Thorne (Random Romance) (30 page)

To kill one of us and keep the other alive, souls severed from each other, would mean breaking the bond and breaking it for all Kayans.

Thorne

Under the mountain I was brought to a large cavern and chained to a steel pole.

‘Why?’ I asked the Ice King.

‘Because it pleases her,’ was all he replied.

The berserkers left me and I waited. Long hours. The manacles about my hands kept them above my head and caused a fire in my shoulders.

At last she came. A warder. She had long white hair, blue skin and white eyes, and she was the strangest creature I had ever seen. She did not seem real, not in any way I knew how to recognise. There was something distant in her face, something completely unapproachable.

‘My name is Eanna,’ she spoke and her voice was so full of magic that it made me physically ill. ‘I am a first tier warder banished from using my power by the warders of Kaya.’

I wondered why she was telling me.

‘I have nothing to hide,’ she responded to my thought. ‘I want you to understand what has brought us both here. It will make it all the sweeter when I destroy your mind.’

‘Was it you who broke free of the prison?’

‘No. I facilitated it. To release the true Emperor and Empress of Kaya. Those who have the power to unite the world as one.’

Penn’s parents.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘The boy would have been a very powerful weapon, had he not been born mind-addled. Even without him, they will be taking the holy city as we speak. And when Kaya belongs to them, they will turn their eyes north to take Pirenti.’

My hackles rose. ‘They’ll never succeed.’

‘They already possess the berserkers under the mountain, greatest weapon of a blood-soaked nation.’

So that was what was going on up here. I hadn’t been able to fathom why the berserkers would be working with their mortal enemies, but now I got it – the warders had control of them.

‘What is it that you’re
doing
up here?’ I demanded. ‘You took the bonded couples, didn’t you? Why? To break the bond?’

‘No. We don’t wish it broken. Only changed.’ Her eyes flashed with something excited, and it was the first emotion I’d seen in her. ‘The bond will be remade. Deeper, stronger. A bond between the rightful rulers of the world and their servants. A bond between warder and man.’

I couldn’t grasp it, until she sent the vision into my head and I understood, finally. I saw all of Kaya and Pirenti held captive by the warders, bonded to them unto death, unable to fight or escape. Where could one escape to, if his very soul was bound to his rulers?

‘You’d die when they did,’ I breathed.

‘No. Not if we have you, Prince Thorne.’

I shook my head desperately.

‘You have in your blood the power to break the unbreakable bond. We wish to use that power to reshape a new bond, one that allows ordinary men and women to die without killing their masters.’

A world of servitude. It sent a shiver of repulsion into my heart.

‘I won’t let you do this,’ I said. ‘I’ll die first.’

‘That is precisely what we desire,’ Eanna answered.

And then she began to torture me.

Here he stood, torturing men and women with the cold edge of his axe. Here he stood, slaughtering Kayans in a room made of marble. Here he stood, watching my mother in the dungeon cell he reserved just for her. Here he stood, watching her scream for mercy as her head slipped beneath the surface of a mighty ocean.

I roared in anguish. ‘Get out of my head, warder filth!’

But she didn’t. She sent more painful visions into my mind. They were sharp and precise, but what was worse was the sense that they were all real, far too real. It was too much. I didn’t want to see him this way, even though I’d always known him to be a monster. My weary heart couldn’t take it. Because what was worse was when she showed me the truth of my own dream.

A girl with yellow hair and yellow eyes being devoured by a monster, the man who’d created me in his image. But when he looked up this time, into my eyes, I finally saw that the monster was not my da.

It was me. It had been me all along.

Finn

I could hear his screams. They came from somewhere close, the agony in them raking at my insides like the talons of a mighty bird of prey. I shook the bars of my cage, screaming with him, demanding to be let out. I could not get to my power; they had cowed it with their own magic – the magic that lay heavy upon the air with a stench of rot. His poor heart, oh Gods his heart. I could feel it in my chest and it floundered wildly, out of control and beating as though on its last legs.

‘Thorne!’ I screamed, again and again until my throat was hoarse and no sound came from my mouth.

A huge man appeared in the darkness of the cave. His eyes glowed red and I could smell his musky scent like one smelt a wild animal in the forest. The other prisoners shrank away from him, but I yanked on the bars with ferocity.

‘Step back,’ he ordered bluntly.

‘Make me, coward.’

He unlocked the metal and I lunged at him, no idea what I meant to do but out of my mind with worry. The man caught me and threw me over his shoulder as if I were no more than a small sack of meat.

I grabbed the back of his neck with my bare hand, wanting to know. It was ice and sky and blood blood blood. He was burdened, this man. But that burden sat high, near to his surface. Below it, in his heart of hearts, he was uncomplicated and happy. He knew his place; he was animal. That was how I knew he was the berserker King.

‘Let me go,’ I begged. ‘This can’t be what you want. It’s an abomination.’

‘All warders are abominations,’ he murmured. And I couldn’t help agreeing. It was the power, the horrible corruption of it. They were humans, after all. Liked to pretend they weren’t, that they were above it. But they were born and they died, and they wanted all the same things the rest of us did.

Which was what became so unforgivably dangerous.

The brute of a man carried me down a twisting tunnel, at the end of which we emerged into a large cavern. And shackled at the centre of it was Thorne, unconscious but hung upright by his hands as though he was about to be gutted. It looked like he’d been there for hours and hours. Streams of blood ran rivulets down from the manacles at his wrists.

I struggled like a mad thing to get free, but it was no use. I was chained to a pole opposite Thorne’s.

When the berserker was gone a warder entered. She gazed at me, her
eyes shrewd and all-seeing. The air of this cavern stank of her, felt heavy with the residue of her power, and it was this power that had let off the horrible stench of rot. I could feel her delight, though she showed me none of it. And as she turned to Thorne I knew she meant to make me watch his torture.

If I’d had any training at all, if my power were not so blunt and so uncontrollable –
if my soul were not too big for my body
– I could have gone into his mind and blocked him from seeing whatever atrocities made him scream so. But I had been forbidden to train – to
improve
– so I could not.

I had never been able to save the people I loved. That was my tragedy.

It occurred to me that ignoring my soul magic all these years was where the true danger lay. And what a blunder that now seemed.

I didn’t know how long Thorne could stand that much blood loss before he died. And I didn’t know how long he could stand seeing such visions before he went mad.

My mind was working, stretching forward, trying to think of a way out of this. I could feel threads entangled on either side of us, but I couldn’t work out how to manipulate them. Just as I had struggled with all the puzzle pieces, I’d known there was a way to put them together, and there had been. I just had to find the answer to this in the same way.

The woman was a first tier warder. She had control of the whole mountain. She wielded the berserkers as weapons, which meant she was very strong. Pieces of her always had to be tending to them, keeping them locked tight. If I could somehow get her to turn all her power to the one thing, then the berserkers would be free to save Thorne.
Would
they save Thorne? I had no idea how it worked up here, but I had to assume they would.

And the only way I could think of to get her to concentrate every scrap of her power on the one thing was to attack her. Completely. With all of my power. Making myself a target.

Which would mean, unequivocally, my death.

One of you will die.

Good, then. Better that it be me. Perfect, to die instead of him.

Falco

There was chaos in the palace. I’d been told it was the same in the city. Because with the setting of the sun every single guard on the wall of Sancia dropped dead.

People were ordered to lock themselves in their homes and to not emerge until told otherwise. Soldiers were sent, but every man or woman who took up arms anywhere near the wall died. The other warders had failed to reach us in time, so we had fifty at most. Which we had thought to be more than enough, but was not, apparently. Not even close.

It was catastrophic, a real tragedy, and I had failed to stop it. For all my plans, my strategies, I had never imagined that our trust in the warders would become such a miserable blunder. And it was far from over.

‘Why the fuck aren’t you doing anything to stop this?’ I roared at Lutius.

He ignored me, in constant contact with every warder he had dispersed throughout the city. He was pale and drawn, stretched thin. ‘Another,’ he whispered. ‘We’ve lost another. They’re dropping.’

‘Explain this,’ Quill demanded. We were holed up in the war room, which was fortified on every side.

I was
aching
to draw my sword and fight. It felt wrong on a deep, instinctive level to be hiding while my city was under attack.

‘There are more than two,’ Lutius said. ‘More than Dren and Galia. They have followers. The warders I stationed around the edges of the city are being overcome and killed one by one. Once they are all dead, there will be nothing to stop the enemy from entering.’

Quill and I had been moved to the floor, where the warders could stand watch over us and protect against the entrances.

‘This feels wrong,’ she said.

‘Just let them do their jobs,’ I cautioned her, even though I agreed utterly.

‘What use is there in us hiding? If they get through the guards, they will find us eventually.’

I didn’t reply, but I took her hand.

The question bubbled up from somewhere completely unexpected. I didn’t have a chance to stop it. ‘Would you have loved me if I’d been different? Better?’

She looked at me with those emerald eyes of hers. ‘I do love you.’

‘Quill.’

A minute shake of her head. A squeeze of my hand. And it was enough, somehow. It was enough for me to finally let go of the idea, the possibility of she and I. She was my Empress, my partner, my best friend, and that was all. No matter what deception I had made of my life, she would not want me as anything more, and the fact, suddenly, was like being set free. However long before death came to find us, I was free of this constant
what if
.

I leant in and kissed her lips gently. She smiled.

Shouting came from beyond the door. But it was not fighting, not yet. They still had yet to breach the wall.

I began to think that there must be a weak link somewhere. Some reason they had an advantage over us, something we had yet to identify. We had more warders, and many of them were very powerful. So why were they falling with such ease? Unless there was something we’d missed.

‘Lutius,’ I called. ‘Any luck with the boy? Jonah?’ With Jonah would come Finn. And she was the key, I was sure of it.

He shook his head, concentrating his power so that his skin had an
unearthly glow.

I stood, considering how to put this. When there were no other warders within earshot, I said, ‘I think they have inside help.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘How could they have broken out of the prison unless they had someone working on the inside?’

He frowned, looking murderous at the very idea. But after a few moments he shook his head. ‘I would have seen it.
Someone
would have seen it.’

‘Nobody saw anything!’ I snapped. ‘You are not all-powerful! There are obviously ways of manipulating other warders. So I would advise you, as your Emperor, to take this seriously, and work under the possibility that you have been compromised from within.’

‘Yes, Majesty,’ he agreed. But I was no fool – I saw the disregard he had for me, the complete lack of faith. And it was fair enough.

I watched him return to his people and give a few sharp orders. I watched him close his eyes and concentrate once more on the souls of those who were trying to infiltrate my city.

When I turned back to Quill, she was gone.

I was quick enough to catch sight of her rounding a corner of the corridor. The guards were focused on the front entrance, so I snuck after her through the back. She was running at full sprint, and I knew she must be heading back to her secret tunnel.
What was in there?

‘Quill,’ I said, just as she was unlocking it.

She whirled to me as if she’d had a shock to the heart. ‘Falco. Gods. You scared me.’

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘What are you talking about? I’m just –’

‘I’m coming with you.’

She stopped, unsure what to say. Eventually she gave a deep sigh and led the way.

The tunnel was small and dark and quite long. It wound deeper into the ground, twisted a few times and then stopped. Through another door, into a small, beautifully furnished room.

Within which stood a young woman. The very same woman who had discovered my secret. The woman I’d come close to having killed.

‘Radha,’ I said.

She stared at me, astonished. Looked to Quill, unsure.

‘You’d better tell me what’s going on, Quillane,’ I said softly.

She opened her mouth but before she had a chance to speak something shook the foundations of the palace and I felt my consciousness pulled into black.

I woke in pain, a heavy pressure on my body. Something had fallen on me, and I struggled to push it off. A piece of sandstone from the roof. Quillane and Radha were clearing a path to me.

‘Falco!’

‘I’m all right.’

As I looked around at the wreckage I realised we were very lucky to be alive. My shoulder had been dislocated, but it was prone to that, and the amount of times I’d had to push it back in prepared me for the pain.

‘You two stay here,’ I told them once I’d crunched the bone back into its socket. ‘Lock the door behind me and don’t open it for anyone else.’

‘I’m coming with you,’ Quillane tried.

‘Darling,’ I said firmly. ‘You stay. One of us must always be safe. That’s how it works.’ I gave her a quick kiss and grinned. ‘Nobody cares if we lose Emperor Feckless, but you, my love, are the last remaining hope of Kaya.’

‘Falco,’ she said, and I could hear the tears in her throat, but I was already sprinting to the tunnel.

Back in the palace it was nightmarish. Difficult to see anything. People running around the place, shouting. Bits of the roof had fallen in, but thankfully it didn’t seem as though the whole palace was about to come down. Guards spotted me, moved to surround me. Petir looked relieved to see me alive.

‘Where’s Lutius?’ I shouted.

‘Don’t know, Majesty. The walls have been breached. But the evacuation has been put into action – many have already made it out of the city. We need to get you and the Empress out immediately.’

Protected by my host of guards I ran back to the war room to find it empty but for two figures. Petir had his sword at their throats in an instant.

‘Hold! Lower your weapons!’

I shook my head in astonishment to see that it was the prince’s friends – Jonah and the little one, Penn. Jonah was leaning heavily on the smaller boy, and he looked like he’d been vomiting. ‘Majesty,’ he breathed.

‘How did you get here?’

‘I … jumped us.’

I blinked. ‘What?’

‘He used power,’ Penn explained impatiently. ‘
Listen
.’

‘Dren and Galia come –’

‘I know, mate. You’re a bit late on that one.’

‘Not just them – the Sparrow comes too.’

I felt cold through my limbs, but shook my head. ‘That’s not my priority right now.’

‘He comes for you
,’ Jonah rasped. He seemed to be moving in and out of delirium. Jumping two people across countries would suck a lot of energy, I could imagine. It was astonishing that he was still alive, from what I gathered.
Maybe Lutius was right about his power after all.

‘Your sister?’ I asked.

‘In the ice,’ Penn said, and my hope died. Why had I been so sure that she was the key to this? I had not a shred of proof to that effect.

Penn took Jonah’s face in his hands and looked into his friend’s eyes. ‘The treachery,’ he prompted. ‘Remember the treachery.’

I lurched forward, studying Jonah’s sickly darting eyes. ‘He spoke of treachery?’ I urged.

Jonah gave a loud moan. ‘He’s circling. There’s so much blood.’

‘Jonah. Breathe,’ Penn told him gently. ‘One breath, two breaths, three, four, five, six, seven …’

The young warder seemed to hear him counting and did so, drawing a deep lungful of air. Then his eyes opened and snapped straight to me. In them I could see a dark horror.

‘Lutius,’ he whispered. ‘Lutius is with them.’

I straightened, heart hammering. Fury sliced through me. Our head warder, working against us from the inside. Our only chance at survival turned against us. We were ruined.

Penn took my wrist, and I looked down at him as if in a daze. ‘Run,’ the boy whispered. ‘Run and hide. Or they will kill us all.’

His parents, I remembered with a sick taste in my mouth.

I looked at the two boys. Two young boys, courageous enough to come so far on the hope that they could help an impossible fight in the moments before certain death.

‘Thank you,’ I told them softly. ‘But there will be no more running and hiding. Not for me.’ And saying so, I drew my sword.

Quillane

‘Stay here,’ I ordered Radha when I could sit still no longer. I didn’t care
about the rules. I could not let poor, useless Falco dash out there on his own to get killed. I needed to know what was going on.

‘Not without you,’ she said bluntly.

‘I can’t do this right now. I need to know you’re safe or I’ll be unfocused. I will have a guard – you will not.’ I took her face in my hands and felt our eyes turn gold. ‘Radha. I love you. Completely.’

She was strong. She’d always had hidden depths of courage. It was why I loved her so. She did not cry; instead, she nodded, lending me her strength.

‘Bring the idiot back,’ she told me. ‘And
be careful
. We’ve got a long way to go with this country yet.’

‘See you soon.’ With a kiss, I started running.

It was, in the end, the worst mistake of my life.

Falco

‘Lutius!’ I screamed as I prowled through the corridors of my palace.
My
palace. I was born here. Watched my family slaughtered here. Was sworn to the throne here when I was but ten years old. No filthy treacherous scum was going to take it from me.

Petir was watching me as though I’d lost my mind, when in truth I had found it at long last. I felt all the hidden pieces of me take their rightful places in my body and soul.

I wanted to kill Lutius, and I was going to.

‘Where are you hiding?’ I shouted.

I could hear his soft laughter in the back of my head, there to taunt me.

‘Come out and fight,’ I ordered him.

‘Majesty, we must
leave
,’ Petir told me. ‘You cannot fight a warder. No one can.’

‘The slaughterman did,’ I breathed, more to myself. ‘In the north they learnt how to kill warders. Perhaps they had it right the whole time.’

Something was leading me to my chambers. It felt like fate. It felt like all the pathways of my life had led to here, to this room, though I knew not why. Would he be waiting for me? Ready to kill me?

In my mind I didn’t even know if I was thinking of Lutius or the Sparrow. I would not have been surprised by either. But my rooms were empty.

I stood still, assailed by a sense that this wasn’t right. That something was supposed to –

‘Falco!’

I spun around to see Quillane burst into the room. ‘What are you doing here?’ I snapped.

My guards were gone. It occurred to me like a finger tracing eerily down my spine. We were utterly alone.

And as I looked at Quill I saw her eyes turn gold.

I froze, thinking for a second that –

But no. It was not me. It was –

She sank to the floor.

‘Quill?’ I exclaimed, dropping to her side. ‘Help!’ I screamed, but still – everyone was gone.
What the fuck was going on?

My Empress stared up at me, all the strength gone from her body. Silent tears were pouring down her face, so many tears I felt terror strike. She seemed completely and utterly broken.

‘Radha,’ she sobbed. ‘She’s dead.’

‘What? Why –’ And it hit me. They were bonded. And I was the greatest imbecile in the world to have missed it.

Quillane wept, her whole body trembling. ‘It hurts it hurts it hurts –’ It was a wail, a scream, the baying of a dying thing.

‘Fight it,’ I urged. ‘Darling, you can fight it. Half-walkers can survive. You’re strong enough.
Fight
.’

She blinked her golden eyes. An incredible colour. Why hadn’t I ever been aware of how
beautiful
that colour was? ‘Why would I want to?’ Quillane whispered.

And then died.

I didn’t know how long I sat there, draped over her. I bore grief like a hard stone in my chest. It was making it impossible to breathe, to move.

Why didn’t she fight?
I couldn’t stop thinking it. Over and over.
Why didn’t she fight?

‘Quill,’ I whispered. ‘I’m so sorry, my love.’ For it all. For spending a lifetime making her bear everything alone in the hopes of saving her, and failing. Failing at the sole purpose of my life. For being Emperor Feckless after all.

Something sounded behind me. Footsteps, coming down the corridor. That’s when I noticed how quiet it had gone in the palace. I couldn’t hear screaming anymore. Which meant that either the people in the palace had escaped or they were all dead.

The footsteps kept coming. Light and soft. The tread of a woman, or even a child.

I couldn’t move.