Cover

Dedication

To those who won’t admit they wish the love interest was the villain every time. I see you.

Map of the Realms of Stìgandr

Author’s Note

Broken Souls and Bones contains dark themes and topics that might not be suitable for all readers. Your mental health matters.

This book contains mentions of the following: enslavement, attempted sexual assault, threats of assault, mutilation, torture, past abuse of a child, family abandonment, explicit sexual content, gore, murder, and violence.

Prologue

The feral bay of the king’s hounds stirred her from the nothing. Mists tangled around knobby branches and the sting of lingering heat from the flames still burned in her eyes.

“Keep those closed.” Leather-wrapped fingers brushed over her lashes. “Don’t let anyone see the silver in those eyes, girl. Hear me?”

The voice was hoarse and rough, older than hers but not as deep as her pap’s.

“We get snatched, then we’re dead. Maybe we shouldn’t have done it.” A new voice, a boy’s that was young enough it cracked and squeaked, uncertain if it was yet a man’s tone or still a child’s.

“Quiet. We’re here now, and we’re seeing it through,” snapped the first. “Get yourself into the damn shadows and stay down. Go. Go.”

A petulant protest from the second followed, but in the end the scrape of boots faded into the briars of the wood and was lost in the mists. The girl shifted and whimpered, muscles aching from running. Her mother told her to run—screamed at her to do it—and not look back.

Ropes held her tightly when she shifted, trying to break free, all at once desperate to find her family.

Through the haze in her mind she recalled the cruel sound of the door cracking against the wall, the iron and bronze blades cutting through the air, seeking flesh to split. She recalled the screams and blood.

So much blood.

“Stop fidgeting, godsdammit.”

She froze. Those ropes keeping her bound were arms. And her cheek was pressed to cold leather that reeked of ash and sweat and the bite of forest mist.

Buried beneath a dark cowl she could make out a stubbled chin. Not bearded in long double braids and bone beads like her pap’s, but a ghost of a beard was there.

She wanted to cry out, to plead with the man to let her be. There were straps of leather for knives and weapons over his shoulders, much the same as the raiders who burned her village. Fear choked off her pleas into nothing but jagged whimpers.