, I might laugh. I might think of all the ways I could rub it in Valen’s face that I had created an illusion of his earth fury, but mine was more fearsome.

“By the hells, you do not get to quit on me. Pick up your damn feet as you always say,” Saga raged as she reached for my hand.

She’d be forced to go on without me. I could, at least, get her free. I didn’t think we were as bonded as she thought. She could find help for her people with the blood fae. Perhaps Stieg and Frey could find a way to break me out of a dank Borough prison before the guards took all my fingertips.

But at Saga’s touch, a gust of warm breath filled my lungs. It came with such force I gasped as if I’d been struck in the throat.

She removed her hand, eyes wide. Had she felt the same sting? The same pulse of . . . something?

Whatever it was, we’d puzzle it through later.

Her touch had revived enough of my strength I managed to stand again. With a bit of reluctance, Saga grabbed my hand to help steady me. Either she did not feel the charge sparking between us, or like me, she ignored it.

I was clumsier than her, but by using her body for support, we stumbled past my illusions. Saga screamed more than once, trusting my steps to lead us through, even when it seemed we were about to step off a cliff. My fury created them; it was simple for me to see the hazy edges, the glimmer of fury like a ripple on a glass lake.

The shadows of the trees swallowed us up. We weren’t far into the grove, but Saga dragged me to a slight knoll. An odd shape, but when she pulled back brambles and dead leaves, there was an opening.

An abandoned troll burrow.

“How did you know?” I said, leaning too much on her body. She was a head shorter than me, and shoved me toward the opening.

“Troll folk burrow everywhere,” she said. “One must simply look. Get in and keep quiet. I know it’s difficult for you, but do it.”

“Ah, sweet menace, you keep my pretty head from getting cut off and I’ll do anything you ask.”

Saga rolled her eyes and squeezed into the narrow mouth of the burrow. She scooped dirt and leaves, covering our heads, then settled beside me. Our bodies were flush. For comfort and space, I draped an arm over her waist. She did the same. Another thing we’d likely never speak of when it was all over.

“They’re coming,” she whispered. Her grip tightened on my tunic.

The rush of footsteps snapped over dead branches. The swish of blades chopped at boughs. I had little left inside me, but I battled my own fury, desperate to draw some hazy illusion over our hideout to draw the guards far away.

“Ari.” Saga’s palm was on my face. “You’re growing cold.”

Inside I was burning.

“I will not stay awake long . . .” My voice was fading. I’d not used fury like this since I was a boy who had no grip on his magic. But I couldn’t let them find us. I couldn’t let them find Saga. I didn’t have time to wonder about it. “If you kill me in my sleep, I will have words with you when you . . . when you reach the Otherworld.”

“Ari,” she whispered, shaking me. “Release it. They’re . . .”

I didn’t find out what they were before the world went dark.