Thorne (Random Romance) (22 page)

I couldn’t help thinking of Da, of course. He was never far from my thoughts. It scared me to think of him at home alone, unable to look after himself when the fevers struck. Those on the cliff would tend to him, but still. My thoughts shifted to Jonah and I couldn’t help wondering where he was, worrying for him too.

‘Do you think Isadora beautiful?’ I asked Thorne.

He frowned. ‘Is this a trap?’

‘My brother does.’

Thorne smiled crookedly. ‘Is that why you look like you’d enjoy throttling her?’

‘No, I’d enjoy throttling her because she’s completely charmless. But I’ll win her over one of these days. I’ve not yet met a soul I could not win with a word of some kind.’

‘No I imagine you haven’t.’ He leant forward, holding my eyes. ‘Who called you Silver Tongue?’

My mouth curled into a smile. ‘You know who. Jealous?’

‘Painfully,’ he admitted, and Gods, I wanted him. Despite
one of you will die
. I let my fingers trace the outline of his hand where it rested on the table, but I made sure not to touch him. He moved quickly, trying to snatch my hand, but I was quicker, darting out of his reach and grinning. His big, calloused hand returned to its spot and I placed mine next to it, so close I could feel the warmth from it. Understanding the game, he moved his thumb to trace the air above my wrist, and as though he really was touching me I felt my pulse race. Yellowblack, flickered my eyes, yellowblack.

‘What about Wild One? Who called you that?’

The flickering stopped. I drew my hand back, folding my arms. ‘Ma.’

Thorne levelled me with a probing look. ‘You’re so frightened.’

‘Of what?’ I snapped, indignant.

‘Of me. Of yourself and your powers. Of your ma.’

‘I don’t want to talk to you about Ma,’ I said bluntly. ‘Ever.’

‘Because you’re frightened,’ he agreed calmly. ‘Do you know what it is to obey fear?’

‘I’m going to assume you’d prefer to answer your own question here.’

‘Cowardice.’

‘Congratulations. You’ve stated a fact that everyone alive knows.’

‘You’re mean, Finn of Limontae,’ he smiled.

‘Some days,’ I agreed. ‘Some days I’m sweet as sugar.’

And then he looked at me

and he looked at me

and he said

‘And I will love you on every one of those days.’

I was frozen. In my mind I saw Falco’s wings and wished for them. In my bones I felt fractured. In my muscles there was a need to run like I had never known and in my throat was a scream barely contained. In my soul was too much, needing to get out, to get away, to be more than I could carry.

But in my heart there was simple truth.

I would love him on every one of those days too.

A man appeared behind Thorne. We were holding each other’s eyes so intently that it took me some time to realise we were no longer alone. My expression must have changed because Thorne rose to face the man.

‘Prince Thorne.’

‘Aye,’ Thorne replied.

The man looked to be in his late thirties, with cold brown eyes and huge meaty hands. He had long hair plaited on either side of his face, and was definitely a soldier, for his weapons and clothing were more expensive than any the farmers had been wearing. ‘I am Hersir Blain of Slaav.’

‘Greetings. With whom do you serve?’

Blain eyed Thorne, completely ignoring the question. ‘I have business with you, Prince. I heard tell that there was a Kayan whore here, travelling with the heir, but I did not dare to believe it until I saw it with my own eyes.’

My skin felt cold.

‘Speak again of the lady and I’ll kill you where you stand,’ Thorne replied softly, flatly, and I was stunned. I was stunned and I wasn’t. I knew,
really. I knew what had been lurking inside him. I’d seen it, hadn’t I? In those agonising touches? There was deadliness in his voice and a thirst for blood in his words, but they were nothing to the creature I’d seen lurking in his heart.

I watched Blain’s face as closely as I could bear to. He looked full of entitlement and anger, and I realised that very rarely was I frightened of a thing that existed in this world. You grew detached from your body and you started to fear abstract things, like time racing forward without you, like a soul you could not read, like quiet and ghosts and memories. Real things began to amuse you. Like falling from a great height, like humiliation, physical pain, the very idea of having your heart broken, or death. Like men with axes. You did not fear men with axes.
I
did not. This all happened, I supposed, when you grew rotten inside.

But right now I feared a man with an axe, because I could sense what was about to happen.

My thought was:
Thorne lied to me
.

‘Isn’t it enough that we have the boy-bitch for our Queen without the heir to the throne also bringing filthy foreign blood into our midst?’ Blain demanded. ‘I’ll not stand by and let this happen again. In good conscience I cannot, though I have always respected you, Prince.’

‘You’ve insulted a beloved aunt, and Queen of our nation, and you’ve insulted a good friend of mine,’ Thorne pointed out calmly. ‘You speak of respect but I’ve witnessed none.’

Blain’s lip curled. ‘Outside then. I formally challenge you.’

He lied to me.

And I didn’t notice.

The world seemed to slow down around me so that all I could hear was the loud
thump, thump, thump
in my chest. I was dazed as I trailed outside. A whole crowd of people followed and made a wide circle on the stone. They knew too well what to do, what to expect.

The air held a sharp bite, and I wasn’t wearing enough clothing. I was barely aware of it. My skin was numb but I hardly felt tethered to my body, except for the
thump
,
thump
grinding through my bones.

Someone appeared at my side – I only noticed belatedly. The fat cooking woman. She placed a thick hand around my upper arm, holding onto it tightly. ‘It’s all right, love,’ she told me. I looked at her, struggling to interpret the words through my haze. What I did interpret was the look in her eyes, and there was no mistaking that it was pity. In her touch I felt a huge heart, an incredibly generous heart, one with more kindness than I had ever felt. I wanted to tell her I was sorry for thinking rude thoughts about her, for belittling her life here, for judging her. I wanted to thank her for being such a
good
human. I felt shame, and it was the most powerful emotion in my breast. Which was so odd, given everything. I didn’t seem to be able to interpret how I felt about Thorne and Blain and the rest of this waking nightmare.

Thorne crossed the circle to stand before me. He didn’t say anything, but he looked into my eyes, long and slow. I had no words. I had a thousand words, but I was unable to speak them.

‘I’ll protect her, Your Majesty,’ the woman told him. ‘If you fall. I’ll smuggle her out of here.’

Thorne’s eyes moved to the cook. Unexpectedly, he smiled. ‘My thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll not forget your kindness.’ And then he met my eyes again and said very clearly, ‘But I will not fall.’

I watched him walk to Blain, who was stretching his muscles as though he’d done it a thousand times. He really was big. And older than Thorne – a soldier during the war, probably, before the prince had even been born. I searched my mind for the lessons at the academy some years ago and remembered that in Pirenti a Hersir was a high-ranking officer – one who had proven himself a leader in battle.

I felt sick as it started to hit me. Truly, gut-wrenchingly sick. I might
have to watch him die here.

And that was when I learnt something about the
way
I loved him.

‘Say it formally in front of the witnesses,’ Thorne ordered, still peculiarly calm.

Blain drew himself up to his considerable height. ‘I, Hersir Blain of Slaav, son of Jarl Brock of Slaav, am formally challenging His Majesty, Crown Prince Thorne of Araan, son of the late King Thorne and heir of King Ambrose, for his legitimate seat on the throne of Pirenti. Do I have a formal witness?’

‘Aye,’ a man spoke up, raising his hand and intoning his full name.

‘Do I have a second?’

A second man recited his name.

‘I, Crown Prince Thorne of Araan, acknowledge the validity of the challenge,’ Thorne said and then the proceedings were done.

Blain drew his mighty axe and approached. Thorne didn’t draw any weapons.

‘What’s he doing?’ I asked with a cracked voice.

‘The Prince isn’t allowed a weapon during the challenge,’ the cook told me.

He was going to die, I realised with a start. He was going to die. And I was going to have to stand here and watch.

I must have stumbled, because the woman grabbed hold of my arms and supported me steadily against her mighty bosom.

Blain gave a loud battle cry and attacked, swinging his huge axe at Thorne’s head. The prince ducked out of the way and spun behind the bigger man. And that was when I witnessed a dark, bloody miracle. Before Blain even had a chance to turn, Thorne slammed a fist into the back of the man’s skull, sending him stumbling forward. He didn’t have time to understand the impact before Thorne hit him again, harder. The axe dropped loudly to the
cobblestones and Blain sank to his knees woozily.

Thorne moved in front of him calmly. Eyes cold, he kicked Blain hard in the stomach, sending the man heavily onto the stone ground. He tried to get up, marshalling well considering the blows he’d taken, but Thorne wouldn’t allow it. The prince knelt on top of Blain and started to hit him in the face. His big, strong fist pummelled into Blain’s mouth and nose over and over again. Blood was pouring and front teeth were gone. I could see even from where I stood that Blain’s nose and cheekbones were shattered. He wasn’t conscious anymore, but Thorne kept hitting him, over and over again.

He must have realised finally that the man was either dead or very close to it, for at length he stopped. Thorne sat still a moment, staring at the mess he’d made, then he gave a chilling growl that crept through the silent night, and within the space of that sound, he took the man’s head and ripped it from his body.

The sound was the most distressing thing I’d ever heard, a kind of sick, wet tearing of flesh and bone. Thorne stood, holding the bloodied, severed head for all to see. Even in the moonlight it was no longer recognisable.

I wanted to close my eyes but I couldn’t. I wanted to shut it out, block the sight of it from my mind, but it was too vivid, too clear.

Thorne spoke into the eerie silence, his voice rough and growling. ‘Spread the word. If anyone threatens the safety of my travelling companion, or speaks ill of her at all, I will hunt them down and slaughter them, and I will not be as mercifully quick as I was tonight. This man challenged the Prince of Pirenti, knowing the consequences, and has died for it. Be gone to your beds, all of you.’ And with that he threw the head to the ground where it hit with a sickening thump.

The stunned crowd hesitated, then began to disperse. Thorne calmly ordered someone to fetch our belongings from the tavern, and then he crossed back to the cook and me. She was still holding onto me, and I was thankful for
it.

‘Your Majesty,’ she whispered shakily, overawed.

‘Thank you again,’ he said woodenly, then gestured to the dead body. ‘I apologise for the mess.’

She didn’t know what to say – it was too bewildering.

Thorne hadn’t met my eyes yet. His, I saw, were clear, pale blue, and I realised with a start that they hadn’t turned red, not once. He reached out and softly pried her hands from my arm, telling her gently that he would look after me now. I didn’t want to leave her. Absurdly, I wanted to go inside and live with this cooking lady; I wanted only her kindness for the rest of my life. But our packs were brought from inside and Thorne claimed the dead man’s axe as his own, and then he led me away from the bloodied cobblestones into the cold night.

We walked our horses in silence. It was cold. Colder than I had ever known the world to be. I had to stop so I could vomit into the bushes. I heaved up the entire contents of my stomach, then returned to my horse. Thorne didn’t say a word, and I didn’t say a word, and we just kept going. And in the moments when he reached out to stop me from stumbling, I could not feel his heart in his skin.

Thorne

With blood on my hands we walked. I could smell the faint remainder of her soap, lingering in the blonde tresses of her hair. I could smell pine needles and a hint of the rot of the underbrush. I could smell the ocean, growing and growing.

And death. I could always smell death after I killed.

She knew now. The brutality in my hands. She could never un-know it.

It was still dark when we came to Araan. I could hear the lapping of the water, gentle on this stretch of coast, and I used it to guide me home in the pitch black. The moon had crept behind the heavy cover of clouds, and I begged the looming storm to wait for us.

In the distance I saw Ma’s cottage. It was small but sturdy, and it sat only a handful of metres back from the very edge of the water, alone amidst forest and sea. If we turned northeast we would come to Ambrose’s fortress, the place over which I would one day rule. If we kept walking north, a long way north, we would come to a world of ice, the land in which at least half of me belonged.

‘Where are we?’ she asked, the first words for hours. Since before.

‘There,’ I said softly, and she followed my gaze to the house. ‘Ma’s house. Closer than the fortress. We’ll rest there until sunrise.’

We plodded the last few hundred yards. I tethered the horses under the awning, giving them as much shelter as I could, then led Finn to the front door. Opening it as quietly as possible, I ushered her inside and she followed me soundlessly. The house had only two bedrooms, so I led her to mine, the room in which I’d recovered from a thousand nightmares. I placed both our
packs in the corner and pulled back the covers of my bed, motioning for her to climb in.

Clearly exhausted, she did so without a word and promptly fell asleep.

I padded back into the living room, glancing around at the house. It looked exactly as I’d always known it to. But as I stood here, gazing at the small rooms and all their small belongings, I felt a deep pain. My mother was the loneliest woman in the world, and I’d left her.

I strode back out the front door and down the three wooden steps I’d built when I was ten. Then I walked to the edge of the water where it lapped gently against the rocks. A slice of moonlight peeked its head out of the thick clouds and illuminated the edges of the oyster shells, wreathing me in a feeling of familiarity so strong I didn’t know where to put it, where it would fit.

A crack of thunder rumbled and lightning sliced through the sky, lighting up the calm sea. It reminded me too much of my dream, and I half expected the next bolt of lightning to reveal a yellow eyed girl getting devoured by my beastly father. As I was haunted by the image, fat drops of rain splattered my face, and then it was pouring. Flash storms like this were common on the coast of Pirenti, where it would be calm and clear one moment, threatening lives the next.

A distant sound reached my ears over the racket of the rain. A high-pitched sound. It came again, and through all the despair I had a moment of pure delight. I spun around and saw him bounding out of the house and through the storm. Howl, barking his glee.

We collided, and he bowled me to the ground, licking my face and yelping joyfully. I laughed and wrestled with him in the mud, rolling him over and tickling his belly like he loved.

‘Hello, boy,’ I murmured, sitting up and stroking his beautiful head. He nuzzled my side, dark eyes meeting mine soulfully, and I realised how much
I’d missed him. Strange, which connections snuck into your life and took root there. Growing up alone on the coast with only your ma and your dog meant you loved the two of them as fiercely as it was possible to love, and selfishly resented the loneliness they could not manage to fight off for you.

Howl ran back towards the house, barking at me to follow. That was when I saw her, my mother, standing in the silhouetted light of the house. She came down the steps and into the rain before I could stop her.

‘What’s wrong? Are you all right?’

I bounded up to her and swept her into a mighty hug. She smelt of rosemary. She smelt of fear and relief. Setting her down, I looked into her rain-swept face and I found my smile.

‘What are you doing here, darling?’

‘Visiting, Ma.’

‘But …’ She seemed bewildered. ‘It’s only been a few weeks.’

‘I missed you,’ I told her. ‘I’m for the fortress at first light. There are dark tidings, but I need rest. There’s … a girl here, sleeping in my bed.’

Roselyn’s eyes widened. ‘A girl.’

I hesitated, then muttered, ‘She’s not well. I scared her.’

Roselyn turned back towards the house, but paused and looked at me again, soft and delicate. ‘How lovely you are, my boy,’ she said softly. ‘You grow more handsome each day.’

I shook my head. ‘Ma? She wasn’t well.’

Howl barked and licked my hand. Rose didn’t respond.

Inside it was quiet and dark, but through the door I had left open I could see that Finn was no longer in my bed. Hurrying into the room, I spotted the open window. ‘Ma!’ I called. My heart began to pound with brutal beats. Lightning struck and I saw her up on the hill, standing in the rain.

Unable to fit through the window, I sprinted around the side of the house and up the hill, stopping behind her, frightened.

‘Finn?’

She didn’t reply, or move. I circled around to look into her face, but it was vacant. Gods, why had I brought her away from her brother? Jonah would know how to take this horror away and give her happiness. All I’d given her was fear.

Ma came up the hill with a heavy blanket. She wrapped it carefully around Finn’s shoulders. ‘My dear,’ she said softly.

Finn blinked, noticing Rose. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured faintly. ‘I don’t know how I got out here.’

‘Come inside. It’s too cold.’

Finn said nothing, but she reached out and hugged Ma with the kind of hug so full of yearning I could hardly bear to watch. Rose stroked her wet hair, and even though the rain was torrential, we stood there on the hill without moving.

When finally they drew apart, Finn stared into Ma’s face, blinked once, then let her eyes drift to me. She said, ‘I can’t feel anything.’

‘Ma, go inside now,’ I ordered calmly, but inside me was a sharp panic.

Ma saw my face and left us.

Finn said, ‘I can’t feel anything.’

Then, ‘Thorne? I can’t feel anything.’

I grabbed her face in my hands, smoothing my skin over hers, holding her against me, trying to make her feel it. She gazed up at me and whispered, ‘I can’t feel anything.’

I pressed my lips to hers; I kissed her with all of me. In the rain I kissed her again and again. I didn’t stop.

At last her face crumpled into distress, and even though she was sobbing I kept kissing her and kissing her and touching her as much as I could with only two hands. And then I carried her inside, to where Ma had gotten the fire raging and made a warming concoction for her to drink. We made Finn
finish every last drop of it, though she could hardly stop crying, and then I placed her before the fire. As Ma changed her into a set of dry clothes I paced the kitchen, terrified that I had broken her.

‘She’s chilled. Lie with her, darling.’

‘She wouldn’t want it,’ I said.

‘Keep her warm,’ Ma instructed firmly.

I sank down and pulled Finn against me. She’d stopped crying and lay very still, except for the shivering of her body. Howl curled himself against her other side, and the three of us warmed each other.

Hours later the rain felt like a dream. It was warm inside, and with her pressed against me I could feel her heartbeat, the rise and fall of her breathing. Her hands curled around mine, and I noticed how long her fingers were with a jolt of uncanny otherness. For a moment she felt impossibly distant, deeply unknowable, and I was filled with a sense of loss so profound I wondered if it would shape me all the days of my life. Whatever was between us – I didn’t think it could survive what she had witnessed tonight. Her regard for me was already so fragile, her fear of what I represented so thick. For a split second I decided to let her go. To cease this mad yearning that had come upon me so suddenly and let her be free of me. Easier for us both.

But then she rolled in her sleep, and tenderly she placed her mouth in the crook of my neck and her hands against my heartbeat, and the decision was gone, erased, the shadow of a thought drifting up and away on the wind as if it had never existed. I wasn’t capable of it: of letting her go. Not yet.

Carefully I extricated myself from her limbs and walked once again into the lashing storm. The rain felt violent as I forced myself out into it, right up to the edge of the now unquiet sea. I closed my eyes against the onslaught, but I tilted my face up towards the sky, and I sent a prayer to the Gods for
Blain of Slaav, as I did with each of the men who were courageous enough to fight for what they wanted.

I didn’t share their courage; I only took it from them as they died.

I was a beast, after all.

Finn

I woke, disoriented. I’d been dreaming of Sam and Ma and heads torn free of their bodies. It took me several long moments to understand why I was asleep on the floor with a furry white thing curled around me. I reached out to stroke the dog’s head and he looked at me with dark liquid eyes as if to tell me he loved me despite never having met me before. His tail thumped hopefully.

Sitting up, I felt stiff and sore in each joint. Unable to help it, I bent my head and buried it in the dog’s fur. He smelt faintly wet in a pleasant way.

Maybe it was a sound that alerted me, but I turned and belatedly saw that I was not alone. Sitting casually at the kitchen table were Thorne and his ma, both watching me quietly.

I remembered last night as though it too were one of the dreams I’d had. I remembered the rain and the storm, and I remembered Thorne’s touches and kisses and how I had felt nothing. There had been only numbness. A kind of impotency in my skin. Which was, I now knew, worse than anything I had experienced in my whole life. Worse than the black tar I waded through sometimes. Worse than being away from Jonah and Da and Ma and Penn. Worse, even, than the screaming.

That was how I came to understand something about my power, sitting on the warm floor of Thorne’s family home, next to a big white dog. The touching of another person’s soul might have been painful and frightening and burdensome at the best of times, but it was me. It was how I existed, how I had been born. It was more a part of me than anything else,
and spending a night without it had been spending a night as a ghost.

So I closed my eyes and pushed the memory of it away, feeling a kind of calm wash over me.

‘Whose bed did I share last night?’ I asked, indicating my new best friend.

‘Howl,’ Roselyn said with a gentle smile.

With a last pat to Howl, I rose to my feet and moved to the living room window. It was still dark and stormy outside. ‘What time is it?’

‘Daybreak.’

Thorne hadn’t said a word. I crossed to sit in the third seat at the table. There was a long silence as I gathered my nerve.

Looking Roselyn in the face, I said, ‘Forgive me. I behaved poorly last night.’

‘Please don’t,’ she protested. ‘You weren’t yourself. And this house has seen many dark nights.’ She was without doubt the loveliest creature I had ever seen, fine and delicate, with a pink flush to her pale skin. Her deep red hair was warm in the candlelight and her eyes were enormous. She made me instantly wish to be softer, quieter, someone whose sweetness was as beguiling as hers was.

I cleared my throat. ‘That’s generous of you to say. Thank you for having me, and for your kindness.’

‘Thorne has never brought anyone here before,’ she said shyly. Roselyn then rose to cut slices of bread, but as her eyes found the kitchen window she grew distracted by something she’d seen and the knife in her hand was forgotten.

I watched her, taken by her shadowed profile. Under her breath, barely audible, there were numbers emerging without her awareness. And it made sense, how Thorne had understood what to do with Penn and how to be with him.

My gaze shifted to him; he was already watching me. I could see a thousand things in his pale eyes.

I told him, ‘I’m all right now.’

He frowned, searching my face worriedly.

‘I’m all right now,’ I promised again, and this time he heard the truth of it.

We waited quietly for Rose to remember the bread and bring it to the table, then the three of us ate together just as quietly. And what happened to me in those moments was a strange and impossible shift. I no longer felt my panicked heart flailing in my chest as the quiet cloaked me like a suffocating veil. I no longer wished to scream just so there would be sound.

I … I felt the first, tender whispers of happiness come to entice me. I thought perhaps that the complete mental snap I had felt last night was like a kind of dam wall breaking, letting free a flood of madness, of rotten, poisonous mess, but now that it had flowed through me I was clean and empty and … open. My brother would tell me it didn’t work like that, that there were peaks and troughs, always. But my brother wasn’t here.

Swallowing, I reached out and took Thorne’s hand. It was weight and earth and ice and wolf’s howls. It was Thorne again. It was
me
again. He startled, looking down at it, then up at me. He didn’t understand. But he didn’t let go. And as his grip tightened, encircling mine, I understood that terrible burden I had felt the first time our skin touched, because I had seen for myself the brutality life had cursed him with. And I had seen him be brutal with eyes that remained blue, instead of turning berserker red.

I’d watched on with disbelief, unable to fathom
why
. Why he had to make it so terrible. If he was conscious of what he was doing, how could he do it? What it had taken me the night to decipher was the need for fear, because only through fear could he stop more of his men from challenging him, and if there were no challenges there need be no deaths by his hand. His
gruesome, vile beheading had been a way to beg the world not to keep trying to kill him, because he would fight every challenge and win every challenge, and he didn’t want to do either.