AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Herja was replaced with Sol.
All hells. I knew Sol had been lost to a curse of madness. I knew he’d suffered, but this sight was . . . wretched and heartbreaking. Sol leaned against a wall, beaten and trembling in chains in a pitch cell.
The prince’s eyes were lost, wild, afraid.
Open your eyes, Ari.
My eyes were open. What was I to see?
Davorin rolled over me, and the dungeons cracked, transforming back into the tent with Herja.
Only now, she’d changed. No knife in her grip, and the dark gloom of Davorin’s essence faded around the princess. Herja sat, legs crossed beneath her, across from a young, travel-worn man who looked eerily like Prince Gunnar.
Hagen read a piece of parchment, then grinned at the princess.
“My name is Hagen Strom,” he said, almost shyly.
Two of the gilded ropes carved through the shadows, one wrapped on Herja’s ankle, another on Hagen’s. Between them, a beam collided, uniting them on the same path. A path that would lead them to their children and a way for their line to unite three kingdoms.
Unlike the terror the princess held in her gaze before, now there was something gentle, something like hope.
Davorin seethed at my back. He snarled as he watched Herja and Hagen take a step away from the darkness he’d tried to cause in the lives long ago. The instant his hands touched me, the scene crumbled and we were thrust back into the cold cells of Prince Sol.
The sun prince wasn’t alone anymore. A girl’s voice twittered across from him.
“Lump, I’m writing a story, and feels like it’s gotta be sappy. I hate sappy, so I’m gonna need your help. You’ve been in love before, right?”
Calista.
Already, light coiled around her entire form, a fated burst of the seidr strands that chased for their marks. Slowly, another rope embraced Sol Ferus in his darkened state of mind.
The storyteller pressed her forehead against the bars of her cell. From the looks of it, she couldn’t be older than twelve. She had a wildness about her, a bravery, and an innocence all rolled into one.
Whatever she said to the Sun Prince drew a slow, stiff smile to his lips, and for a moment, his pain was forgotten when he whispered, “Tor.”
A ledge snapped in the dungeons of Ravenspire, spilling us from the scene into somewhere new. Brine and damp filled my lungs, and ribbons of night crept over the royal city of Lyx, to Mellanstrad.
My face struck the pebbled shore of the fjords.
Screams laced the seashore. Sprawled out on black sand, Elise kicked and thrashed. She sobbed and pleaded for help. Pinning her, a man, hooded with a red mask, raised a black battle axe.
The Blood Wraith.
I knew this moment in their history existed, but the shock of Valen attacking the woman who filled his soul was wretched and frightening.
Time seemed to slow as Valen’s axe fell. Two paces beside them was a man drenched in shadows and mist. By the hells, Davorin had been there. He was stronger than mere mist, as though the pain and hatred between Timoran and Etta had strengthened him.
The hate bred in my land kept him alive to search for his missing raven.
No mistake, he’d sensed, maybe known for a certainty, the beast of bloodlust had a role to play with the woman beneath him. He’d been the one to bring Valen to slaughter Elise, a way to kill hishjärtabefore Valen even realized. How could the King of Etta rise without the woman who was destined to end his curse?
Flickers of the golden ropes leapt through the shadows. Tor and Halvar as the Blood Wraith’s Shade appeared. Both wrapped in golden ropes, they tugged their beast off the woman they didn’t know and tangled their ropes with hers, unknowingly.
I laughed a little viciously. “You failed! Don’t you see that?”
Davorin made a lunge for me, but the shoreline cracked like dry clay, dropping us through a crevice. Moments flashed in front of me. Moments that led to the undoing of the Timoran grip on Ettan soil. Cedar-wood smoke burned my lungs as the storm tossed us past a meeting with the old Ruskig council.
Siverie had been there, kohl lined eyes, ready to infiltrate the second royal house in Upper Mellanstrad. She was only meant to spy on the Lysander family until a bastard with battle paint on his face and blood on his blade convinced the whole of the council to turn the mission into an execution, starting with the insignificantKvinna.
