Page 70 of Song of Sorrows and Fate

Valen dragged us to our knees; he tucked my head and Livia’s under his arms. With one palm on the splitting floorboards, he tried to use his own fury against whatever was shattering the earth.

As another violent shudder rocked us, he gave up and simply held us close as our kingdom fell apart.

Chapter24

The Memory Thief

The Howl Sea—Shores of Klockglas

“Where are the boys?”Kase roared. His eyes were blackened, and shadows billowed off his shoulders like a dark cloak.

“Hidden.” I thrust a dagger into the scaly belly of a fae man who looked as though he had barnacles on his knuckles. The sea fae flooded from the Howl. They hissed revenge, shouted praises to their horrid Ever King that was slaughtered on Eastern shores.

The cliffs just beyond the Howl into the Fate’s Ocean, the ones Valen had raised from the sea floor so long ago, were flooded by bursts of dangerous tides. Even the Howl rolled and thrashed in great swells. It was too wild, too deadly; we could not reach the other regions.

Were the Falkyns able to keep sea fae off their shores? In Hemlig, Isak and Fiske had visited to gather new seeds for harvest seasons. Were they even alive? Bard had gone to Furen a week before, Tova and Hanna along with him, and I’d nearly allowed the twins to join them before Sander caught his cough that kept us near the palace.

Another sea fae lunged for me. Their weapons were wicked. Serrated, like the teeth of vicious fish. Some were colorful, with hilts of coral and blades of bone. We’d captured one sea fae with a look a bit like Thorvald. Pointed ears, a sunset glow to his eyes, nearly impossible to distinguish between our fae folk or those of the sea.

I’d robbed him of his memories.

It was worse than I thought.

“Do you see that bastard?” I shouted back at Kase, slicing my sword at a beautiful woman with stormy eyes. She was stunning, hauntingly so. Pale hair and ruby red lips. Her gown was iridescent green like she’d swam through a garden of sea flowers, and it fitted to her body.

She didn’t hold a blade, but widened her fingers and dark, jagged fingernails extended.

“He’s not here,” Kase insisted. His blacksteel blade opened the throat of a fae with a curved sword in hand.

I didn’t understand it. Within the memories of the sea fae who’d fallen, I’d seen Davorin. Those memories taken from bone dust from bodies washed ashore meant they’d been in his presence mere moments before they were slaughtered.

Some were killed for refusing to fight.

Their bodies were then thrust through the violent tides of the Chasm of Seas, left to wash ashore from the currents of the Howl or the Fate’s Ocean.

Others, the ones we’d snared before death, gave up his influence. His wretched features standing amongst them, empowering them to take revenge against those who had killed their king turns ago.

I’d never forget his damn face. He’d built the anger of the sea folk, nourished it, let it fester. He’d drawn them out of their own kingdom to fight against the fae who’d slaughtered their king. Thorvald could rot in the hells for all I cared. Valen held the Ever King’s title with that bleeding gold disc Thorvald kept flicking when we’d been trapped in that damn troll burrow.

Valen had warned the Ever King’s brother that every sea folk would meet their end should they step foot on land. Had Davorin emboldened them to try? None seemed to be under his dark trance, not the way the Southern fae had been ten turns ago.

Surely one mimicker was not so powerful he could convince an entire world to rise against us?

I dodged the sea fae’s jagged claws, spun on my heel, and rammed the point of the short blade between her shoulders.

She let out a shriek of agony and stumbled forward. Once her face was pinned to the soil, I stepped onto her spine, and leaned over my knee. “We warned your folk, return and you die.”

Where I thought she might shed a tear, might whimper, she bleeding laughed. Wickedly.

“Earth fae,” she said in a low, hissing voice, like a damn whisper on the sea. “Your time of peace . . . is up. It is . . . time for us to take back . . . the Ever.”

Her body spasmed and dulled, as though the life had somehow glowed beneath her skin, then bled out into the tides.

Time for them to take back the Ever? The realm of the sea fae?

They wanted revenge on the East since this was where Thorvald fell into his grave. But the Ever . . . the Ever was a whole damn world as far as I knew.

My stomach clenched. Gods, had they already overtaken the other kingdoms? The warning had come from the North, and Valen was Thorvald’s killer. A shudder beneath my feet caused me to stumble.

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