“U ncle Valen will want his head,” Alek said. He sat in one of the chairs in the front room, a boot propped against the edge of the table.
“I know.” I stared out the window with the painted image of Nightfire and his star lover in the night sky. My fingertips traced the distance between them. Sometimes the myth of the lovers in the sky felt too much like my existence. As though the passion, the love I felt for Erik Bloodsinger was doomed to separate us.
“You’re certain this is what you want, Liv? You have a choice, you know. There is no need to feel like you must stay the way I do.”
I smiled over my shoulder. “Alek, I’ve loved the sea king since I was a girl on the opposite side of a war. We’re bonded.”
“Yes.” Aleksi scoffed. “His mantle. That is what causes me to worry. You both think it must be this way, when perhaps, it can just be a means to broker peace.”
“He is my desire, Alek.” I fingered the bone necklace around my throat.
My beautiful monster. “He’s my hjärta. Bond or not.”
Aleksi’s face softened. A hjärta meant one had found a love so deep it was the other beat of your heart, a true harmony between two souls.
“I think you don’t want me to stay because if I am at Erik’s side, I’m not by yours.” I arched a brow in a playful challenge.
“You nor Bloodsinger can be rid of me. I meant what I said and will serve him during this time of his kingdom’s need.”
“You know he views saving Uncle Tor as a payment to Stieg for protecting him as a young boy, right? You’re the one keeping a debt between you.”
“I know.” Alek waved me away. “But the truth of what he did for Daj has weighed on me since that day. It’s why I wanted to be a Rave. I wanted to catch the Ever King when he came through again because I knew he would, gods I knew he would. I was going to expose the truth, force peace talks, a lot of grandeur, hero’s banquets, and honor for my future littles for being the brave warrior to soften the heart of the Ever King.” He leaned back in his chair and propped his boots onto the table. “Thank you, cousin, for robbing me of my heroic fantasy.”
I chuckled and faced the window again. It was still surreal to have my cousin with me, but I was glad. Alek had stepped into the Ever as a balance between worlds. Where I was the daughter of Thorvald’s killer, Aleksi was the son of Erik’s saved.
He’d drawn the interest of many courtiers and had already settled in with Sewell who called him the golden fox. I assumed because of Alek’s eyes. Even Tait smirked when Alek managed to make Celine and Larsson laugh.
He’d joined us as we sailed to the isles about the kingdom, pushing back the darkening. Day by day, Alek was coming to realize the Ever was not the enemy we thought. They were fae folk the same as us, they fought for their realm; they protected their families the way we did.
In the weeks since Erik gave me the title of Ever Queen, I’d spent more than one night talking to my cousin into the early morning hours. Sometimes, Erik would join us in the conversations. A dark, silky presence who only uttered a few words. In vulnerable moments, he’d admit how the anticipation of the fairy tales I read would keep him hopeful in the cells, all those turns ago.
Most often he was silent, or he’d leave Alek and me to talk alone.
In somber moments, Alek recounted the pain of our friends at my capture. Mira had nearly killed one of her own guards when they’d taken her away, trying to fight her way to me. Sander had spent every waking hour beside Mira’s father who had a proclivity for maps and cartography, trying to find a way into the Ever.
Jonas—playful, carefree Jonas—Aleksi said he’d uttered perhaps two words and his eyes had been the inky black of his dreary nightmarish magic since I disappeared.
I needed to put my parents’ hearts at ease. I needed to see my friends.
We were nearing the time when I’d return home and I would meet them. Not as Livia, heir to the Night Folk throne. I would be the Ever Queen. I’d be there to speak for the sea folk. I’d face my father as a queen of his enemy.
Strange to be afraid. My father loved me fiercely, and I’d never doubted it. Perhaps that was the trouble. He loved me enough to kill the man who’d taken me from him. He loved me enough to think Erik had cast some sort of spell on me, and the only way to be free of it was by Erik’s blood.
A thousand scenarios rampaged in my head. Sweat gathered between my fingers, and the familiar flurry of my pulse started to rise.
I closed my eyes. I am Livia Ferus, daughter of warriors, healer of lands, Queen of the Ever.
Nerves still prickled up my arms, but I pictured Erik adding his own touch of vulgarity to the saying like delicacy of the king’s tongue. He tried to make each one more tantalizing.
“You’re at peace here, Liv.” Alek came to my side and studied the painting. “You don’t seem so . . . burdened.”
“I love our people, Alek. I love our family. But when I came here it felt as though I came home.” I met his stare. “I can’t explain it. Even when I tried to hate Erik for taking me, there was a sense of being right where I needed to be.”
Aleksi hesitated for a long pause before he took hold of my hand. “Then I will stand with you until our people finally make peace with the Ever. Now, I better be off. Celine insists on my input over the final design of your crown, Queen.”
My stomach swirled in delightful heat. Queen of the Ever. Queen of Erik Bloodsinger. I could hardly believe it, and every morning it took at least five long kisses of the man before my mind relented to the truth.
This was my life.
Someone knocked on the door. Without invitation, Larsson stuck his head into the room. “Livia, I mean Queen.” He winked. “Some of the darkening has spread rather aggressively over the ridge near the Black Isles. The king is returning from the province of the House of Bones and will meet us on the way.”
The Black Isles were near the hidden coves of Lady Narza and her sea witches. Difficult waters to navigate, according to Erik, and in the center of
treacherous seas. It must’ve meant the darkening was critical for Erik to attempt it so late in the day with high tides approaching.
“Right. I’ll leave a missive for Alek and Celine letting them know.”
I hurried to change into a simple linen dress and followed Larsson toward the docks. The Ever Crew sailed under Erik’s command, but all were skilled sailors, and whenever they returned to the royal city they often used their own vessels for short journeys to the various isles.
Larsson’s skiff was made of white laths like ivory and boasted large black sails.
“You did not wish to go to the House of Bones?” I asked, stepping over a broken board on the switchback steps leading to the docks.
“You know the king keeps his trusted few near his queen.” Larsson flashed his white teeth and took my hand, helping me over a lip onto the final staircase.
The wind whipped my hair around my face. I took in the abandoned sloops and skiffs around the docks. “Oddly empty today.”
“I think the people are uneasy about peace talks,” Larsson said. “They feel their world is about to change. I wouldn’t say they’re wrong.”
The Chasm would remain open. Our people would build new peace.
Those were the things I hoped we saw in the coming days.
“Wait! Larsson.” Tait emerged from the upper steps, waving. “We’ll be back soon enough, Heartwalker,” Larsson returned.
“Wait.” Tait took the steps two at a time with ease, lithe like his cousin. “Where are you going?”
“There’s a return of the darkening in the Black Isles,” I said. “We’re to meet the king there.”
Tait’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, I saw the missive. Tidecaller reached out to the king to ask if we were to meet him or remain at the palace. Trouble is the king had no idea what she was talking about.”
When Larsson’s grip tightened on my arm, my heart dropped.
“I wish you hadn’t done that, Heartwalker,” Larsson said, voice low. “I actually liked you.”
It happened in a single breath.
Larsson drew a blade. Tait reached for his, but a heartbeat too slow. Larsson rammed his knife deep into Tait’s belly. I screamed, but from the shadows of the docks two men lunged from behind and encircled my waist, dragging me toward the skiff.
Larsson ripped his knife from Tait’s stomach, watched him fall back, then wiped the blood over Tait’s dark hair.
“Sorry, mate,” Larsson said snidely. “Had to be done. I wouldn’t go around your father in the Otherworld. I think he might’ve figured out you knew Bloodsinger was going to kill him.”
Blood coated Tait’s chin. My pulse raged in my skull, muffling sound, but I knew I screamed his name. I pleaded with him to keep breathing. I screamed for Erik three times before one of the meaty brutes at my back stuffed my throat with a dirty cloth.
I thrashed and kicked and fought, but one of them was the same as three of me. My feet didn’t even touch the ground.
The man who held my waist tossed me onto the deck. I landed on a ridge on my hip. A shock of pain lanced up my side, but I scrambled away, spitting out the rancid cloth. Larsson shouted for the ship to set sail, then crossed the deck in three strides.
Before I could reel myself over the rail, he gripped my hair and yanked me back on deck.
“Bastard.” I clawed at his wrist, drawing blood.
He slapped me hard enough it felt like my jaw unhinged. After a pause, Larsson wiped the blood off his wrist and took hold of my hair again.
The carefree, kind man was gone, replaced by a sinister grin and dark eyes filled with hate.
“The power of the Ever.” He laughed with a new kind of viciousness and stroked my cheek. “Time for you to be of use to the true king, not my pathetic brother.”
My heart stopped. The same rage I’d felt from the emotions of the creator of the darkening bled in Larsson’s eyes now.
“Although, I should give Bloodsinger some credit. He’s damn hard to kill.” Larsson’s mouth tightened. “And you, what a vicious little thing you are. Slaughtering a trained killer with roots. I thought I’d seen it all until that day.”
The assassins. It was a cruel strike to my chest as the realization that Larsson had sent the assassins to take me.
He was a trickster. A liar, and we’d all been duped.
“You did all this,” I said, voice low. “You started the darkening.”
“An unfortunate experiment that got a bit out of hand. But now we have you, not worthless scum like Lucien Skurk to help us find a way to control
the blight.”
Damn bastard. I narrowed my gaze. “I’ll never help you.”
“We’ll see, Queen.” Larsson glowered and snapped his fingers. “Take her.”
His two grunts dragged me back to my feet, leading me toward a narrow nook near the stern of the ship with iron chains and manacles awaiting my limbs.
Before they released me, another person stepped into view.
My eyes went wide for half a breath, stunned as theories and questions and rage reeled in my skull.
In the end, my lip curled, and all I could get out before another dirty cloth was stuffed in my mouth was, “He’s going to slaughter all of you.”
