Page 91 of Reign of Stars and Fire

The grin on my mouth when the people of Ruskig agreed, when Siv was handed an extra dagger, resembled Davorin’s cruelty. A heavy weight burned in my chest. Not yet a king, but highly ranked in the Ettan rebellion, I’d been the one to give the order for Siverie to slaughter Elise.

I’d never told my queen the truth.

“You are the same as me, Awakener!” Davorin shouted into the torment around us.

“Perhaps once,” I called back. “But I didn’t like the look. It’s rather pitiful and weak.”

All I had to do was turn around for the time, the place, the scene to shift. Me, donned in a cloak, atop old Vit as we trekked up a rocky hillside. I covered slender hands squeezing my waist.

“I do love a woman’s body pressed against my own, but perhaps we could loosen our grip slightly.” Elise sat behind me on the horse. “Unless you are attempting to suffocate me, in which case I applaud you for such a devious attempt at assassination.”

She laughed. Where anger and dark rage surrounded me in the longhouse with the council, now I grinned, and a touch of gilded light laced the two of us together.

“Tell me, Davorin,” I shouted, wind whipping my hair over my face. “Did it make you piss yourself to see every attempt to divide us fail? Seems whatever tied us together is made of stronger things than a weakling like you.”

His lip curled. A single shout of disdain roared over the storm when he raced for me again. I was ready for the attack and braced against his body. We were swallowed whole and dropped onto hard, uneven floorboards without mercy. Splinters of pain lanced across my skin. Davorin’s form was tossed aside. He groaned after striking a crooked floorboard.

The new room bore crooked walls, a sod roof, and a hint of moldy wood from constant leaks. I scrambled away from him, nearly smashing into two sets of legs. I lifted my gaze and froze.

Elise stood in front of me, tears in her eyes. She held Valen’s gaze in one of the Ruskig shanties. I knew it as the one I’d given for her use when she had been taken in by the rogues. Valen still wore bindings on his wrists—my shackles I’d given to him.

Open your eyes, Ari.

A thought struck me. The royals of the North were joined by a fated love, but they were also connected . . . to me. Without my desire to slaughter Elise, I would never have sought her out after Siv went rogue. I would never have learned of her connection to the Blood Wraith. I’d never have manipulated her into bringing him to me.

I would never have found . . .myfamily.

The gilded ropes of Elise’s and Valen’s paths of fate tied together in a glowing knot.

Elise placed a hand against his cheek and whispered, “Who says you are the one who makes the choice alone?”

Valen gripped her hair and drew her close, muttering soft words I couldn’t hear against her lips. Then, he kissed his queen.

The gift of choice. A whisper came in the storm.

I laughed out loud when shadows of hatred and fear faded from the shanty as their unified fate gleamed.

“Failure.” I sneered at Davorin. “Again. Seems we have a common theme here.”

Davorin barreled through the passion of Valen and Elise, warping the shanty into mist and shadows.

Ribbons of every color replaced the old floorboards. Cinnamon and sugared sweets. Rich meats and savory herbs. The glitter and glamor of a masquerade spun around us when we landed. Davorin slid away, his form fading into the revelry, but I was drawn to the whimpers of a freckled girl with two red braids over her skinny shoulders.

“Kase! Where are you?” She ducked in and out of dancing folk, tears on her cheeks.

Unbeknownst to her, as she searched, a rope of glittering gold coiled around her thin waist.

Shadows rolled, dragging me forward to a place where Eastern guards shoved a boy into a cage, like a dog. Golden eyes took in his surroundings, he looked above him to where the faint cry of the girl’s pleas could be heard.

“Mallie!” His voice broke over and over as he banged on the bars, sobbing for his girl.

Kase Eriksson had always been made of shadows, but there in his cell, there was more. Fear, potent like dust in the lungs, gathered around him. Resentment, despair, all of it crushed a young Nightrender. Like Malin, a rope of fate tangled with his shadows.

He curled on the floor of his cell, dug out a wooden rose charm from under his top, and whispered, “Don’t forget me.”

Beneath my feet, a fissure divided the cell, and my stomach shot to my throat when I fell onto a plush plot of land. A huddle of masked people stood around a couple in the center. I recognized them all. The Falkyns, the Guild of Kryv.

Like with Valen and Elise, the ribbon of fate’s light collided between the Memory Thief and the Nightrender as Kase looked up from where he laid out on the ground, eyes alive and locked on the woman hovering over him.