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

by L.J. Andrews

Don’t you take another step, Little Rose. You are mine. Damn him. Did he not know that was, in fact, exactly what I wanted? Silas might be lost in shadows, perhaps he chatted with ghosts, but I had no doubt those fingers could do miraculous things to the flesh. Did he touch with the same ferocity as his gaze? Did he use filthy words as demanding as his tamed voice? Would he take me fast and passionate, or slow and sweetly? In my head lust flared to something deeper. Desire pulsed into something lasting.

Odd. The rush of primal need burned into a new sensation in my chest. Something hot and forceful. The want was there, but it was more.

“You came for me after I left.” Silas narrowed the only eye I could see. “When have I ever left your side?” I didn’t know the answer, but for the first time, more than I feared, more than I wanted to run from the games of the Norns, I wanted to know what had kept me from him.

Like a different world had lived beneath our battered kingdom, debauched buildings melted away and Raven Row was transformed into something beautiful, something formidable.

No one seemed to pause for a single breath to consider the impossibility of transforming from drunkard to . . . warrior.

He pressed a hand to his chest and bowed his chin. “The Rave fight for the first kingdom.”

“They’ve awaited the call of their royal, Little Rose,” Silas whispered against my hair. Low and seductive. His arms tightened around my waist. “You are the heir. They bow to you.”

“You do not need to be anything you are not. No one needs more than who you already are, Little Rose.”

“This is the part where she rises.”

“This is the part where captives are free.”

One shouted under loyalty for the father robbed from me. Berjast enda. Until the end.

“Shield, Princess.” Olaf looked to me. Silas dipped his covered face alongside my cheek. “Sing with me, Little Rose.”

when the song ended, something dreadful happened within me. When I looked back at my Whisper, heat from my blood pooled in my belly, dripping even lower until I clenched my thighs tightly. Gods, no. Absolutely, unequivocally, no. What had I told my Raven Queen? The bleeding instant one of those lust-crazed royals leapt into bed, damn wars began. I would rather go the rest of my life without risking the necks of everyone I loved simply because my masked phantom all at once looked like a morsel, one I wanted to taste over every surface of my tongue.

Twin battle axes were atop the pillow. The queen selected one, inspecting the sharp curve of the blade. “Twin weapons of equal strength. Forged from the fury in this soil. We wish our Timoran cousins to take one, a symbol of our friendship.”

“Those blades will bring about a new Etta,”

“And you, young Arvad, you will be part of it.” I leaned over my knees, meeting his dark eyes. “I urge you to keep your heart and mind open to your neighbors in the North.” His nose wrinkled. “I hate Timorans.” “Perhaps there will come a day when you do not.”

I’ll find you, I promised. Why I thought such a thing, I didn’t know, but my heart jolted when a voice answered. A broken voice, one that was young and thick with emotion. Our song here is finished. Sing with me again, Little Rose.

In distant turns, a woman from the first family’s line would take vows with a man from the second. They’d fight to restore the crown. They’d fail. But from that union would come a daughter. A girl who’d find a boy of shadows, and together they’d pick up this fated fight again.

“May the fated queen have the fiercest devotion of heart.”

“One day, your house will protect the heirs with the true claim to that ring,” I whispered, speaking only to the attendant. “Teach your son of the fallen family, so he will teach his son, and his son, until the end.”

“Sing my song at the end. Bring me back to you,” I whispered to the darkness. Always, Little Rose. Silas wasn’t here, but his voice was clear and sharp in my mind.

Heartache splintered through my chest. Agony, rich and palpable, burned through my blood. I wanted to tell him not to fret, not to hurt on my behalf. I wanted to tell him many things, but the song began again, one that fitted into the words I’d spun about a shadow king, and a queen who robbed folk of memories. It was beautiful.

In my mind, a cry of anguish broke my heart more than the blade. Find me, he pleaded. Live and live again. Find me, Little Rose. Please.

“I wrote those words for months before the battle in the South. My daj said those words . . . the night he died.” Silas lifted his head. “If you had no true lifeline, the battle lord could not find you.”

“Live and live again. I died in those . . . dreams, those memories. Are you . . . are you telling me I’ve . . . died before, only t-t-to live again?”

“That I keep dying only to live again?” He nodded, but kept his gaze trained away.

“The reason the king’s final song was against a natural order of fate.” My pulse quickened. “This is why he died, isn’t it? To lose the magic of his blood, it would destroy him physically.

“I’ve told you, darkness comes at crimson night. There the true fight begins. A fury sleep does not end your battle,” I said. “Merely pauses it for a time. Give fate time to unravel, Lili.”

Your children have grand roles to play in these final tales. They will not be alone, I swear to you.” Lilianna took my hands. “Eli will kill you.” I smiled and cupped the side of her face. All hells my hands were . . . they were frail and old. “He can try.”

“In the darkness, a voice small as the song of a bird will guide you toward the song of your heart. This life is not yet done for you, Sol Ferus. It is not yet done for either of you. I will be with you, even when you do not know your own name.”

“Until the next tale.” I blinked and found Stefan’s

We are nearing the end. The next tale is short, I whispered in my thoughts. One where we finally send the bright king to her. Will you be there, Whisper? A broken voice answered, Always, Little Rose.

A moment of clarity brought his face into focus—a boy who tried not to smile too often, but when he laughed, his features brightened like the sun. “Silas,” I whispered. My body felt heavy. Anguished despair cut through my heart. It didn’t feel as though it was my own.

“Will you finish the tale for a bright king, Silas?” He’ll find her, his voice was soft, burdened. “Good. Sing me back to you.” What will you be called? Each tale, each life, took a different name, a different storyteller.

The Kind Heart and Cursed King would restore the first fated crown. From there, we’d finally find the end.

Some might call the wound frightening, cursed, even. To me, he was the brightest memory. To me, he was home at long last.

“Do you know what it’s like?”

“Do you know what it’s like to watch the light of your soul die over and over? Do you know what it’s like to burn for lifetimes for another who fears you in the end?”

A sob burst from my chest, and I flung my arms around his neck. He jolted in surprise, but it took mere heartbeats before his strong arms crushed me against him. Silas turned his face and drew in a long breath, as though soaking up every piece of me.

Silas’s shoulders shook, but his tears were silent and tangled with mine. A song of sorrow and fate tied us together and kept us apart in the same breath.

He’d watched Annon, he’d watched me, succumb to death time and again, unable to do anything but carry the tales onward with his voice and my words.

I’d spoken true to my Kind Heart when I told her there were signs of four storytellers before me. What I hadn’t known was each one . . . was me.

“I looked so different each time, even in my age and name.” “You . . . chose the proper place to join each path and fated tale,” Silas said. “You kept each name connected to your past.” “I didn’t know my past.” “Your heart did.”

when the tales ended, where did I go? It is like I simply appeared.” “I don’t know where you would go. I would feel your soul still in existence, until it burned brighter, an...

“Your soul lived on because . . . your soul bond lived. A tether in the darkness, a ballast in the tumult.”

He didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. Silas, my phantom voice, was the deepest bond. Deeper than the heart, he was a piece of my soul.

The pain, the suffering, it was almost too much to bear. Then again, there was more. Devotion, strength, unyielding love. All the brighter pieces of the heart would be needed for him to survive such a wretched existence of solitude and death and darkness. And he felt them for me. I had lived different lives, over and over again. And he’d watched my slaughter, time after time.

Live and live again until death at crimson night. That’s what Annon meant when he told me I was ready to find my power. Crimson night shattered the endless cycle, it ended my father’s manipulation of a natural life. This was what broke Riot Ode—he’d wiped his daughter from existence, true, because he’d made me a bleeding immortal until I was strong enough to find my power. It worked; through the lifetimes my power grew. Each fated path added to my voice, it drew me closer to the other part of me. It drew me back to Silas.

“I chose my true name,” I said. “Does it mean . . . this is the last?” “The final tale. There is no new lifetime here. Thi...

All these turns he’d watched my blood spill, unable to stop it. I could imagine the madness that might come with such solitude and gore. Affection, respect, adoration, something, was suffocating me.