Thorne (Random Romance) (29 page)

Finn

Over the next hours the world changed. The impossible happened, the inexplicable: I lost him.

What the bond meant was that Hess could no longer be right. She had said that one of us, and only one, would die at the end of this journey. Now it was either both or neither.

The other thing it meant, although this was true even before we’d bonded, was that there was no way I was letting him go into the ice on his own. It was vast and unforgiving up there – how could he possibly hope to find where the warders were taking people?

So I had a plan. Thorne would undoubtedly find a way to stop me, which meant I had to do this without telling him. I’d sneak out while he was sleeping. But now I wasn’t sure how that was going to work because he hadn’t slept a wink and was instead standing at the window, where he’d been since the moment we bonded.

And it was starting to scare me.

It scared me even more when he got dressed and donned his boots.

Clearly, he didn’t believe I had the strength to help him fight and win. He was convinced the odds were against us – that some day soon he would be killed in a challenge, and would take me with him. Dread was heavy upon him – I could feel it from across the room.

‘Thorne?’

He wouldn’t look at me. I could see his silhouette against the glass, and the night beyond seemed infinite.

I crossed to him and placed my hands along the length of his spine.

‘I love you,’ I whispered, my lips pressed into his warm body.

Still nothing. So I placed my hand on the back of his neck. It caused a rupture inside me. A shock of disbelief. He was pulling away from me with everything he had. With my hands on his skin I could feel it. I could feel his heartbeat through his body, and it was giving me nothing. Panic burnt.

‘Come back,’ I tried. ‘Thorne. Come back.’

But he wouldn’t. I couldn’t make him.

Sliding around to his front, I reached for his face and tried to look into his eyes. ‘All those words of love you spoke to me. All the stories. Hundreds and thousands of them. I lived off them. Breathed with them.’

It hurt, a nameless hurt. An inexplicable one. A hurt that filled all of me, and all of my years to come. I ached for the
waste
, the time I’d wasted keeping my love from him, as if it cost me anything to give.

‘What are you trying to
do
?’ I pressed. ‘How can you think that this is the answer? This is never the answer. You can’t will the bond undone.’

He moved infinitesimally so that his face was in a shaft of moonlight, and I felt myself crack into pieces. Thorne took my hands and pulled them from his face, but he didn’t let them go. He held onto them with a kind of urgency, as though he was being forced, as though something bound him to me beyond his will.

‘You
told
me,’ I uttered, starting to cry. ‘You swore to me that you loved me and that you wouldn’t ever leave me.
We got married
.’

Tears slipped out of my eyes and I could feel them tracing their way slowly down my cheeks.

‘Thorne,’ I whispered. ‘I want to follow you but I don’t know where you’ve gone.’

He closed his eyes, and I saw tears slip free of his lashes. I could feel his heart beneath my hands; each beat was seared into my flesh.

‘I’ll find you. Wherever you are, I’ll find you.’

But he turned from me, and he walked towards the door.

‘Don’t,’ I sobbed, striding after him. I hit him hard, and he turned, catching my fist in his huge hands. ‘Don’t leave me.’

But looking into my eyes, he said simply, ‘I must.’

And then he was gone.

And my eyes had no colour.

And my mind had no thoughts.

And my body had no sensations. And my soul gave up, too weary to bear the weight of its own size after so many years.

It had always been too weary. It had been born weak, my soul. He’d made it strong, but now he was gone.

Thorne

I would break this bond, and free her from me.

It was all that existed in my heart now, all that I knew. I cared not about the task I’d been sent for – it meant nothing to me. Nothing to what Finn had become.

My beast went into a deep, deep sleep, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to wake him, heartbroken as he was.

Finn

At the door I stole a heavy fur cloak and hastened out into the cold night. Peering up either end of the street, I decided to try a new direction as I did not wish to see the residue of the executions. They seemed like an age ago, a thousand years in the past, when in fact they had been earlier this very night. Dawn would be arriving soon and with it a new day.

A crummy day, undoubtedly. I was fairly certain that the whole point of bondmates was so you were assured never to be left, but hey, I’d broken that rule with gusto. My husband was the first human being to find a way to
choose
not to be with his mate. That felt good.

You stupid, bloody idiot, Thorne.

It took me several hours to find my way to the wall and with relief exited through a north gate, leaving my name with the guard. I wanted to be found, after all.

Spread out before me were rolling hills covered in long yellow grass the colour of my eyes. Icy wind bit into me and my teeth immediately started to chatter.

I stood looking at the grey and black shadows of the pre-dawn world. I thought of my mother, of the gentility in her smile, the kindness in her soul. Perhaps that was why I loved Thorne so much. Because he had that same kindness, the one I had never been endowed with. Or maybe I had had it, once upon a time. But it had long since faded with the memories I refused to relive. On the day I woke to find Ma dead, I had vowed never to use my terrible soul magic again. It was a sickness, I had been warned. A deformity of my birth. Once only had I consciously broken my vow – which had been panic and nothing else, only the gut-deep survival instinct that arose when a
man was about to attack you.

But now I stood, readying myself to break the vow willingly, for better or worse. I closed my eyes and hoped she would understand, wherever she was. ‘I won’t run away anymore,’ I whispered to her.

And then I set free a huge burst of power, enough to light up the sky above me with a brilliant glow. It rose high into the air and cascaded over the city of Vjort, blazing for all to see.

They would come. They’d see it or they’d feel the swell of its power, and they’d come for me. It had been my plan all along. Except I’d thought that Thorne would be the one to follow my scent into the ice, not the other way around.

My head pounded with a sharp pain. It was a blunt hammer, always. Never elegant like a needle or subtle like a whisper. My power was big, and it was savage; it killed without me wanting it to. But if Thorne and I were to survive in this world, if we were to save those being kidnapped, then I had to find a way to stop this fact from frightening me, and I had to take control of that deadly power instead of letting it control me.

Wearily, I sank to my knees and as the sun began to rise I saw for the first time the endless ice that stretched out into infinity before me. Thinking it beautiful, I waited for the warders to come and capture me.

Thorne

I stopped by the next room before I left. Isadora, Penn and Jonah – who was now awake – were sitting around the fireplace.

‘I’m leaving now. For the ice. I go alone.’

Jonah looked at me. ‘Hold, brother.’

The name struck my heart and I felt both Finn’s love for him and my own erupt in my breast.

‘I dreamt long.’

I moved closer, searching his face. It was with great fear that I saw his eyes had shifted to white. But it wasn’t the white Kayans seemed to harbour when they felt hatred. This was the strange sapping of colour that the warders had. It was in his voice, too. Something older, something more knowing.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

Jonah smiled a little sadly, still heartbreakingly young and human. ‘I guess I graduated. A little early, as it turns out.’

‘Are you …?’ My voice broke. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I dreamt of Penn’s parents and a mass grave. I dreamt of sparrows circling the holy city. I dreamt of bloodshed on the sandstone, a great deal of it. And treachery. The worst kind. I must go back to Sancia and warn Falco and Quillane. Finn will refuse to come with us, so I cannot protect my sister. I must ask you to do this for me.’

I took his shoulders and gripped them tightly. ‘Until my last breath.’ Even if it meant I had to destroy every last scrap of love between she and I, break every vow I’d made to her – even then, I would protect her from her greatest threat: myself.

Jonah embraced me. I felt, peculiarly, as though I didn’t want it to end.

‘We go with Jonah,’ Isadora told me, and it was the gentlest I had ever heard her speak. ‘We will do our best to get him there in time.’

‘And protect him,’ Penn said.

I hugged the small boy fiercely. ‘You be careful,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t ever let them compromise who you are.’ He nodded, knowing I meant his parents, knowing it with a courage that astounded me.

‘My life is the richer for knowing the three of you,’ I told them.

The innkeeper – who I vowed to endow with riches beyond his wildest dreams for having facilitated a secret bi-racial royal wedding many would kill him for – equipped me with ice shoes, ropes, a pick and a hammer, plus a fur
thicker than my own and rations enough for a month. I promised him even more wealth to watch over Finn while I was away, knowing he’d need an army of helpers to stop her from getting herself into trouble.

My breath made thick clouds as I walked north into the ice.

Day broke and the sun lit it like an eruption of flames or a sparkling, dazzling expanse of glitter. Through it ran long chasms so deep they were blue like spider-veins. It seemed too vast, entering the very edge of it. It seemed impossible.

But it was not. My da had done it.

As would I.

Days passed as I ran at a steady jog; I didn’t have time to walk. I barely stopped for breaks, slept in snatched hours here and there. I focused on the beat of my pulse, concentrated on keeping it steady and slow as I ran. My feet dug into the ice with each step, the snow boots lined with small metal spikes. Several times I ran too close to a fissure and nearly fell to my death. There would be no climbing out of a chasm like that. It would sweep you down into the bowels of the earth and wait for you to perish.

Slowly – too slowly – I reached the shadow of the mountain.

And Gods, it was mighty. I’d never laid eyes on anything its like. Splintering into the sky with a divinity I hadn’t expected, it cast its baleful eye upon me as I ran closer and closer.

The cold, I realised, was what killed. I had to exercise my toes and fingers to make sure the blood kept flowing or I’d lose them to frostbite. My cheeks and nose were red and chapped, my lips cracked like a drought-ridden riverbed. I made the mistake of sucking on the ice for hydration – it dropped the temperature of my body to dangerously low levels. After that I let the ice melt in my pack before I drank it.

And always I ran, while wolves howled around me.

I’d lost track of how many days had passed when I first saw them –
half a dozen shapes moving towards me from the base of the mountain. I stopped and crouched to gain my breath while I waited.

Their identity became clear quickly. It was in the way they ran, in the size of their figures, the disciplined and easy movements atop the ice.

Berserkers.

And here, at their head, was their leader. The King of the Ice. Berserker lord of the mountain. His name was Goran and he had been King since my father killed the King before him. Over thirty years.

He was huge and scarred, but beyond that – at a deep, instinctive level – I could feel his strength. Scent it, resonating through the air around him.

And as he drew nearer, it felt to me as though I was coming home, at very long last.

They said nothing as they surrounded me. All a head taller. Giant-like, in their animal skins. There was a restless, rabid quality to them. Rage threaded beneath their surfaces.

I knew that if he were awake, my beast would be shivering in delight, prowling his cage. He would send a deep, guttural desire into me – the desire to fight. But so too would he recognise kin, like ambrosia in my blood.

He did none of these things; he was like a corpse, so still was he inside me.

I drew myself up and gazed at Goran, who towered over me.

Then I bowed my head to him. ‘King of the Ice.’

His eyes were red. Perpetually. For the beast lived him and he lived it. They were one and the same.

‘Son of Thorne,’ he said, voice deep and resonant.

‘I’m not here to challenge you. I come only for information, and to find illegal warders.’

He cocked his head, smelling me.

My hairs pricked up, skin tingling.

‘Once,’ he said softly, ‘I would have destroyed you, Prince of Wolves, for daring to trespass. A man goes north and there is only one reason for it: to challenge. But now beasts are caged and the north has become hated by its sons. The world is falling.’

I didn’t understand, but I didn’t have to: they knocked me unconscious.

Finn

I was caged and carried, and to be honest, it was a blessing. I would never have made it on foot, and that was the whole point of getting myself captured. It was too far, too cold, too deadly. I had no idea where I was going, and one misstep would mean I was lost forever.

They were berserkers, I knew immediately. I’d been expecting warders, but I got four berserkers, emerging from the ice. They ran and ran, carrying me with them in a wicker cage. They didn’t speak or stop, and I felt dizzied by their strength. I moved in and out of consciousness, cold beyond comprehension. The only times they paused were to feed me and massage my limbs, and I slowly grew to hate these moments, for the burn of muscles being brought back to life was unbearable, and my body started to wish for oblivion.

I couldn’t count the time passing. I had no concept of it, trapped in my delirious hallucinations. Sam was always there in my head, swinging from that last rope. Moths fluttered endlessly around my face and body, and it was beautiful to me that each time their gossamer wings touched my skin they lit it up so that it glowed effervescent.

I thought often of the prophecy. Its words whispered through my mind, taunting me.
He will be of one soul and two faces. He will speak with two voices and feel with one heart. He will be servant and ruler. He will know moon and earth. To break the bond will be to break him.

It made no sense that we should need to find information elsewhere. The clue itself should have provided the answer.

One soul, two faces. Two voices, one heart. Servant and ruler. Moon and earth.

If not twin girls born to a father of the north and a mother of the south, then … who?

Who?

The next time I came to consciousness I was in a cave. The earth beneath me was cold and hard, but it was not ice. I blinked, rousing myself slowly and trying to see through the darkness. I was still in a cage – that much was clear. This one had steel bars dug down deep into the ground. There were other cages around me, opposite and on either side. They seemed empty, at first. And then I was met by the slow, eerie sound of many people breathing.

Slowly they took shape and my skin crawled with a nameless horror.

Bodies lay in corners and shadows, barely alive.

Something scraped behind me and my heart slammed in fear. I whirled, peering into the darkness.

I saw her eyes first. Glowing. She shuffled forward; she was inside my cage with me. Her hair was shaved off. Her body was so thin it looked like a skeleton with papery skin stretched over it. She was a wraith with white eyes.

Trembling, I pushed myself back against the bars.

But she simply looked at me, this walking corpse.

‘Are you … are you all right?’ I managed to ask in no more than a whisper. She made no reply. ‘Who are you?’

‘I had a name once,’ she rasped, voice painfully young. ‘But I do not remember it.’

‘What is this place? Why are you here?’

‘It is the dreamless nightmare. And I am here because I fell in love.’

She spoke more. Slowly and at great length. Whatever agony was inside her wished to come up, to get free. But even her words did not present
her with any kind of salvation.

They were, all of them, half-walkers. The most wretched creatures to walk the earth, as the nameless girl described them. The warders had taken them and brought them here. Then they had killed one mate in each bonded couple, and used their twisted magic to keep the second mate alive against their will. These poor souls were half-walkers not because they had chosen to be, not because they were strong enough to be, but by force. The idea of it was heinous.

Every single one of them wanted, with a longing I had no words to define, death. I was more frightened of accidentally touching their skin than I had been frightened of anything in my life.

To break the bond will be to break him.

At the end of this journey through ice and ghosts, one of you will die.

Two faces, one soul.

It wasn’t fitting, I couldn’t make it fit, but Gods it felt close. Warders making half-walkers. Why? Their power lay in the soul magic, in the power of the bond. This was Agathon’s legacy. Break the bond, and the soul magic unravelled. I didn’t know this, not for certain, but I had always guessed it might be the case. I imagined it would be very difficult for us to convince the warders to let us break the bond, once we’d found the answer, but I had always known it would be decided not by warders but by the Emperor and Empress of Kaya. It was why warders could not be rulers – there was too much potential for corruption.

So warders making half-walkers made no sense.

But it did explain Hess’ prediction. If either Thorne or I was killed, the other could be kept alive by magic.
One of you will die … It will only be one of you.

Two faces, one soul.

And like that, it fit.

I knew.

It was Thorne of Araan. It had been him all along. I didn’t know how he fit as a son of the north and the south, but perhaps that was me. My soul, as half of his. We were the two faces, the two voices, now that we’d been bonded.