Song of Sorrows and Fate: A Dark Fantasy Romance (The Broken Kingdoms Book 9)

Without another word, I slipped my fingers through hers in an unforgiving grip, and pulled us up the stairs toward the palace. Untouched for countless turns, to feel the weight of another in my palm was foreign and unsettling.

Here. She was finally here. A thousand untamed thoughts tumbled in a maelstrom through my mind, but all led back to that single truth—my voice, my rose, was alive and breathing.

Every few paces up the steps, I’d turn over my shoulder, all to ensure I hadn’t conjured her through dreary illusions and cruel dreams again.

“I . . . there are people I care for out there. They’ll be safe?”

“You gave the words,” I said, curious if she’d recall how our voices once entwined. “I sealed the fate song. Be still. A swift thought. Though, I do not know how long we will have before it fades.”

“That was your voice.” She didn’t ask it as a question. It was more a realization.

Calista’s face contorted into a painful wince. She slowed her steps, resisting slightly, as though seeking an opportunity to flee. It wasn’t a secret to me that she feared losing her own autonomy to choose her fate.

In truth, the sense of destiny was heady. But she still had the power. She could run. She could deny me. It could all be over. The thought of it made me taste bile in my throat. For lifetimes I’d imagined her smile, her touch. I’d imagined the way she’d draw close, as lost in me as I’d become in her.

It seemed reality was not like lonely dreams.

Calista’s arm was stretched fully. True, her hand was clasped in mine, but she made certain to keep as great a distance between us as possible. Her breaths were sharp. The kind of breaths she made when she was afraid and didn’t want it to show.

I’d heard those breaths. Memorized them. Ached to ease them. Now, they came at the sight of me.

Darkness gripped me somewhere deep inside, a tangle of anger and despair. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. To her, I was not supposed to be the monster in the dark.

Could she not sense the lengths I would go for her? The lengths I had gone?

At the top of the staircase, her gaze met mine, fierce like a thrashing sea. She tugged back on my hand. I spun around, prepared to toss her over my damn shoulder if it meant she stayed close a little longer, but met the touch of her ink-stained fingers instead. Dainty fingers. Slender, callused. I wanted to touch them, wanted to study each divot, every spiral of the skin on the tips.

My blood went cold when she gently traced the ridge of the black satin mask. On instinct, I drew back.

Forget what you see on the surface. See me.

“It’s really you,” she whispered. “What did he do to you? Was it true what happened in my Golden King’s dream?”

Gods-awful pity burned in her eyes. She saw the poison of this mask, this unfeeling memory of all that was lost to me that night. It was all she saw.

“Will you let me see?” Her thumb tucked under the lip of the mask,

I snatched hold of her wrist. “Don’t.”

“Sorry.” She shrunk away, a wilting bud against the frosts, and followed me in silence through the palace doors.

Jagged angles made the entryway uninviting and formidable, but Calista lifted her gaze, gawking as I dragged her inside. Beasts with gaping maws reared over the edges from the corners, a sort of collision of the dark wolf, Fenrir, and the sea serpent, Jormungandr. I opened the door and led her inside.

When a gust of wind slammed the door behind us, Calista leaned closer. Another foreign sensation that set the skin on my arms ablaze and gathered puzzling fog inside my skull. Reality had long since been clear, but her touch, her scent of sharp ink, of birch parchment, and the faint, sweet petals of roses blurred my senses even more.

Almost as soon as she’d stepped into me, she took note of how close we’d come and positioned her body a pace away.

I left her in the circular entryway and struck a matchstick, lighting a tallow candle.

A curve teased the corner of her mouth as she took in the domed ceiling, the pale walls, as she traced the drawings scattered across them. Some were faded after turns, but the shapes were still obvious and childish from the hand of a boy who’d been left to cruel solitude.

I’d long ago ceased marking the walls to pass the time. Still, a knot of apprehension built in my chest as she strode along one of the walls and touched the leaves of blood roses and the faces buried in the brambles. The children wrapped in the vines and petals were laughing. Her shoulder flinched, as though she wanted to look over it to where I stood at her back, but thought better of it.

Clearing her throat, she moved on and touched wings on ravens in flight. She paused at the shadows coiled around a man’s face, his eyes were hateful and dark, his lips were contorted into a sneer. The night was devouring him.

“It looks like him,” she whispered. “Still haven’t thought of his name yet. He deserves to be called something you think of when you take a piss, you know?”

So long speaking with ghosts that didn’t always reply, it took me a moment to realize she’d pointed her question at me. “Sráč.”

One of her brows arched. “What?”

“Sráč. That’s what I call him.”

Her full bottom lip slid between her teeth. “That’s old language.”

“I am old.”

Bleeding gods, for the slightest moment, her eyes brightened more than they feared. “It means shit.”

Her face twisted in a strange expression. I considered she might retch, until a frightening sound scraped from the back of her throat. Light, dry as though she could do for a bit of water, and intoxicating.

She laughed.

Here. In my sights. A laugh that hadn’t been mine for centuries. It was beautiful and grating all in one breath. When I was too still for too long, the light in her eyes faded with her smile.

She turned back to the drawings on the wall. “It’ll do for now. But mark me, there is a better name out there.”

Across the flat panels she took in bits and pieces of the drawings of our fallen world. Trees and the stables where we’d run free. Forest burrows where trolls had always gathered. Stones and pebbles. Flying insects with long, slender bodies and furred legs.

Calista paused when she got to the man with bright eyes, a few scars on his sun-weathered face, and a beard braided in rune beads.

She clutched her chest when she flattened her palm over the smoking herb roll between his teeth.

“Annon,” she whispered and looked at me as though needing an explanation.

What did she want me to say? Captain Annon had been my last connection to life. He’d delivered my roses. He’d done all he could to guide Calista Ode toward her path. He’d been the last breathing soul to step foot behind the gates, all to see to it I hadn’t descended so far down into the shadows that I couldn’t escape.

“Why do you have his likeness here?”

Odd question. “It is obvious.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. “It isn’t. So explain it to me.”

“I missed him.”

Her lips parted. The scrutiny was unnerving. A thousand prickling things seemed to traipse up my arms, my face, down the front of my tunic. For the first time since gaining her touch once more, I yearned—craved—to fade away into the unseen corners.

“Come.” I took hold of her wrist again and pulled her up a curved staircase to the upper levels. “I’ll show you to your room.”

“My room?”

I didn’t think I needed to repeat myself.

“Wait.” She tugged against me. “Silas, what room?”

“Yours, as I said.” I balked and took the stairs two at a time. “I do not recall you being so dense, Little Rose.”

A huff followed. She tried to shirk off my grip. I was stronger.

“I’m not dense, you bleeding sod. You’ve said no more than ten words to me, and—”

“Then you haven’t been listening,” I interjected. “I have spoken many words to you, for many turns.”

“In the shadows. Like a coward.”

A sharp bite of anger throttled me from behind. In the next moment I had her back pinned to the wall, her heaving chest against mine.

“A coward?” My teeth ground together. “Which of us has denied the call to their fated path over and over again? Which of us chooses to unsee the signs of truth?”

This close, I couldn’t keep back, and dragged my nose alongside her throat. The soft fabric over the hard shell of my mask slid across her skin. She stiffened and closed her eyes, chin lifted.

“You’ve ignored the call, Little Rose. Forgotten truths. You’ll soon remember it all now that you are here. I’ll keep you safe from whatever is to come. He won’t find you.” I did my best to give her a reassuring smile, but no doubt it was more a sneer than anything.

I tugged on her hand again, taking us up the stairs. The palace was a labyrinth of levels and chambers, and strategically warded against the sráč. I’d tended to each eave, each corridor, for the whole of this dreary existence.

Songs of protection, of misdirection, lived in this palace.

She’d be safe here. The Norns might have plans to destroy our world, but they would not touch her again. I’d already survived enough heartbreak when it came to this bleeding woman. I wouldn’t do it again.

“You can’t keep me prisoner,” she whispered. “There are people I love out there. Who love me. I won’t hide away in here.”

In her eyes was a collision of unease, frustration, and a slow burning flame under it all. The power from which she hid, her strength, her words. A pull she wanted to avoid. I didn’t understand it. In the past, she’d taken hold of her fate without questioning. As though she trusted the whisper more than she did in this moment.

Why did she resist me now? How could she ignore this raging fire in the soul?

“There’s no use resisting, Little Rose, our bloody games have come to an end at last. There’s no going back.”

“You cannot force me to do anything.” Her mouth set in a firm line.

This was all wrong. The king promised me our bond was fierce and powerful. If it was so, how could she shove it aside and degrade it in such a way? What the hells was the point of all this anguish?

One hand trembled as I curled a fist at my side. With my other hand, I opened one of the numerous chamber doors. “Yours.”

I shoved against Calista’s shoulder, urging her inside.

“Wait, no.” She grabbed onto the wooden frame. “You take me, and there are kings and queens who will bring war to your gates.”

“They are already in war. No backward glances. This—” I jabbed a finger toward my face, “is what you see now.”

It shouldn’t have ached so fiercely, but when she flinched, it was a knife to the chest. “You can’t trap me. You can’t, Silas. Please. I beg of you.”

She needed to sleep. Then she’d be more clearheaded. I began to close the door, but she slammed her boot between the door and the jamb.

“No! There is something coming. I saw it in the water. He’s returning.”

I froze. “You’re certain you saw him?”

Calista nodded. “In the storm, I saw his face. I saw . . . ships with his armies.”

Slowly, I reached out a palm and rested it on her cheek. She didn’t stiffen, even seemed to find a touch of comfort. “Then you are no longer safe outside these walls.”

I closed the door swiftly, locking the knob.

“Silas!” She kicked the wood, rattled the latch. “You bastard, let me go. Let me go. I cannot stay here. I will never choose a captor. You cannot force my hand, you cannot . . .”

Her words cracked and died. The slide of her body down the door and soft, breathy sobs charred another piece of my heart.

It was for her good. I peeled off the mask when the pressure of it caused the scarred skin to ache and burn. One palm on her door, I hummed, low and steady. Power was scarce in the darkness, but I hoped to have enough to bring a bit of rest to her burdens.

My song had always been hers, should she only take it.

It took a moment before the sobs ceased and a gentle thud came from behind the door. Perhaps I could not twist the tales of fate without her, but I could still bring her to a calm. A talent I’d always had, one I’d give gladly. The more her resistance had grown, the more I’d needed to reach her in the calm moments of her mind, and I’d done it through dreams.

Another gift I carried, and the ingenuity behind the Golden King’s dream walk. I didn’t want to dream walk when I could touch her, speak to her, but I would if that was all she’d allow. I’d give her the rest she needed, and cling to the hope when she woke, she’d see reason.

My pace was swift through the labyrinth of rooms and chambers on the upper level until I slipped into the largest of them all. I slammed the door behind me and rushed to the window.

Red moonlight lit the fortress shores. Already the shift was beginning. Tenements stood straighter. Rotting laths were peeling back to reveal stone beneath it. She didn’t know what her simple act of walking through the gates had done.

The sea was undisturbed, but on the horizon grew a swell of angry clouds.

Fate was unraveling at the edges, and if Calista Ode did not accept me, if she rejected all we’d been striving to become, then we would not see a new sunrise in a brighter world.

All I wanted was freedom for the both of us, a world with no more night, no more shadows in my mind. But I could not have any of it. For she did not want me in that world.

Only in the darkness of her dreams.