Thorne (Random Romance) (26 page)

‘Our kin would have us wed,’ I pointed out as we stepped stiffly to the music. Why I pointed that out I had no idea. I wasn’t a very good dancer, despite Ma’s continued efforts, and felt more uncomfortable than I had in a long while.

‘I … Majesty, I would be
so
lucky …’ she stuttered.

Believe me, you wouldn’t.

My eyes raked the crowd for yellow hair but I couldn’t see her anywhere. Something felt off about it. Ella and Sadie were still fine, dancing on the dais in full view of their parents. So what was it? It wasn’t as though it was unusual for Finn to disappear to have fun on her own, but …

Without warning, I was hit full force with the scent of danger. My
beast rose to his feet and gave a low growl of warning.

I stopped dancing but was unable to see anything wrong. Pushing back through the crowd to my aunt and uncle, they both stiffened at my expression.

‘Something’s wrong. Where’s Finn?’

Finn

It happened as I was looking at the painfully gorgeous shy sweet perfect little lady who was to be Thorne’s precious little wife and wishing I could strangle her lovely long neck. They looked beautiful together; he was painfully handsome in his black cloak and mask, while she looked alarmingly like his mother.

I didn’t even notice them beside me. Two men in cloaks and masks. I wouldn’t have noticed them, because everyone was in cloaks and masks. But I certainly noticed when they threw a ward to my lips, rendering me silent, and I certainly noticed when they took hold of me and moved me so subtly back into the crowd that we vanished from view without so much as a rustle.

My body was paralysed, so they lifted me at the elbows, making it look as though I was walking, and they spirited me through the streets of the fortress and straight out the front gate. People were still coming and going through the entrance. Guards watched closely, but I could not struggle or shout, so we passed easily.

My heart was thumping, my mind trying to make the connections. At least one of them was a warder. So what would a warder want with me? None of my skin was touching theirs – they were careful about that, which meant they knew of my abilities and didn’t want to be read. Not that I could
do
anything with this stupid power of mine. Knowing the feel of someone’s heart didn’t make them any less dangerous to me.

I resolved to just stay calm until I had some answers.

They carried me further into the forest until we were alone, with no
chance of stray festival-goers stumbling across us in a drunken haze. They had a carriage, on the back of which was a
cage
.

My heart lurched. This was looking worse and worse.

The men let me go, and I felt my body return to my control. ‘If you wanted to get me alone you could have just bought me a drink,’ I pointed out.

They drew back their hoods. Both were warders: I was in trouble.

Especially because two more men emerged from the trees, and they were unmistakably Pirenti soldiers – huge bear-like men in animal pelts and wielding axes. Men with axes again. The world was really trying to teach me a lesson here.
Don’t fear something frightening? Well then, let me throw it at you again and again until you see how stupid you are, Finn.

Having delivered me, the warders were apparently intent on returning to the festival. They turned and walked back through the forest. One of them paused long enough to say, ‘Be quick. They’ll be after her. And make sure she’s incapacitated or you may find yourselves in grave trouble.’

Huh? Grave trouble from
me
? ‘I think you kidnapped the wrong girl,’ I told them, but they’d already disappeared from view.

I faced the soldiers. ‘Whatever you’re doing,’ I said carefully, ‘I think you are seriously going to regret it. And I say that with the utmost respect for your profession of … crime.’

‘Lippy bitch,’ one of the men grunted. The other backhanded me across the face. It made a loud crack and I felt the shock of it through my entire body. Pain blitzed my head and I fell to my knees. The world spun. I’d never been hit before. Never been physically harmed at all, actually. It was not fun.

The same soldier stared down at me expressionlessly. He had pretty green eyes. And that was when real fear found me, and real understanding. I came from Kaya, which, ninety-nine per cent of the time, was safe. Women were treated the same as men. There wasn’t much violence, not a great deal of crime. You could say what you wanted and nobody was going to hit you in
the face for it.

But Thorne had said it, hadn’t he?
You have no idea of the world you just stepped into.

Blind fury exploded in my heart. I hated that there was a place in the world where if you were a woman it meant you were in danger. I
hated
it. I loathed the fact that the only way to stay safe was to learn to fight and hurt others. Loathed the fact that one hit could make me feel like I was dying and pretty much deny me any chance of escape.

I didn’t want to be weak, but I also didn’t want to learn to fight. So where did that leave me?

In a cage. That’s where.

‘If you want me to stop talking,’ I said coldly, ‘you’ll have to cut out my tongue.’

‘With pleasure.’

Green Eyes stopped his companion. Then he drew his own knife and he didn’t cut out my tongue – he stabbed me in the guts.

I woke some time later, staring up at the wooden slats of the cage. Grey and black trees moved above me. The carriage was travelling but I had no idea how far it had moved. I felt every rock in the road, every tiny bump or pebble we crossed as it jolted my body into a spasm of agony. The knife was still inside me. I didn’t know why he hadn’t removed it. Maybe he didn’t want me to bleed to death until we got to our destination.

It came to me in a rush, too late, the reason I had woken up. There was someone in the cage with me. Green Eyes. Undoing his breeches with tattooed hands and gazing down at my body.

Terror struck, and rage.

It coiled inside me, a living, breathing
throbbing
thing. It wanted out. It wanted free. It wanted no more seconds to pass in this life with this man
doing these things.

A scream erupted from my mouth, and with it came my soul and my power and every ounce of magic I had been denying for so many years. Without thought, without decision, it sprung forth and slammed into Green Eyes, knocking him back against the cage where he slumped and did not get back up.

I felt woozy. My head was made of rubber. It hurt and hurt, but I had a sense that there was still more inside me, wanting to get out. Trying to move, I tore at the knife inside me and let out a cry.

The carriage stopped.

Oh no no no.

As quickly as I could manage, I tried the latch to the cage but it was padlocked. If I had a weapon I could probably get through the wood, but they would hardly equip a prisoner with a weapon. Footsteps sounded as the second soldier jumped out of the carriage and approached. Okay. This was okay. I needed him to open the door for me anyway. But what in Gods’ names would I do then?

Green Eyes had nothing on his body that I could use, except maybe his heavy belt buckle. But I was in bad shape, and trying to manoeuvre it off him proved too painful for me in such a cramped space.

Too late. Soldier number two was here anyway. I readied myself, letting the power unfurl like a whisper inside me. He stopped, taking in the scene. ‘You stupid bitch,’ he sighed. Then he undid the cage.

I let go, let myself explode, and he flew off his feet at the sheer force of the pressure I had sent into him.

It snapped back into me with a terrible snap and I nearly lost consciousness once more. Groaning, I struggled to sit up and looked at the two bodies in fear. What had I done? Had I killed them? The thought sent waves of nausea through me.

Fearfully I reached out and touched Green Eyes’ ankle and felt the faint beat of a rotten, rotten heart. ‘Oh thank Gods.’ Then muttered, ‘Not that you deserve it, you monster.’

I started dragging myself out of the cage, needing desperately to be free of it. The drop to the ground was anguish. I landed on the knife and jerked it sideways, right through me. A strange sound ripped into the air and I realised belatedly that it was my scream.

Reaching as far as I could, I managed to touch the second soldier’s hand and found him barely alive. And so with relief swelling inside my chest I allowed myself to lose consciousness.

Thorne

There was a howl inside me, right in the heart of me. He was howling with rage and despair, and with a savage need to find her. And that was how I knew: my beast loved her too.

They weren’t listening to me. They were reasoning. Telling me they were sure she had just gone to find wine or fun or dance. And yes. These did sound like things that Finn would do, normally. Before the last few days, I would have agreed. But not now. Not after the words I’d said to her, not after witnessing what she had with Blain of Slaav, after meeting Ma and after this evening in her room.

Not now.

‘Listen to me.
Something’s wrong,’ I repeated, harsh. ‘I can smell it.’

This made them fall quiet.

‘Send a score of guards to search the fortress,’ Ava ordered and men ran to do her bidding.

‘She’s not within the fortress,’ said a soft voice I had not expected. I spun on my heel to see Osric, the only first tier warder in the world. Oddly, my dog Howl was with him; the man’s hand was threaded through the dog’s
fur in a way he normally didn’t let strangers touch him. The warder was looking at me with his streaked eyes and I could see that he knew. Whatever it was, he knew.

‘I’m here for the festival,’ he explained unnecessarily, as if I cared.

‘Finn
,’ I managed.

‘She has been taken,’ was what he said.

My eyes fell shut for a brief moment.

I couldn’t speak, so Ambrose asked, ‘By who?’

‘Two warders. Illegals. I saw it. Came as fast as I could, but I was too slow. I feel their residue still. And hers. She has a very distinct imprint.’

‘Where?’ I managed.

‘Out. Somewhere in the forest. I know not where.’

‘What do they want with her?’ Ava asked, but I was already moving. Running.

At the gate I shouted up to the guards, ‘Two men and a woman in a raven mask?’

‘That way, sire,’ came the answer, so I followed his pointed finger. Howl was with me, moving with swift certainty. Following the road, I stopped to breathe deeply, picking up the very faint lingering of her scent. It took me some time to find their tracks and follow them into the forest, away from the road.

It took us all night. I found where their tracks met the wheel grooves of a carriage and Howl and I followed those through darkness until the world turned to the grey of predawn. I ran every minute, scenting blood, her blood, and barely keeping it together. He wanted to be free, and I wanted the same.

Not yet
, I told him.
Soon
.

But when at last I came upon them there was no one to kill, for they already lay dead on the ground. Howl yelped.

And there lay Finn, my Wild Girl, and she had a knife in her stomach,
and there was a pool of blood spreading beneath her. My beast gave one mournful bay inside me and then he curled up in a ball, and I sank to the ground beside her, my knees soaked in her blood. Howl made a horrible high-pitched whining sound and sniffed the blood, padding frenziedly around us.

Reaching for her with trembling hands, I tried to shake her awake, not knowing what to do. I didn’t know what to do. ‘Finn,’ I said, my voice scraping in horror.

Her eyes miraculously fluttered open. My heart slammed out of beat. ‘Thorne?’

‘I’m here.’ I moved her gently into my lap so that I could stroke her hair and hold her. I was covered in blood – she was
still
gushing it.

‘When that desperate bastard wakes up tell him girls with knives in their stomachs generally aren’t up for a good time.’

I choked on a laugh, then realised what she was saying and literally saw red. I was losing control. I would tear him limb from limb.

‘Thorne,’ she said again. ‘Don’t kill him. You’ll need answers.’

‘How come you’re being more rational than I am right now?’

‘Must be blood loss.’

‘It’s all right. I’ll get you home.’

‘There were warders with them,’ she said in a rush. ‘Warders. Two.’

‘I know, it’s okay, just relax.’

‘Tell Jonah –’

‘Don’t, Finn. You’re fine.’

‘Just in case, tell him he’ll get to keep all his joy now.’

‘Don’t. Please don’t.’

She looked at me then, and her eyes were her tawny shade of yellow, except brighter, somehow. Richer. ‘Thorne,’ Finn murmured. ‘I’m
so
in love with you. And I’m sorry I was too cowardly to say it sooner.’

I started to cry, my tears falling on her face as I leant to kiss her lips, even though there was blood spilling from them.

Thorne

When she lost consciousness I placed her in the carriage and rode it back to the fortress as fast as I could make the horses run. Osric had made it halfway. I had no idea why he’d followed me, but he had, and he climbed into the back with Finn and Howl and started to do something with eyes of white and skin of blue.

I got us back to the fortress and carried her inside to the infirmary, and Osric stayed close, working his wards the whole time. Two days passed, and he did not sleep, and nor did I. I washed my blood-soaked dog and I paced the hallways. When finally he stopped, he was ragged with exhaustion.

‘She will live,’ he said on a sigh.

And I hugged him close for a very long time.

Days I sat by her bed. Ma sat with me, helping with medicines. Ava, Ambrose and the twins were in and out, spending time with us as much as they could afford. Ella and Sadie pinned the wings Finn had made them above her bed for luck. Osric came sometimes, and oddly enough he comforted me more than any of the others.

We’d had the two soldiers brought in for questioning, because they’d turned out to be alive after all, but when Osric finally managed to get into their heads he said they were unreadable – that Finn had utterly scrambled their minds and there was nothing coherent left. I made him vow never to tell her what she’d done, but quietly I felt satisfied that they’d been ruined so utterly.

One night under a red full moon I found myself alone with her. I felt a thousand years old from waiting. From longing. And so I slid into the bed
beside her, curling her gently into the crook of my body. It felt illicit, somehow. Secret moments stolen without her knowledge. I wondered if she would remember her delirious words to me. Her words of love, so generously given in her last moments.

I did not know how I would forge a life with her, only that I would.

She shifted in my arms and at long last opened her eyes. We looked at each other, faces close. ‘I only said it because I was dying,’ she warned me, and I laughed and kissed her.

‘It’s not fair,’ Finn murmured. ‘I’m sharing a bed with the prince of the barbarians and I don’t even know how I got here.’

I smiled. ‘It’s a very boring story, I’m afraid.’

‘Then make up a good one.’

So that’s what we did. Day and night. I sat with her and I told her stories. Sometimes they were true stories of my life, Ma’s life; other times they were tales I had been told as a boy, myths or legends or even just nonsensical things I made up.

Time passed and she recovered from a wound that should have killed her. I felt her come further back to life with each word I spoke – I, who had been such a quiet child, a silent young man. This was the most I had ever spoken in my entire life and probably the longest Finn had ever remained silent. Or
mostly
silent, in any case.

She watched me and listened, and sometimes she asked questions if I wasn’t making sense, and she often pointed out that I should have told that part before that part, or I should have drawn out some section or another. She taught me the art of good storytelling, and always she touched me. A hand on the back of my neck. Fingers entwined with mine. A foot grazing my leg. Sometimes she made me take off my shirt so she could touch my tattoos and my scars. But there was never anything more than that between us, only a sweet kind of tenderness neither of us had experienced before.

Each day she asked, ‘Have they come yet?’

And I was forced to shake my head.

I didn’t know where Jonah, Isadora and Penn were. I had men on the roads looking for them, because they should have arrived by now, or soon at least. But there was no sign.

On Finn’s seventh day in bed I brought a box of my da’s records in and dumped them on the floor.

‘The dreaded journals,’ she said.

‘Records.’

‘What’s the difference?’

I opened the first one, embarrassingly unsettled and trying to hide it.
‘Fourteen slain tonight. All Kayan. Seized with weapons of iron forged in the Vjort style. Possible spies? Look into forgeries in Querida region.

She took a breath. ‘Oh.’

‘Here’s a lovely one.
Sanra taken. Renamed. A woman sobbed from her window as I made announcement. Later found her home. Husband killed in war. Children required double rations.’

I shook my head. ‘What a monster.’

‘That sounded to me like a man who followed the sound of a woman crying and gave her children extra food because she couldn’t feed them herself,’ Finn said.

I looked sharply at her. Then back at the page. ‘Don’t.’

‘Okay. Sorry. It’s from later in his life anyway,’ she pointed out quietly. ‘We need earlier records from when he was a teenager in the ice caps.’

‘Torturing people.’

‘Warders
.’

I looked up at her, surprised. ‘Are they not people?’

‘Maybe they used to be.’ She shut down then, curling onto her side and facing away from me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, but because I didn’t know what I was apologising for it meant nothing. The anger inside her had not been born upon her kidnapping, only deepened. She had harboured a fury at the warders since the day they banned her from being who she was. I’d scented it clearly that night at the royal dinner with Lutius and Osric.

I kept reading, not because I thought the words held any merit, but because I knew she couldn’t bear quiet. Nothing was in any order. I took pieces from all over the place. ‘
A lord of Baath offered the highest dowry so it has been decided. I go tomorrow to inspect the girl. If she suffices we will wed quickly. Heirs are required.
’

‘Ambrose beat back four at once. He has earned his place as my second. They will know better than to come at us. Her Majesty has proposed his journey to the north. I argued it was unnecessary.
’

‘Three slain. One of them a woman. Cruelly, they send women soldiers. Her eyes turned white in the end.
’

‘My wife counts. I buy her herbs to stall the panic. Her Majesty has demanded I send her back.
’

‘Day twohundred. No conception.
’

‘Day threehundred and twelve. No conception.
’

‘Day sevenhundred and three. Remedies tried. Still no conception. Her Majesty suggests execution.
’

I stopped, unable to go on.

‘How he wanted you,’ came Finn’s soft voice.

I frowned, returning the book to the box. ‘These are accounts of soullessness.’

She rolled over to face where I sat on the floor. ‘Far from it.’

We were quiet. I didn’t know what she meant.

Finn asked, ‘Do you want to hear a story?’

I nodded, though in truth I felt too raw to listen to any more stories.

‘When I was thirteen I loved a boy. He was sly and swift and he had orange hair and a thousand freckles. I liked how his eyes shifted azure each and every time he looked at me. I had a million different ideas of what this meant. I knew we would bond one day, when we were older. I had been practising my soul magic in secret. The warders had forbidden me from it, but I thought them cruel and foolish. The boy was one of the first to swing the ropes on the Siren Nights. He slipped, couldn’t regain his hold, too taken by the call of the sea. I knew what to do. I knew perfectly what I could do. If I entered his mind I could block out the haze of the siren seduction and give him clarity. He would be able to keep his hold. But I was blunt. My mind was a hammer instead of a needle. It went inside him and for a moment I knew all that he was. I could see every thought, every wish, every memory. I knew he loved me in a fashion but was more frightened of me than anything else. His brothers teased him about me and it made him deeply uncomfortable because the thought of me reminded him of his sister’s doll, the one he had admired in secret. He was equally ashamed about admiring me, which was curious to me at the time. And then the moment passed, and my blunt hammer smashed through his mind by mistake, killing him instantly.’

Finn fell silent, and I felt that silence deep down inside me. I sat on the side of the bed and reached for her hand, but she removed it.

‘The act I had taken killed me too,’ she said woodenly.

I straightened, watching her face, not understanding.

‘It used me up. All of me.’ Her gaze was flickering with a peculiar translucency. It kept fading white and black and grey, one colour overlapping another as if she had a thousand layers within her eyes. ‘I was dead, but my brother carried my body home to Ma. She was a warder – a low tier warder, not very powerful, but trained in the arts of necromancy. She knew about life and death, the flicker between it, and knew how to whisper a soul back into its body. She sent her soul’s energy into mine and drew me back from the
dark, even though it had been too long and she could not hope to survive. She restored me by tying my soul to my brother’s permanently, but perished in the act.’

I tried to speak but couldn’t.

‘That’s it. That’s the story everyone wishes they knew. I walked a night with the dead and heard them screaming, and now they scream behind my eyes every night and every day, unless my poor brother is there to help me bear the burden of them. A fate he was never supposed to endure.’

Closing my eyes, I was awash with a sadness so profound I knew it to be a part of me, as it was a part of her. It was all so clear now. All the pieces of her I hadn’t been able to understand.

‘Your da. He’s survived a long time.’

‘Broken and humiliated,’ she replied. ‘He is a true half-walker. Not like Ava, who laughs and loves. Da is a shell. And soon he will die, murdered by me just as Ma was.’

‘Finn
. Hess said it was not your burden to bear. Any of it.’

‘She also said Sam would have fallen anyway. Don’t you see how much worse that makes it all?’

She could have let him fall. Then she would have remained a normal girl, her brother would not have had his life stolen, her ma would not have died, and her da would not be fading as we spoke.

I nodded. There was no use in trying to take away this knowledge, or argue with it. No use trying to lessen her pain – that would never happen. Instead I reached for her hand once more, and even though she tried to move it from my touch, I took it and held it too firmly for her to be able to escape it. Reaching for her cheek, I cupped it with my other hand, tilting her face towards mine.

‘You find joy in so much,’ I told her softly, holding her eyes. ‘You laugh, and you love so many things at once. I would that everyone could
endure their pain with so much courage. The world would be a far better place.’

The moment stopped, and I didn’t know how she would react, my Wild Girl whose behaviour would forever be a mystery to me. She was as likely to scream at me as anything else.

But she didn’t. Finn reached out and ran her fingers through my short hair, stroking it gently. Her eyes shifted one more time and then stopped, resting on the pale blue colour I saw when I looked in the mirror. I knew with perfect clarity that when eyes shifted to another person’s shade it was because something had been shared or felt or exchanged, some intimacy so sweet it stole everything else and left only love.

‘Let’s get this mess sorted out,’ she suggested, breaking the spell. She slid onto the floor and opened one of the records, and after a moment I did the same.

Some time later Finn said she was being driven mad by the walls and ceiling of her room, and needed a change of scenery. So we moved to the library to continue our reading. We were trying to find any records of the time Da had spent in the berserker mountains, but so far had come across nothing. The earlier records contained no ice, but they were certainly dark and twisted by bloody deeds and a very confused mind.

The black haired ghost taunts me
, I read.
He sees everything and I can’t escape him.

Ava and the twins found us surrounded by dusty scrolls and books; she looked at it all with distaste while Ella and Sadie found their favourite book and sprawled on the floor to read it. ‘How can you stomach it?’ the Queen asked.

‘Reading? Or reading about Thorne?’ Finn asked.

‘Either.’

‘You’re definitely Falco’s cousin,’ she muttered. Then added with a smile, ‘It’s actually really interesting. Like being privy to a different species of human. He was meticulous with his information and his training. I mean, sure, he slaughtered a whole bunch of people, but if you want to be ruled by a scary tyrant, then at least this one was good with his paperwork.’

The joke didn’t land very well. I couldn’t stomach much more of my father’s emotionless sentences and lists. Ava, the only one of us who’d known him, did not smile.

I looked at my aunt, sensing something warring beneath her surface. ‘What is it?’

She shook her head.

‘We know why Roselyn and Ambrose loved him,’ Finn said. ‘But what about you?’

Ava stared at her, something in her shifting eyes. They faded to a very pale lilac, so pale it was almost white, but not. Not quite. Looking at me, her expression was flat. ‘Let me be clear,’ Ava of Orion said with a glance to make sure her children weren’t listening. ‘I did not love this man. I spent the most important years of my life hating him. Your mother and uncle have every right to forgive and forget – everyone survives loss in their own ways – but I do not, and I never will.’

I’d never heard her say anything like it before. She went along with the toasts in his name and she spoke warmly of him to her daughters. I realised what a generosity it was towards the people she loved.

‘What did he do to you?’ Finn asked.

‘I don’t care what he did to me. It was his wife he hurt, repeatedly. And to me that’s unforgivable, no matter how long he’s been dead.’

A wave of queasiness hit me and I closed the book before me with a snap. All these puzzle pieces were not making a whole. I could no better understand the man now than I had a month ago. And maybe that was the
truth of it: that there were no answers, no wholes left to be found. He would always be a mystery to me, existing only in words spoken with bias and memory.