Thorne (Random Romance) (21 page)

I turned to Thorne, because frankly I didn’t know how to react or feel or what to think about what I had just witnessed. My mind wasn’t processing what my eyes were seeing – five swinging corpses. Five lives doused in mere moments, without the slightest of efforts. I couldn’t fathom who Isadora was, where she had come from, and why she was able to do that without batting an eyelid. It seemed too preposterous. As if the mere fact of her existence made a joke of the men who’d thought to attack her.

One did not want to anger Isadora. That was the lesson of the day.

Carefully I removed the arrows from Thorne’s arms, feeling queasy. He wasn’t too bothered by them, which was a whole other absurdity to deal with.

‘Small bows, small arrows, small wounds,’ he shrugged when I pointed out his remarkable lack of pain. I just shook my head and bound his arms with bandages from the aid kit. Then I went back to Jonah and bound his head wound, which was thankfully quite shallow.

The others wanted to leave the bodies where they were, but I felt even more ill at the idea, and so went to cut them down myself. Thorne helped me, and we didn’t say anything as we laid them out under the trees.

A few more days passed and we kept a cracking pace. Now that we only had two horses, we took turns riding and walking. But Thorne was a silent creature of determination – he would not be slowed, and the rest of us were not keeping up well. On our third night of only stopping for an hour or so of sleep (filled with nightmares of swinging corpses for me to enjoy!) Jonah blocked Thorne’s path as he went to re-pack the horses.

‘Stop.’

‘We must keep moving, Jonah,’ he said flatly.

‘Wait. We need to work this out. We can’t keep going as we have.’

‘I must get to them.’

‘The rest of us are spent,’ Jonah pointed out. I would never have admitted such a thing, but it was true. He reached a hand to clasp Thorne’s upper arm. ‘Brother, we will get there. But we need to rest.’

Thorne gazed at the smaller boy, hesitating.

‘Prince Thorne could go on ahead,’ Isadora suggested wearily. ‘With a horse to himself he will make better time.’

Thorne nodded, saddling up.

‘Not on his own,’ I said quickly.

‘Why?’ Thorne demanded.

I didn’t know why. I just … didn’t like the thought of him having to make this journey, in such a state, alone. It seemed too lonely.

‘Go with him, Inney,’ Jonah said. ‘Take the second horse. The three of us will walk and meet you at the fortress when we can.’

‘No, wait –’ I tried, suddenly horrified at the idea of being alone with Thorne for so long.

‘And if we come across the other groups along the way, we can persuade them not to follow the trail to Pirenti,’ Isadora added.

‘It won’t be safe for the three of you to enter Pirenti without Thorne,’ I pointed out.

Thorne picked out a piece of coal from the tiny fire we had made. He motioned for Jonah to turn around, and then he made a small mark on the back of his neck. He did the same to both Penn and Isadora. ‘The royal sigil. You will be safe wearing this – no sane person would don it without my permission unless he wanted to be in serious trouble. But for the Gods’ sakes, don’t wash it off.’

‘Not a problem!’ Penn declared, and Thorne couldn’t help but smile. He took the small boy in a tight hug.

‘Hang on,’ I said hurriedly. This really looked like it was being decided. He was bidding farewell to all three of them. ‘I can’t leave Jonah.’

Thorne glanced at me. ‘I’ll go ahead on my own, Finn. I don’t mind.’

‘I know you don’t mind, but you shouldn’t have to.’ I looked between him and my brother, feeling a terrible ache in my chest. I already knew what I was going to do, but it hurt.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Jonah told me softly. ‘I promise you will. It’ll only be a few weeks, at most. And this had to happen at some point in our lives. We always knew that.’

I went to him, embracing him fiercely. I was crying, and I hated it, but I
couldn’t make it stop. ‘I love you,’ I whispered to him, not wanting anyone else to hear. ‘Do you know why?’ His hands were in my hair. ‘Not because you take away my sadness. But because you’ve given me every piece of happiness I’ve ever known.’

He clutched at me and I could feel him trembling, could feel his tears. ‘And you me, my girl. But don’t be frightened of finding happiness elsewhere. That’s all right too, you know.’

I shook my head, trying to hold onto him, but he pushed me away, and he was crying as he led me to the horse. I hugged Penn and kissed his cheeks and lips and he giggled and couldn’t look at me.

To Isadora, I said, ‘I charge you with looking after them both. If harm befalls either one of them I will hold you responsible.’

She nodded once and then helped me to mount my horse.

As Thorne and I rode away from them I was sobbing and it was ridiculous but the truth was that Jonah and I had not been parted since the day we were born. I knew of course that it would happen but I wasn’t ready, I hadn’t prepared myself, not yet not yet not yet.

In the night I could hear the high, sweet voice of a young red-haired boy singing. ‘
Away we go, close to always, stolen by the bone queen of once upon a time …’
And then his voice was swallowed up by the thunder of our horses’ hooves.

Thorne

It was because she came with me. I could smell her terror; leaving her brother was what scared her most in the world. But she came with me anyway.

That was how I knew I loved her.

Finn

It took us half the time it should have to cross into Pirenti. A week instead of
two. We did not touch each other once – I didn’t know if I would ever be ready to touch him again – but we talked. Talked and talked and talked. I felt the air between us shift and change shape, become something different. Something … deeper. Something that was starting to make me very nervous.

We crossed the border and the forest grew denser, the cover of trees blotting out the sun so that there was a canopy of speckled light above. The road was quiet, but Thorne said it always was this close to the Kayan border. Only traders came this far south, and even then they were few. I wondered who had built this road between the countries, and what they’d had in mind for it. Probably war.

‘There will be civil war in Kaya before long,’ Thorne said suddenly, on one of our few walking breaks. ‘The Sparrow grows greedy.’

‘He wants what we want,’ I replied. ‘He wanted an end to the bond before we knew there was one.’

‘He wants power and will shed blood to gain it.’

‘He wants Falco gone from the throne,’ I murmured softly. ‘It’s commonly known. And having met the man, it’s hard to disagree.’

‘The bond,’ he said bluntly. ‘You want it gone for your da. But if not for him how would you feel about it?’

This was a question I didn’t allow myself to ask. But with Thorne the way he was in this moment – a focused, detached man – I felt a desire to answer it. It felt safe to answer it.

‘It just brings so much death and destruction,’ I told him. ‘And there’s like this …
yearning
that defines a Kayan. An emptiness that we know instinctively to be our soul’s way of waiting for its mate. That absence – it’s not a way to live.’

‘There’s more than one way to fill the absence,’ he replied. ‘What you wish to achieve with this quest is an end to the yearning, the half-souls, the endless waiting. But you could also end it by bonding.’

‘I have no desire to live in a world where a man or woman cannot be themselves, wholly themselves, on their own. I defy the idea that I can’t be me without someone else to help.’

‘And maybe that’s not what’s happening at all. Maybe the absence is just loneliness. Maybe the bond is simply about two people
sharing
something when they are ready and willing to do so.’

‘Sharing what?’

‘Love!’ he exclaimed, exasperated. ‘You can be you without love, Finn. But maybe love would make things better.’

I didn’t respond, sick of the conversation. I was tired to my very core of
love
. It bored me in all its predictable anguish. Damned Agathon and his romantic heart. Didn’t he have any idea of the kind of destruction he was setting loose when he made this infuriating bond?

‘I don’t think the bond is all that different,’ Thorne added after a while.

‘From what?’

He hesitated. ‘Kayans seem to think that the love of the bond is so much bigger than any other kind. But in my own country I’ve seen love that’s vast and strong, and I know that
all
loss leaves us walking half a life, at least for a time. My mother loves like no one I’ve ever met. And her grief … it’s bigger than the ocean. Who can truly say that it means less than a Kayan’s grief?’

I felt unaccountably angry with him for saying something so painfully perfect, and I wanted to be gone from him, and I wanted the day we met to erase itself from my life, and I wanted him to never say another word to me for the rest of our days, because – really – I wanted none of those things at all.

I kicked my horse into a canter so that he wouldn’t see my eyes or hear my heart beat its way out of my chest.

As night drew closer the road grew busier. We had to slow to another walk as it was unsafe otherwise, passing horse-drawn carts and travelling
parties who either walked or rode. They all recognised Thorne and bowed formally to him. Many stared at me with calculating eyes, but none spoke with any hostility, nor did any make trouble. A few even greeted me kindly.

The one quality each shared was their enormous size. Around these men I felt like a dwarf in a land of giants. They were unshaved and scarred and ugly, and they wore filthy animal pelts and carried massive, dull weapons. I felt rapt with excitement at the sheer strangeness of it all.

At one point Thorne explained, ‘This is a rough area. The farmers and merchants don’t have much money, so they survive on what they can. Closer to the fortress there is more wealth and you will notice the difference in the appearance of those we come across.’

‘More to my taste, surely, having come from such luxury myself.’

He cracked a smile at that. ‘The central provinces of the country are the safest. In the north, closer to the ice caps, it is more brutal. The northernmost city, Vjort, is a walled city that houses the largest army barracks. Hundreds of soldiers dwell and train there, which makes it a dangerous place for outsiders. In Vjort it never stops snowing, even in summer, and the beauty of it makes it hard to understand the violence.’

I’d never seen snow, but I wanted to, more than anything. ‘I thought the capital fortress was the biggest army barracks.’

‘It’s not half the size of Vjort. Ambrose spends a great deal of time up north, and the soldiers take shifts travelling down to the fortress, doing sweeps of the country and spending time training under the King. That way he has a strong presence with them, for if the soldiers couldn’t see the King’s continuing strength, Ambrose would be challenged by too many who forget his power.’

‘Can anyone challenge him?’

Thorne nodded.

‘And if someone beat him?’ I demanded. ‘Some idiot who was a good
fighter? What state would Pirenti be in then?’

Thorne said simply, ‘That is why he must not be beaten.’

It occurred to me that I would meet this man soon. The unbeatable King of Pirenti, who had been so lovable that even a woman incapable of love could fall for him. ‘Is he challenged often?’

‘He was. In the beginning of his reign, when he married a Kayan.’ Something dark crossed Thorne’s face. ‘They came at him, one after the other. Thinking him weak. Thinking him soft.’

I swallowed. ‘And now?’

‘Now they know better.’

We travelled in silence for a while. An owl hooted in the trees above. No one passed us for a few hundred paces or so.

‘There are those who don’t like the treaty, aren’t there?’ I asked, no idea why I was pushing it when I knew the answer.

‘There will always be those who seek war. It’s why Vjort is such a dangerous city – it’s full of bloodthirsty warriors with no one to fight. One day someone will think himself strong enough to take on the King and the challenges will start again.’

‘Thorne …’ I licked my lips, keeping my eyes forward. ‘They won’t challenge you. Not until you’re King.’ It didn’t sound like a question, but it was. It was.

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘They won’t challenge me.’

We came to the outskirts of a town. ‘There’s a tavern where we can sleep a few hours.’

‘Really? You don’t want to keep going?’

‘It will be too cold to sleep outside.’ By which he meant that it would be too cold for
me
to sleep outside. I thought about arguing, but the weariness had set into my bones and the thought of an actual bed made me giddy.

Inside the small tavern it was dark and hot with a huge fire raging in
the main dining area. Thorne asked for a room with two beds and we were shown immediately to the largest. It was not very large. After dumping our packs, we went down to have a meal in the dining area. There were quite a few people already seated at the bar or around the fire, so we chose a small, free table at the back of the room. A few men bowed to Thorne as we passed, but he simply gestured for them to stop, greeting them individually. It was nice to see Thorne being treated with respect instead of the hatred and fear he’d received in Kaya.

I gazed around at the other patrons, noting that they were all grizzly looking men. ‘Aren’t there any women in Pirenti?’

‘There’s one.’ He pointed at a very overweight, very dirty cooking lady who was delivering a huge pot of boiling stew to some men who slapped her on the ass, even though she was twice their age.

‘Charming company she keeps.’

Thorne tried to hide his smile. ‘You have no idea of the world you’ve just walked into, do you?’

I looked at him, thinking the question a curious one. ‘What should I expect, Majesty?’

‘Expect that your words will earn you different responses to the ones you’re used to,’ was all he said.

Food was brought over – delicious, meaty stew. Thorne ate four entire bowls, plus a whole loaf of bread, while I only got through one measly bowl.