The Ever King: A Dark Fantasy Romance (The Ever Seas Book 1), page 1
The Ever King
LJ ANDREWS
Copyright © 2023 by LJ Andrews
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by: MerryBookRound designs
Developmental Edits: Sara Sorensen
Line edits: Jennifer Murgia and Megan Mitchell
Proofreading: CindyRayHale.com
Interior Art:
Samaiya Beaumont at samaiyaart.com
Salome Totladze @mogana0anagrom
Nora Adamszki at www.adamszkiart.com
Map/Chapter Headings: Eric Bunnell
Formatting: Authortree.co
Rights and Representation by Katie Shea Boutillier: ksboutillier@maassagency.com at Donald Maass Literary Agency.
Created with Vellum
Author Note
Welcome to the dark world of The Ever. I hope you enjoy the book and the deep, possessive romance between Livia and Erik. That is the reason for this note—some might find early actions of our morally grey Ever King the kind that blur the lines of right and, well, brutal.
He’s not snuggly (at least not until we peel back some layers) so know that some of his actions are dark and vicious.
The world of the Ever is built from the worlds of my Broken Kingdoms series, bringing to our fae loves some sly pirates, bone ships, and sea shanties. Please note, my nautical friends, that although I did research on the swashbuckling lifestyle, this is a fantasy book, and I have taken liberties with my Ever Ship that might differ from historical accuracy of the vessels sailing the Caribbean seas.
Be aware, although this series stands alone from The Broken Kingdoms, some characters will be seen in this book that could be unintentional spoilers for a few reveals in books one and two of the Broken Kingdoms series.
For those readers who are joining here on the tails of the Broken Kingdoms finale, welcome to the world beneath the waves. The Ever King takes place approximately twenty years after events in book 6, Dance of Kings and Thieves, in the Broken Kingdoms—if you know, you’ll know.
Little Erik grew up, and he’s back with a vengeance.
Without further ado, welcome to the Ever.
Contents
Prologue
1. The Songbird
2. The Songbird
3. The Songbird
4. The Serpent
5. The Serpent
6. The Serpent
7. The Songbird
8. The Songbird
9. The Songbird
10. The Serpent
11. The Songbird
12. The Songbird
13. The Songbird
14. The Songbird
15. The Songbird
16. The Serpent
17. The Songbird
18. The Songbird
19. The Serpent
20. The Serpent
21. The Songbird
22. The Songbird
23. The Songbird
24. The Serpent
25. The Songbird
26. The Serpent
27. The Songbird
28. The Songbird
29. The Songbird
30. The Serpent
31. The Songbird
32. The Songbird
33. The Songbird
34. The Serpent
35. The Songbird
36. The Songbird
37. The Songbird
38. The Serpent
39. The Songbird
40. The Songbird
41. The Serpent
42. The Serpent
43. The Songbird
44. The Songbird
45. The Serpent
46. The Songbird
47. The Serpent
48. The Songbird
49. The Serpent
Where To Find Me
Acknowledgments
Prologue
THAT NIGHT
The ending needed to be altered.
The girl spent the whole of the afternoon crossing out lines with her raven feather quill, then adding new, better words to read to the boy in the dark. A tale of a serpent who befriended a songbird. A tale where they lived happily ever after, for in the girl’s version, the snake never devoured the bird.
Long after the moon found its highest perch in the night sky, the girl slipped from the loft in the battle fort near the shore. Crouched low, she used the tall snake grass as a shield until she found her way to the old stone tower. The top had caved in, and it wasn’t much of a tower anymore, but the walls were thick as two men standing side by side.
Along the foundation, iron bars covered a few openings. In her head, the girl counted six barred windows before she crouched at the final cell.
“Bloodsinger,” she whispered. Since the end of the battle, she’d practiced the breathy pitch to be loud enough the boy inside would hear, but the guards stomping along the borders would think it nothing more than the hiss of a forest creature.
Five breaths, ten, then red eyes like a stormy sunset appeared from the shadows.
He was a frightening boy. A few turns older than her, but he’d fought in the war. He’d raised a sword against her people’s warriors. A boy who still had dried blood on his skin.
Her heart squeezed with a strange dread she didn’t understand. This was the last night she might see the boy; she needed to make it count.
“Trials come with the sun,” the boy said, his voice dry as brittle straw. “Better leave, little princess.”
“But I have something for you, and I’ve got to finish the story.” From the pouch slung over her shoulder, the girl took out a small book, bound in tattered leather. Inked over the cover was a black silhouette of a bird and a coiled snake. “Want to hear the end?”
The boy didn’t blink for a long pause. Then, slowly, he sat on the damp earth and crossed his legs under his lanky body.
The girl read the final pages marked in her new, palatable ending. The songbird and serpent grew to be friends despite their differences. No lies, no cunning, no tricks. Each word drew her closer to the bars until her head rested against the cold iron and one hand drooped between the gaps, as though reaching for the boy inside.
“They played from sunup to sundown,” she read, squinting at her messy writing. “And lived happily ever after.”
A smile crossed her features when she closed the bindings and glanced at the boy.
He’d reclined back onto his palms now, legs out, bare ankles crossed. “Is that what we are, princess? A serpent and a songbird?”
Her smile widened. He understood the whole point. “I think so, and they were still friends. That’s why tomorrow at the trials you can, well, you can say we won’t fight no more. My folk will let you stay.”
No more blood. No more nightmares. The girl couldn’t stomach any more blood from hate and war.
When the boy kept quiet, she dug back into her pouch and took out the twine. On the end was a silver charm she’d used her last copper to buy. A silver charm of a swallow in flight.
“Here.” She held out the handmade necklace through the bars and let it fall. “I thought it could remind you of the story.”
All at once, the distance between them was a blessing. Any closer and the boy might see the flush of pink in her cheeks. He might see that her hope in the charm was less about recalling the tale and more about remembering her.
With slow movements, the boy took hold of the charm. His dirty thumb brushed over the wings. “Tomorrow, I’ll be sent away, or I’ll greet the gods, Songbird.”
Her stomach dipped, and something warm, like spilled tea, flooded her insides. Songbird. She liked the name.
“That’s what happens when you lose a war.” The boy’s lips twitched when he placed the twine around his neck. “There’s no stopping it.”
The race of her heart dimmed. She dropped her chin. Hopeful as she was, the girl wasn’t a fool. She knew the only thing saving the boy’s neck was that he was a boy. Should he be a man, he’d lose his head. He had fought against her people; he hated them.
Like the serpent from the story hated the birds in the trees for their freedom in the skies.
She didn’t care. A feeling, deep in her bones, drew her to the boy. She’d hoped he might be drawn to her too.
Hope failed. True, he was young, but he’d always be marked as an enemy. Banished and forbidden.
She blinked and reached once more into the fur-lined pouch. “I know this is important to your folk. Thought maybe you’d want to see it once more.”
The girl cupped the gold talisman, shaped like a thin disk, with care. It was weathered and aged and delicate. A faint hum of strange remnants of magic lived in the gritty edges. If her father ever learned she’d snatched the piece from the lockbox, he’d probably banish her to her room for a week.
The moonlight gleamed over the strange rune in the center of the coin. The boy in the shadows let out a gasp. She didn’t think he’d meant to do it.
For the first time since she’d started reading to him, the boy climbed up the stone wall and curled his hands around the bars. The red in his eyes deepened like blood. His smile was different. Wide enough she could see the slight point to his side tooth, almost like fangs of a wolf, only not as long.
This smile sent a shiver up her arms.
“Will you do something for me, Songbird?”
“What?”
The boy nodded at the disk. “That was a gift from my father. Watch over it for me, will you? I’ll come back to get it one day, and you can tell me more stories. Promise?”
The girl ignored the wave of gooseflesh up her arms and whispered, “Promise.”
When the sound of heavy boots scraped over the dirt nearby, the girl gave one final look at the boy in the darkness. He held up the silver bird charm and grinned that wolfish grin once more before she sprinted into the grass.
The speed of her pulse ached as she hurried back to the longhouse. Her gaze was locked on the disk in her hands; she never saw the root bursting from the soil. The thick arch snagged the tip of her toe and sprawled the girl face down in the soil.
She coughed and scrambled back to her knees. When she looked down, her insides twisted up like knotted ropes.
“Oh, no.”
The disk she’d promised to protect mere moments before had fallen beneath her body. Now, the shimmer of gold lay in three jagged pieces in the soil. Tears blurred her vision as she gathered the pieces, sobbing promises to the night that she’d fix it, she’d repair what was broken.
Perhaps it was the despair that kept her from noticing the strange rune, once marked on the surface of the disk, now branded the smooth skin below the crook of her elbow.
In time, the more she learned of the viciousness of the sea fae who attacked her people, the more the girl looked back on that night like a shameful secret. She made up tales about the scar on her arm, a clumsy stumble down the cobbled steps in the gardens. She’d forget the boy’s promise to come for her.
The girl would start to think of him as everyone else—the enemy.
If only the girl had kept away from those cells that night, perhaps she would not have unraveled her entire world.
CHAPTER 1
The Songbird
Blood was in the air. Pale sunlight had barely clawed through ashy sea mists around the shore, but the hot tang of blood filled my lungs with each breath.
I pulled back the thick, woven shades to see if some gory death had taken place at the base of my family’s tower. The dirt roads carving through the wood and stone fortress we called home for two weeks every summer were filled with loud merchants and courtiers preparing for the festival.
No bones. No flesh. No blood.
I let the shade fall back into place, my thumb tracing the roses and ravens embroidered in the threads—symbols for our Night Folk clans in the Northern realms. The Eastern, Southern, and Western realms would have their own unique markings.
I was losing my damn mind. Brutal nightmares of snakes devouring little birds took up my sleep. Now, I was bringing the blood and death from dreams into reality. Maybe it was because the Crimson Festival marked the end of the war. Or maybe it was because this festival was the tenth since our enemies, the sea fae, were locked beneath the tides.
With every fading summer, the haunting dreams grew more vivid, like a waking nightmare. A distant promise from a lanky boy locked in a cell had become a poison in my mind, an endless image of monstrous serpents rising from the sea, night after night.
I was a fool. There hadn’t been a single whisper of sea folk since the great war ended. This summer would be no different.
To soothe the tension in my blood, I opened a drawer in a table beside my bed. Inside were three lumps of what once was the rune talisman. Since the disc shattered, the pieces had grown more brittle, as though returning to nothing but sand on the shore. They were hardly shapes anymore.
I slammed the drawer closed and climbed back into the wide bed, pulling the heavy fur duvet over my head. Alone, I could succumb to the race of my uneasy pulse, the damp sweat on my palms, and the nervous tremble in my veins.
The fortress was designed to house all four royal families of the fae realms. To the sea folk we were all earth fae, but in truth we were made of clans with different magics and talents.
All the clans fought together to win peace during the great war against dark fury—what my clan called magic—and the folk of the Ever Kingdom—the sea fae. His people. The festival was an excuse to celebrate the victory and gave reason to see everyone I loved through days of field games, archery, lively balls, and too much sweet ale. I couldn’t puzzle through why this summer felt so . . . different.
“Livia!” A heavy pound on the thick, oakwood door rattled the rafters overhead. “You’re needed and yet are nowhere to be found. I noticed your absence first, in case you ever wondered who cares for you most.”
It must be terribly late in the morning if Jonas was the one sent to fetch me this time.
A strategic move. Well played. That vulgar tongue of his was equal parts charm and weapon. He knew how to use it well.
“Woman troubles,” I shouted, muffling my voice into the pillow. “Best to move along.”
“I’m up for the challenge.” A pause, then a few clicks came from the door latch, and the door swung open.
I shot up in the bed, frowning. “Jonas Eriksson, I warned you about picking my locks.”
Jonas flashed the roguish grin that won too many hearts in his court. “I do recall you once said I was forbidden to do so, and I simply forgot to care.”
Bastard.
Jonas filled the doorway with his height and width. Busy as a child, and even more active as a man, his body was made for battle while still being lithe enough to slip between shadows like a thief in the night.
His agility around locks and small spaces would be unsettling if he was sinister. The truth was, Jonas and his twin, Sander, couldn’t help their proclivity to sneak. They’d been raised by a rather cunning king and queen who’d both thieved themselves a time or two.
Jonas strode to the tall window and tossed open the heavy curtains. I blinked when the sunlight burst through the room, and a gust of wind followed, carrying with it more imagined blood, more hints of the sea.
Jonas spun around, facing me, his hands on his hips as he smirked.
“Pleased with yourself?” I scratched my scalp through wild tangles of my dark braids.
“Immensely.” As the eldest of the twin Eastern princes, Jonas’s bright, verdant eyes and devious grin beneath the dark scruff on his jaw kept more than one lady slipping into his rooms. If they knew the goodness of his loyal heart under all his schemes and wit, they’d never leave him in peace. “Get up. The coaches are about to leave.”
Gods, how late did I sleep?
“Hurry, Liv. I mean this with love, it’s going to take some time for you to get presentable. You look like a goat swallowed you, then tossed you out with its shit.”
“Have I told you that you’re not charming?”
“Many times. You’re still wrong.” Jonas dropped one knee on the foot of my bed. “You seem distressed, Livie. Tell me what’s troubling you.”
“Nothing is troubling me except you.”
“You wound me.” He pressed a hand to the emblem of a sword encircled in shadows stitched to his dark tunic. His court’s seal. Jonas’s face sobered a bit as he studied me until I wanted to sink under my quilt from his scrutiny. “No teasing—are you all right?”
My shoulders slumped. A downside to having friendships built from infancy was knowing every tell and every flinch of each other’s faces. We knew the other’s weaknesses and strengths. Their fears.
