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

She didn’t return until the moon faded into sunlight. I sat on the stoop of the cottage Gorm had given me to use until the dawn.

When Saga rounded to the front of her cottage across from mine, she paused. Her naked body was wrapped in the same black gown she’d used to shield her skin from me. It was torn in places, but stiff and dry now.

She dragged her bottom lip between her teeth, then turned into the hovel without a word.

Saga’s body had been harmed before, used selfishly when it ought to have been loved. I knew the look too well. I’d seen it too many times in other women. The panic in the eyes, the way she’d curled away from me as if I might strike her.

My mind conjured up faceless bastards with strong hands and weak spines. Men who’d steal what was not theirs to take. I glared at the door, unsettled, angry, a little murderous.

I didn’t leave the stoop until pale light crested over the jagged stone walls surrounding the Court of Blood. The thought of taking my eyes off her, of letting anyone break the spine of my unwilling captive was enough to leave my eyes red with rage.

I’d always seen her as unbreakable. But she’d been broken. Over and over again, she’d been broken.

I was a fool. I was blind and too absorbed in my own bleeding tasks, duties, and ego. I’d never noticed the woman I tried to hate was battered under my watch.

I was a damn fool.

We were sent on our way with well wishes from Bjorn and Gorm while a report was delivered by Cuyler that Gunnar and the others had been safely returned to the Court of Hearts with no whispers of the king ever missing.

Saga and I had said nothing to each other. The passion we’d succumbed to had been buried beneath silence, as if it had never happened at all.

But I would not forget how something about my touch, something I’d done, had sent her to a moment in time where different hands touched her in horrid ways.

A spark of rage like burning embers had not left my chest since last night. Too angry to speak, we’d set out for the docks with two of Gorm’s guards for the short journey across the inlet where the Sea of Shadows collided with the Fate’s Ocean.

I wanted nothing more than to learn who had put hands on her. I’d peel his skin from his body while I strung him from his ankles and watched him bleed as I fed him small chunks of his manhood, piece by piece.

It didn’t take much to dream up such violence. I’d done it before.

Across the skiff, Saga stared at the dark water. I studied the back of her head. She was bundled again, all those scars hidden from sight.

I hated myself a little for being such an arrogant sod and demanding she show more of her flesh. All the burly wraps, high-necked tunics, long gowns without a slit to be seen, made a great deal of sense now.

I’d manhandled her, threatened her, spit barbed words at her. It was no wonder she’d been cold as stone toward me. No doubt with marks such as those, Saga had faced the same treatment for turns. She was nauseatingly accustomed to it. I was merely another cruel master.

“North Fae.” One of the guards said with a grunt.

I didn’t even have the desire to correct him on my title. Seemed insignificant to the other thoughts tumbling about in my head. I blinked my gaze to him and took the outstretched scroll of parchment. “What’s this?”

“Trade agreement from my lord to the weak Lord Hawthorne. Lord Gorm hopes it will help cease any idiocy the serpents try to create when you seek them out. They fear My Lord greatly.”

Blood fae were obliged to remind anyone who asked that the Court of Serpents was weaker in every way. Still, the trepidation of the blood fae was the reason we would step into the serpent court without illusions.

I was to play the role my title demanded, and pray Hawthorne feared Gorm’s retaliation as much as Etta’s and did not have Bo or Rune hidden somewhere in his swamp.

“I have hope we’ll only be in the serpent court for a short while,” I told the guards. “We’ll send word through the troll tunnels when we know where we are headed.”

“You are entertaining, North Fae. To think Lord Hawthorne or Lady Yarrow will barter easily makes me want to laugh loudly.”

If this was the way he looked when he wished to raise a ruckus, I could only imagine what his temperament was when he was somber.

Saga and I were left on the shoreline with my satchel, the trade agreement, and a few onyx chips used as currency. Here, the soil was sopping with damp. Long reeds and mossy stones marked glistening paths through willow trees, and ghostly branches with web moss draped over the knobs and twigs like a shabby cowl.

Along the paths were serpentine swamps. The water was pale green with speckled stones at the bottom. The hum of iridescent dragonfly wings filled the quiet, and the occasional golden flicker of sun flies danced about the velvet blossoms of white lilies.

I adjusted the strap of the satchel over my shoulder. All this time there’d been no trouble speaking to Saga. We’d sparred with words since being cast out of the longhouse, but I could not find a sound to utter, and instead, made a horrid gurgle in the back of my throat where words ought to have been.

My jaw pulsed in tension, and I merely took a long stride down a winding pathway that disappeared between two tangled willow trees.

Saga followed obediently and equally silent. We ought to be bold and speak of what happened last night. There was nothing amiss with a man and woman enjoying a bit of pleasure together.

But there was more to it. I’d never shied away from a woman’s touch should she want mine the same. Turns in Ruskig were long, dreary, and lonely. It was not uncommon for folk to pass the time in the refuge finding a bit of peace in the arms of a lover.

In all those moments, I’d not succumbed to such a rapid pulse as last night. The feel of skin under my hands had never stirred a forgotten piece of my heart in the same way as it stirred when touching Saga.

Before she’d looked on me in horror, a bleary wash of lust or something deeper had lived in those eyes the same as me.

Once the path bent under the willow canopy, the trees darkened until the bark looked like a midnight sky, and leaves were a strange tangle of sea blue and evergreen. Mist swirled around the roots like a low storm off the sea, and at a split in the path, seated on a wet boulder, was a wolfish fae.

His lips were painted black; his ears were tufted with wiry fur. His grin was wide and toothy. It was not so much the sharpened seax on his waist, but the serrated edges of his pointed fingernails that always brought me to fret.

“Morning, Ulv,” I said. This was not the first time I’d spoken to the gatekeeper. Truth be told, he was more cunning than he was brutal, and Ulv had to be older than the gods. His face was not cracked from turns, but his back hunched as if the twin to the boulder on which he sat was buried under his burlap cloak.

“The ambassador returns,” Ulv said, his voice hoarse as if he’d been running a great distance. “Come to play our serpent games?”

“Afraid we’re here to speak directly to your wondrous lord and lady, Ulv.” One thing I’d learned when I’d first visited the isles was to stroke the vanity of the serpent folk. They believed themselves to be the true fae folk because of their connection to the earth. They lived for glamour, compulsion, and revelry. They played tricks, ate cloyingly sweet fruits, and danced until their toes snapped.

“Ah, entrance to the den with our blades and our briars?” Ulv slid off his boulder. The moment his heavy boots struck the ground, he hacked a cough like the force of standing sent a wave of exertion pulsing to his lungs. Once it passed, he used the back of his woolen sleeve to wipe spittle from his black lips. “You know the rules, then?”

I fought the urge to groan. Tricks. Schemes. The serpent folk could be terribly inconvenient. I nodded. “I’ve played before, though, I wish Lord Hawthorne or Lady Yarrow would consider the many other times I’ve visited and forego the riddles. I’m afraid we’re rather short on time for this visit.”

Ulv sneered, his fangs flashing. “Play or do not. It is your risk to take.”

“Fine.” I waved my fingers. Hawthorne wanted folk to feel privileged to enter his court. He lived for risks, thinking the sweat, racing hearts, and pale fear his toying conjured in other folk some of the highest entertainment.

Should they be unsuccessful in his game, it did not end well for the tips of their toes or ears.

Ulv crouched and began writing the symbols of his riddle in the loamy soil as he spoke the words aloud. “Answer correct and entry you shall win. You may not keep me until you have given me. What am I?”

As the new ambassador I’d studied the Court of Serpents with the help of Bracken nearly three turns ago. I’d been sent to make peace with all the fae; I was to speak for King Valen. To me, that meant knowing how to live peacefully in each court. I’d kept a heady prejudice against the blood fae, but had hope that was at an end. But regarding the Court of Serpents, I’d been schooled on Ulv, the gatekeeper, and had studied a vast number of riddles from old histories.

It took me a few moments to spin my thoughts through options, but he’d offered a fairly simple jest.

“I believe the correct response is one’s word.”

“Certain?” Ulv cocked one bushy brow.

I grinned in what I hoped was a touch of arrogance. “Absolutely.”

With a deep bow, the gatekeeper swept his arms open. “Entrance granted.”

Behind the boulder, a slight, gilded shimmer rained down a thick oak until glamoured branches twisted and bent into a tall archway. Somewhere in the mist the cheery sound of lutes and drums filtered through the trees from Hawthorne’s den.

I turned around and waited for Saga to receive her riddle. Ulv was notorious for going easier on pretty women, and I’d never tell her, but Saga was clever in her own right.

But Ulv didn’t give her a riddle. He gestured me forward, already wiggling his clawed fingers to close the ensorcelled archway.

“The woman is with me,” I said.

Ulv took a long draw of air in through his wide nostrils. “My glorious lord does not welcome traitors. In fact, he’d rather me gnaw out a few pieces of flesh.” The gatekeeper snapped his teeth.

Saga narrowed her eyes. “I am no traitor, you oaf.”

Ulv chuckled darkly. “Tell that to the High King you tried to slaughter on those smelly Eastern shores.”

“Were you there, creature? Did you lift a blade, or did you sit and watch with your lord and lady, placing wagers on who’d fall?”

Saga’s voice was rife in vitriol, but beneath it was a touch of pain I’d grown keen to in recent days. For all time it seemed she would be damned as a traitor. There must’ve been more to her tale, more to the reasons she’d stood beside Astrid instead of Bracken. I was certain those secrets she kept were tied to her role in the battles where we stood on opposing sides.

Sofia and the king seemed satisfied with her punishment of being bound to me, but the other fae could not overcome it. They tormented Saga while giving Astrid silks and satins and her own bleeding wing in the Borough.

“A neutral party is merely that, neutral,” Ulv grumbled. “We did no fighting, but we also did no betraying.”

Never standing firm on the foundation of one’s beliefs while others suffer was the mightiest show of cowardice.

“Now, tell me, my pretty, where shall I bite first?” Ulv swiped his speckled tongue over his lips.

Saga opened her mouth to retort. We’d never gain entrance into the den if she kept snarling, but what she said brought even my busy words to a halt.

“I cannot be denied entrance under the law of two hearts Lord Hawthorne placed over his den nearly one hundred turns ago.”

Ulv’s eyes narrowed, but he shot a glance at me, not Saga. “Two hearts? You telling me you two are—”

“Yes.” Saga lifted her chin. “According to serpent law, I am permitted entrance since . . . m-my lover is permitted.”