Song of Sorrows and Fate (The Broken Kingdoms, #9)

by L.J. Andrews

Already, the heat of the song between our two hearts began to flicker, as though a flame struggled in the fury of the wind.

Let me be your darkness, but let me be yours. Anywhere she went, I now planned to go. Damn the Norns. Damn fate. I would not go another turn, not another damn moment waiting, wanting, and watching. Do you know what it’s like, Little Rose? There was no time to wait. Not anymore. The truth was in the sky—we were about to watch our world burn.

Sol, Tor, Stieg, and three more warriors mutely lifted Mattis’s body off the sand. They carried our regent, our friend, to the Sun Prince’s horse. It was a sign of honor, of respect, for a royal to walk a fallen Ettan defender back to his family.

“Listen to me, Starlight,” Ari said. Starlight, a name he’d always called her, a name that belonged to the two of them, since Ari always said she was born beneath the stars, and they brightened with delight at her birth.

Ten turns ago, in one night, a royal family of worriers had been dropped in my lap. I loved them for it. Loved them all, even the stoic glares of my Shadow King. He fretted, but in a different way. Whenever I announced I was returning to the West, a bit of black mist coated his eyes, and I knew.

Take my song. It was always yours. Time runs short.

“Will it help him?” I asked the wind. “Will it help Sol if I give in to the shadows?”

A feeling, sharp and harsh, took hold deep in my gut. I crunched the parchment in my hand, eyes closed. “I want to find what was lost. This bond of fate that is missing, show it to me if it will protect them. If it saves them.”

The wind carried a whisper, low and deep, and wrapped around me in a cold gust. Finally, the wait is at an end.

“The end has come to us. Shall we greet the gods, little one, or do you prove whose blood runs in your veins?”

Olaf pointed at the bloody moon. “All tales must come to an end; ours comes now.”

“What happens is an unavoidable consequence of wasted time.”

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

What made my heart sing? It was her. Even in childhood, when I’d been mocked by other Rave youth for befriending a silly little girl, she’d been the warmest flame.