AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Stay, Erik Bloodsinger.
The man standing across the hall was not looking for peace. He wanted blood.
Red lined his black eyes with a touch of bloodlust. Dark hair spilled over his brow, unkempt and wild. A king of might and dignity during the war, now he seemed more beast than man.
I didn’t have time to take in much of anything before Valen Ferus, killer of my father, spun one of his blacksteel battle axes in his grip. Long, Night Folk fae legs had him across the hall in less than ten strides.
Stieg abandoned me in the same moment my back slammed against the stone wall. Air fled my lungs from the blow, then was blocked from returning when Valen used the handle of his axe to crush my throat.
“Where is she?” he roared in my face.
His words from so long ago filtered through my mind—Stay.
I was certain the earth bender king would see to it I would always remain. He’d make it so my bones littered this land until they turned to dust.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SONGBIRD
The air was strange,smooth and too rich with spices like cardamom and citrus. I drew in another long breath, seeking the clean sea and heat in the breeze from the royal city.
I groaned, shifting on a pulpy surface. Plush as bunches of moss under my spine, but pain bloomed through my chest as though someone took a rusted spike and rammed it through my body, pinning me in place.
I cracked one eye. My lashes were crusted in salt, from tears or the sea, I couldn’t recall. Truth be told, I couldn’t recall much for a few breaths until . . .
Larsson.
My other eye snapped open, sacrificing a few dried lashes to my wet cheeks. I shot upright, half expecting to be yanked backward by iron chains or a collar around my throat.
There were neither. All around were arched lancet windows, unlatched and allowing a morning breeze inside a . . . room. Rounded edges of a tower tapered up to sturdy rafters of a pointed rooftop.
Where the hells was I?
Thick green and gold drapes were hung around four impressivelycarved posts of the bed, a woven rug of pinks, oranges, and blues of a sunset on the sea coated the rough-cut floorboards, and a chestnut vanity, complete with silver brushes and combs and oils for perfuming the skin was pushed against one wall.
Someone had dressed me in a thin shift, clean, and made of handspun silk. My hair was in a tangled plait over my shoulder, as though I’d slept on it more than once, and it needed to be brushed. Only faint bruises from where I’d been tossed onto the deck of Larsson’s boat remained on my hip.
How long ago did he take me?
What sort of game was this?
I’d expected damp cells, piss and refuse around my feet, perhaps even waking in the Otherworld. Not a luxurious chamber reminiscent of my rooms in the Crimson Fort.
For a moment my feet hovered over the floorboards, like a scaled, toothy creature might reach up and bite, until I let them fall, toes wiggling. Pieces of the moment I’d been snatched from the royal city began sliding into place.
A ruse, Larsson had drawn me out of the king’s chambers, but . . . gods, Tait!
Heartwalker, bleeding out on the stone steps near the docks. The image was pungent in my brain, real and fierce until I was certain I could taste his blood on my tongue.
I fisted my hands and pressed them against my forehead. Tait, that scowly bastard. I always thought he despised me, but he’d known something was wrong and came for me all the same. He came to protect me.
I bent over my knees, fingers steepled in front of my mouth. Why was it Larsson?
“Brothers.” The word slid from my lips, a soft declaration to the empty room. My pulse quickened. Clear and poisonous in my mind—Larsson had named Erik as his brother.
The rumors of Thorvald fathering another little hadn’t concerned Erik; he was convinced if a child of Thorvald had existed,his position as king would’ve been challenged by now. But I’d sensed it—the strange bitterness, a claim to a lost birthright—buried beneath the corrupted soil of the darkening.
By the gods, we’d all been so duped.
