AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Skadi!” Livia cried. “Please. Help us, and I swear I will help you.”
The woman hardly seemed like she needed help. Hard eyes drank us in. Her head cocked to one side when she locked her gaze on Livia. “I have no time to spend helping you when I must help my lands instead.”
“No,” Livia said, shaking her head. “This isn’t you. This isn’t what you wanted! Gods, Skadi, wake up. What did they do to you?”
There wasn’t a response from the other woman. Only strange iridescent ribbons of darkness around her hands.
Wind, unnatural and furious, whipped through the trees, forcing every branch, every trunk to yield to its rage. I steeled against the torrent, cradling Livia’s head against my body. Pebbles underfoot skidded and clacked against larger stones, rolling inward. Rolling toward the trees. Sea spray pricked at my face, a thousand needles against my skin.
“No!” Livia screamed. “The isle, it can fade if threatened.”
“Then we go now.”
She pulled back on my wrist. “I feel it, already, it’s keeping me here.”
“Bloodsinger!” Behind the empty-eyed woman, Larsson shoved forward, battling the force of the isle.
A familiar rage ripped its way to the surface, like an old friend I’d always carried with me, dormant and docile, locked away in the scorched edges of my soul. Larsson stumbled. His dark hairflung around his face, a face I saw so differently now. I could almost see hints of my father, of me, in him.
It made me want to snap his head free of his neck.
“Take her, then you kill your lover,” Larsson roared. “Stay, and I will make your death swift.”
We were surrounded by archers and blazing arrows. Flames lit the tears on Livia’s cheeks, the gleam of my sword. I knew nothing about fading isles, knew nothing of how to break a bond that kept my queen a prisoner. All I knew was the gods could not tear me from her side.
“If I die,” I shouted. “You die with me.”
More ember spears rained shots against the isle. One stone lanced through a guard’s chest, splattering bits of bone and flesh along the rocks beneath his boots. Panicked shouts filtered through the guards. Another stone shattered a knee and shoulder. Even Larsson crouched.
“How are the damn wards breaking? Pull us into the mist,” he snapped at the woman.
A man with gold-flecked crimson hair cursed. “You keep pulling her deeper, and she will never resurface.”
Larsson ignored him and commanded the woman to tear them away again. Stony indifference lined her features, a mask over what might’ve been lovely.
“Erik, it’s taking me,” Livia cried. “Skadi! Let me go. This is not you.”
Already, countless trees were blotted out in a furious cyclone of dark mist, fading into the night. Only the outer ring of the isle seemed to remain. It was drawing Livia in, and I would not lose her. With Larsson knowing we could find him, there was no telling how long he’d hole away before he struck again.
Two forces fought the other—a magic of the isle drew Livia toward the land, and vicious magic cracked the shore, desperate to pull us back to the sea.
“Sea king.” The strange woman merely stood amidst thecolliding magics, hair wild in the wind, fingers laced in front of her body. “White iron is an interesting blade.”
From the darkness around the woman’s hands, a dagger fell, all silver and pearl, like it was nothing but bone. The blade landed at my feet. Perhaps she’d fashioned it from her darkness, summoned it from some pit of the hells, it mattered little. After one look at the woman, after one curse from Larsson when he saw the dagger, I snatched it up.
The moment my fist curled around the ivory hilt, a jolt tugged around my middle, and the shore cracked and split. As though touching the blade broke some sort of chain keeping us grounded on the soil.
Bursts of dirt and bedrock shot from the deep fracture, aiming at the stars. The shore broke away from the isle and plunged me and Livia into the sea.
Before the tides swallowed us whole, the mist of the isle devoured the strange woman and Larsson’s face into nothingness.
I kicked us to the surface, Livia in my arms.
Where peaks and lanterns and forests had been, now empty seas stretched for lengths. Where furious tides and winds had been, now haunting silence remained.
Livia shuddered.
Horror, cold and sharp, flooded my chest. Her eyes spun wildly in her skull. Blood seeped from her nose, her ears, her damn mouth. The remaining wards tore her apart.
