Thorne (Random Romance) (28 page)

I stared at him, wondering what happened to the men now. Prison? Punishment?

‘You are extremely unlucky,’ he went on, more softly, ‘that these people happen to be very dear to me.’

I looked at the people around me and realised that they were excited. They didn’t often see their prince. Maybe they never had. And that’s when I understood what was going to happen. With poison in my gut, I knew. This was the heir to the throne on his first appearance in Vjort since manhood.
And in Pirenti, in the army city of Vjort where the wildest soldiers in this world dwelled and prayed for war, they valued strength and ruthlessness above all else.

These were men who’d broken the law, and they’d done so in front of their prince, to people he loved.

He was going to have to execute them.

Thorne drew his axe. I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t watch this. I couldn’t bear to – I’d truly had enough. I willed myself to turn and leave this violence, but just as I was about to do so, Thorne’s eyes lifted to find me, and I knew I could not leave. This was the price of loving a man whose safety relied upon people witnessing his strength, and if I’d had enough, then he’d had enough a very long time ago.

What a curse it was, to be born a gentle soul in the body of a Prince of Pirenti.

There were tears spilling down my face but I didn’t look away from him. I straightened my shoulders.

Without a word, Thorne swung his axe three times and killed the three soldiers. Not men battling him for his own life. Not men who wanted to kill him. But men who had begged for forgiveness and now kneeled unarmed before him. They fell soundlessly, and I swallowed the bile my mouth.

In that moment it began to snow. Tiny white flakes floated through the black night, beautiful and pure, to land in the blood of the dead men.

Jonah was well. He’d been knocked unconscious only.

Thorne was not. He looked like a ghost.

He carried my brother to our room and placed him in bed. Isadora sat with Jonah in such a way that I knew something had deepened between them. Penn climbed into bed next to him. I kissed my brother on the forehead, sending him every ounce of strength I had through whatever bond was
forged between us.

‘Will you watch him for me? I’ll be back,’ I told Isadora with a cracked voice. She nodded, taking Jonah’s hand.

And then I was drawn after Thorne. Down the creaky wooden steps. Through the noisy dining area. Out into the back courtyard, abruptly quiet.

Everything was made of stone, except the single tree curling up into the sky, a skeleton in winter. A moon shone large and crimson. The night was frigid.

I felt my body turn cold in the space between moments. Snow fell slowly, dreamily.

I felt in a dream myself.

Because I’d seen his face afterwards. And I’d understood that the weight of a heart so frayed had grown too much for him to carry. The violence in his hands was drowning him. He was alone in the courtyard, his back to me.

He looked tall and strong and kingly, but I knew better. As my footsteps took me closer, he fell to the frozen ground.

I sank to try and catch him, frightened.

He looked ravaged as he started to cry. ‘I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to be this.’

I pressed my forehead to his, holding his face.

‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,’ he whispered, locked. ‘I can’t be this thing that they want me to be. I don’t want this pain and death and I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.’

His tears were all over my face and I held him more tightly.

‘I can’t do it,’ he wept. ‘
Please don’t make me do it
.’

‘I will never,’ I vowed. ‘No one will.
No one
will make of you something that you are not. I won’t let them.’

He looked into my face, my eyes. He searched me, panicked, whispering, ‘I can’t live this life a second longer. Not one single second
longer.’

I couldn’t help my own tears from slipping free as he cried against my chest, his shoulders heaving.

It was frightening, seeing him like this. Deeply frightening. Only weeks ago, before him, I would have turned and run back inside, and then I would have run into the night and not stopped running until I was so far away that nothing would ever catch me.

But now. Now I demanded more of myself. Because loving someone made you brave, if you were very lucky.

‘Do you know which life I wish to live?’ I asked, meeting his blue eyes.

He looked at me, and he waited.

Thorne

Tonight I was shown the worst part of myself. And I was shown, too, a happiness so profound it didn’t fit within my chest and I knew I could never deserve it, could never be worthy of it.

When she asked me, what I thought was this.

How can anyone, ever, survive being loved so much?

Finn

I was clothed in a linen dress given me by the innkeeper’s wife. She did my hair with hands so old they trembled, but I loved them, these hands, for in them I could feel a life lived in sweetness and there was not a single regret in any of her wrinkles or her veins. She found heather in the garden to thread through my hair, and though the dress was old and tattered, I felt beautiful.

Through the snow I was guided to the small cobblestoned temple. It was crumbling, stone by stone. I ran my hands along the rough edges of it, needing to feel it, to remember every tiny detail.

We moved inside and I saw him.

At the end of the altar. Waiting for me.

I saw him and I saw nothing else. I had a sense that I would never see another thing in my life. I walked to him slowly, and I could see that in his eyes there were tears. Different tears; he looked happier and stronger than he had ever looked.

He took my hands in his. I was swallowed by his gaze.

When it was time, he said softly, ‘I am yours. The life I want is with you. The world I want to live in is the one in your heart. Always.’

And when it was time I replied, ‘You gave yourself so generously to me, Thorne, and so I’ll try always to be worthy of that generosity. I give you everything that I am. But most of all I give you my strength. Love is dangerous, but I will make us brave – that is my promise to you.’

And we were married.

Thorne

The answer.

You aren’t supposed to.

Thorne

We hurried from the temple and through the snow, hands linked. We were both jumping out of our skin with excitement and a giddy, overflow of love; we were drenched in it. But there wasn’t time, yet, to enjoy each other.

‘He’s going to kill me when I tell him he missed it,’ Finn muttered.

‘Ma too,’ I agreed. ‘We’ll do it again, when all of this is over.’

‘Deal.’

Isadora and Penn were still sitting with Jonah, who’d not yet regained consciousness.

‘Sorry,’ Finn breathed as we entered. ‘We had to deal with something that couldn’t wait. What happened?’

Penn hugged her for a long time. ‘What are you wearing?’ he asked her. Finn shot me a guilty look.

‘We were captured on the road,’ Isadora explained darkly. ‘Warders. They gave us to half a dozen Pirenti soldiers, who brought us north in a cage.’

‘How did you escape?’

Isadora’s eyes were a deeper red than usual as she said, ‘I killed them.’

There was silence in the room.

‘All of them,’ Penn murmured. ‘All of them.’

‘What did they want with you?’ Finn asked.

‘All of them.’

‘Jonah read them,’ Isadora replied. ‘He saw ignorance, of a kind. He explained that they were too muddled in the head to be truly aware of why they were doing it. He thought it must have been due to warder manipulation.’

‘So there are illegal warders using Pirenti soldiers to move their
victims north,’ I mused. ‘It is clever – if anyone is discovered, it will be the soldiers. But what purpose does it all serve? And why you?’

‘They wanted Jonah,’ Penn said. ‘His magic.’

‘So they’re looking for warders they can recruit,’ Finn surmised. ‘Which is why they took me too.’ Then she added, ‘And I think they want bonded couples.’

‘Why?’ Isadora asked.

‘That first leg of the journey. Sin’s men were looking for warders and bonded couples.’

‘You think it connected?’ I asked her.

Finn nodded. Didn’t explain why.

We mulled it over for a while. Two things we now had to deal with. The end to the bond, which we were no closer to finding than we had been on day one. And rogue warders kidnapping people.

‘My da’s information could be in the berserker mountain,’ I said finally. ‘And the warders are taking people north. So I will go into the ice and hope to find answers to either issue.’

‘Not alone,’ Isadora said.

‘You would not survive in the ice. I say this not to insult, but because it is too dangerous to trifle with such truth.’

‘You expect me to come this far and then give up?’ she demanded.

‘In the morning,’ Finn interrupted. ‘Tonight we sleep. In the morning we decide.’

Isadora’s jaw clenched, but she nodded.

To me, Finn said, ‘I’ll sit with my brother a while.’

I nodded, sharing a long look with her, then took Penn and steered him out to another room.

‘You ready to sleep, mate?’ I asked him. He shook his head, then promptly walked to the window and climbed out. ‘Penn!’

Poking my head out, I saw him scamper down dead creepers on the side of the building. Quickly I descended the stairs inside and circled around to the courtyard. It was empty, but I could smell the boy, and found him in the stables.

He was sitting inside one of the stalls, nuzzling a sleeping horse. ‘Shhh,’ he ordered me.

I nodded, watching him. Carefully I entered the stall and sat down in the straw. Penn was stroking the horse’s brown hair in time with its breathing; it was amazing that it had not spooked at our entry, but remained calmly on the ground.

‘They give you peace?’ I asked.

He didn’t reply.

‘Do you miss Griggor?’

Again he didn’t respond. And then, abruptly, he said, ‘I had a pegasis.’

‘Truly?’

‘He was the first Griggor. I belonged to him.’

I had seen the way Ava was with her pegasis Migliori, and knew it to be a very deep bond.

‘They killed him,’ Penn said, emotionlessly.

I blinked, felt something in my chest tighten. ‘Who did?’

‘They took his energy and he died.’ He stroked the horse again and again. ‘Now they’ve escaped.’ My mouth was dry. ‘Who, Penn?’

‘Ma and Da.’

I gazed at him in the dark. ‘It could have been anyone who escaped.’

‘It was them.’ He looked at me then. Met my eyes, which was unusual for him. ‘They have rot inside. They’re going to hurt people.’

Finn

Isadora crossed to sit in the window, and I was curious about the fact that she wouldn’t leave Jonah, even now that I was here.

‘What’s happened between you?’ I asked bluntly.

‘Nothing.’

‘You care for each other.’

She didn’t look at me, but I could feel her discomfort rolling off her in waves.

‘I don’t want him hurt,’ I said, not because she didn’t already know that, but simply because something in me felt the need to say it out loud. For myself more than for her, probably. ‘I don’t know anything about you,’ I added.

‘There isn’t much to know.’

‘I don’t believe this is just about the money.’

‘Am I meant to care what you believe?’

‘Isadora,’ I said. ‘I’m trying. You don’t like me. But you’ve saved my brother’s life, and I want for there to be something more between us. I want … This whole thing has to mean something, doesn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘Can’t we make it mean something then?’ When she didn’t respond I shook my head. ‘I’m your friend, whether you like it or not, whether you are mine or not. I will care for you and fight for you always, because that’s what happens when you go through this kind of stuff together. I know that’s sentimental, but I also happen to believe it.’

The pale, wraith-like girl finally turned to look at me. She was silent a long time, and I had no idea what to expect. Then she murmured simply, ‘Very well.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Please. No more emotion.’

I kissed Jonah again, then headed for the door, wanting my husband. Before I reached it, Isadora said, ‘He has softened you.’

I smiled, surprised by her insight. ‘No. It only looks that way.’

Thorne had arranged another room to be rented. This was where I found him, blessedly alone.

‘Where’s Penn?’ I asked breathlessly.

‘Sleeping with the horses.’

‘Thank Gods. That was too long.’

‘It was twenty minutes,’ he laughed.

‘Twenty minutes too long.’

‘Come here.’

I went to him; he had my dress off in an instant. I felt things inside me quicken and tighten and heat up all at once. I was swept away by the mightiest of ocean tides and I had not a hope of fighting it – would never
want
to fight it. He drowned me, stole my breath, immersed me in sensation and feeling and something bigger, sweeter – more infinite. I saw a million things all at once, things that were him and things that were me. And I knew after the one nightmarishly numb night that I was
lucky
to have the power I did, to feel all of Thorne when we touched.

We didn’t waste any time, trembling with the same need, one that had been growing for a long time, every single second since the day we first saw each other in that square. His mouth was against my collarbone, breasts, shoulder, neck. His hands placed me on the bed, took my hips, pulled them up against him.

I was gripping him so hard that my fingernails broke his skin; there was a wild creature inside me and she was longing to burst free. Her heart was made of raven’s wings and her teeth were sharp like steel.

Our eyes locked as he finally moved inside me; I felt like I’d been waiting my whole life. My heart was against his heartbeat. I could feel the vibrations of it through his skin, but so too could I feel it in my own soul. My
gift, my curse. Right now his heart was light as a feather and full and whole. It was beating through my body and my bones felt tight, aching.

Moving on top of him, I ducked my mouth to his chest.
Thump thump thump
through my lips, against my tongue, into my pulse.

He sat up, kissing me hungrily, large rough hands in my hair, along my spine, under the curve of my breasts and gripping my hips. As we began to move faster against each other he looked at me once more, and his eyes slipped scarlet.

I gasped. Thorne hadn’t disappeared – he was still here in every look, every touch. They were both here.

‘At last,’ I murmured.

Thorne flipped me over again and moved deeper inside me.

We reached that aching, shivering, exploding place together, holding tight, and when it was over we looked at each other and –

and as one our eyes shifted to gold.

Thorne

I was revelling in the disastrous perfection of our bodies together when I felt the cage crumble around him, my beast, and with no resistance from me he filled my limbs with his strength and his passion and his
hunger
. I felt, for the first time in my life, one with him.

And that was entirely because of Finn. I looked at her, could hardly believe she was real, could feel everything building inside me and taste the salt of her skin on my lips and the way she trembled around me and under me and then –

Our eyes turned gold.

And I
knew
we’d bonded because I’d allowed the beast a single moment of freedom.

It rushed through me – a heady, dizzy wave of love and death and
lives stretching out around us. I felt the threads of our souls wrap around each other and link interminably, knitting together until there was no longer two but one, stronger and more whole than we had ever been separately. It was like fire, burning through my skin, setting every inch of me alight with a kind of agonised pleasure.

But with it, with the joy, came a sudden realisation, like the tolling of the bell, a warning of final doom. We were the dead walking.

Wrenching myself away from her and leaving us both cold, I felt swollen with horror.

‘Thorne?’

I turned away from her gold eyes, those gold, gold eyes. I couldn’t breathe, felt my chest cavity cracking open so that understanding could devour my heart with greedy glee.

‘Thorne
.’

‘No,’ I managed to utter.

‘What?’ she demanded. I heard her get up and move towards me.

‘Don’t,’ I said quickly, trying to rein in a million thoughts, a million feelings.

‘You
don’t!’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you dare turn away from me. Not now.’

‘I’ve just condemned you to death!’ I snarled. The beast was howling. I smashed my fist into the wood of the dressing table, wanting it to hurt, but all it did was splinter the wood. ‘Don’t you see? I’ve numbered your days! They come at me, again and again. I am challenged by men infinitely more savage than I am, and one day I will not be able to defeat them any longer, and you will die with me!’

I wanted to break things. Destroy the whole world. Tear it down piece by piece until my hands bled a river of blood.

I turned to see Finn standing in a shaft of moonlight, still and
expressionless. I was struck abruptly by the sight of her, the curves of her in shadow and light, the tousled golden hair and –

And a look in her eyes that froze me still.

‘You might not be savage, my love,’ she murmured, ‘but I am.’

My heart clenched; a dark thrill ran through me. What she’d really said was:
I will learn to be, for you.

She smiled and it was a cold smile. ‘You think I would let them kill you?’ A shake of her head. A few steps towards me. ‘I already told you. I will make you strong, Thorne. As strong as it takes to beat them back, one after the other, until no one in this Godsforsaken country would ever be foolish enough to try to take what is yours.’

I kissed her, my Wild Girl. Because she was loyal. And that, I thought, might have been the best thing about her.