Chapter 12
Roselyn
I found Thorne in our washroom, scrubbing furiously at his hands. There was a crazed expression in his eyes and it frightened me. I went to his side and took the scrubbing brush from his hands, and he started at my presence. After a moment his shoulders sagged and he allowed himself be led to the bathtub. He was covered from head to toe in blood, and he was shaking.
I undressed him, pulling his shirt over his head and then letting his breeches fall to the floor. I’d had the bath filled already so I moved him straight into the scalding hot water. As quickly as I could, I scrubbed all the blood from his skin, lathering him up with soap and working until his skin was pink and clean.
‘There,’ I murmured, resting my hands briefly on his shoulders. He usually liked to be alone while he bathed, so I stood to leave, but he took hold of my hand and stopped me.
‘Rose,’ he murmured, almost panicked. ‘Stay.’
Startled, I hesitated a moment, then sat on a stool beside him.
‘Do you know why I don’t allow you up there, in that room?’ he asked. I drew in a breath, certain that I was to be punished again.
‘I’m sorry,’ I tried quickly but he shook his head.
‘Do you know why?’
‘No.’
‘It’s to protect you from what’s in there. What happens in there.’ He stared at me, and I couldn’t read what was in his eyes. ‘I’m a monster,’ he said softly, eerily. ‘And the truth is I’ve never wanted you to see me like that.’
My mouth fell open slightly. I didn’t know what to say.
‘Did you see how many people I killed tonight?’ he whispered. ‘So many – and I enjoyed it. But I don’t think … I don’t think it was right, was it?’
I felt my heart stop. He asked my opinions on lots of things, but never this. Never anything to do with this. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it was.’
Thorne closed his eyes and sank into the tub, resting his head against the side. ‘She wants me to be like this. She can use me when I’m like this.’
For a moment I actually thought that this had to be a dream, because it couldn’t possibly be real. Thorne, the most painfully loyal man in the world, was speaking against his ma – the very person his life revolved around, the one person he’d been born needing to please. Everything that he was, he’d become because he was so desperately afraid of disappointing his queen.
‘Did you know I was a monster?’ he asked, opening his eyes. I didn’t say anything, so he nodded slightly. ‘Of course you did.’
‘No.’
‘Don’t lie, Rose.’
‘I’m not. I barely know how. You hate the worst parts of yourself so much more than you could ever hate another human being. And that’s not monstrous at all, Thorne.’
He swallowed. ‘Did you know she was making me like this?’
I frowned, confused by the question. ‘Yes, of course. She tries to make everyone like her. It is how she rules. Cruelty and violence and fear. You are her greatest weapon, Thorne. The strongest, fiercest weapon she could ever find, and you happen to have berserker blood in you.’
He blinked, sitting up a little. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I … it is only a guess. I know nothing for sure …’
‘Tell me what you think.’
‘I think she bred with a berserker to create a weapon she would be able to manipulate.’
He stared at me, his beautiful blue eyes shadowed, the truth of it dawning on him. ‘Why have you never spoken to me of this before?’
‘I did not think it would be of interest to you.’
Thorne closed his mouth with a snap. He passed a shaking hand over his eyes. He seemed to think about what I’d said for a very long time. ‘What does it matter?’ he asked eventually, and now he was hollow. The empty anger was back in his bones. ‘It makes no difference why I am what I am. I’m hers to do with as she wills. She is the Queen, I am her weapon. I’ve always accepted it – why should anything change now?’
‘You don’t feel … cheated?’ I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.
‘It’s not my place to feel anything,’ he answered, and I felt the bright spark of hope instantly flicker out.
At least, that’s what I thought. Until he reached out and pulled me gently, tenderly and fully clothed into the tub with him. I gasped as the water hit me, panic exploding in my chest. But his hands were moving quickly, undressing me and dropping the sopping wet clothes onto the floor, and every second that my body lay against his was a second in which I forgot to fear the water. He gathered me into the circle of his arms, and he kissed me on the lips, and I was so surprised and thrilled that I forgot to breathe and forgot to panic and forgot to be afraid. If he wanted me, it was usually at night when we were in bed, and it was without kissing. He very rarely kissed me, except to make a point of it.
But now, now he kissed me like his lungs were broken, like if he stopped he’d die, and I felt as though maybe, just for the shortest of moments as our lips touched, maybe I was finally being allowed inside him, just as he inhabited me. As though maybe he was giving me a glimpse of himself, of the Thorne that lay beneath.
It filled me up, and I knew I’d be able to live off this one moment for a very long time. Unable to help myself, I reached out and held him, running my fingers over his short hair. There was something I needed to tell him. If he could understand this one thing, I truly believed he would be okay, and it didn’t matter if he got angry and punished me for saying it. It didn’t matter if this perfect moment was ruined, because it mattered, this one thing I had to say. It mattered the most of all.
‘Thorne,’ I said, looking deep into his eyes. His hands cupped my face and he waited. ‘You deserve a life you shape for yourself.’
And as he stared back at me, I started to understand that maybe things would be okay for us, one day. He didn’t punish me, or get angry – he simply stroked my cheek with his thumb, and then kissed me again.
Thorne
My sleep was feverish that night. I tossed and turned, unable to calm down, my body wracked with a sense of desperation. I felt trapped and contained in ways I’d never known. At one point, very late, when poor Roselyn had finally managed to drift off to sleep, I sat bolt upright, my skin crawling. There in the corner of the room, wreathed in shadows, skin glowing with a sickly pallor, was a man. I felt my heart slam out of beat, sending a wave of shock through me. I knew this man – knew him very well. It was the black-haired Kayan, and his eyes glowed golden in the darkness as they looked right inside of me. I’d never known fear, until I saw his ghost in my bedchamber.
‘A prince at the top of the world has a very long way to fall,’ he told me softly. He had a kind face, a gentle face. Even as he stood there in the darkness, he didn’t seem angry with me – he seemed concerned. ‘Every time you hurt someone, Thorne, you fall a little further.’
I took a breath and shook my head. ‘I cement my power by proving my strength.’
‘You’re very foolish,’ he said sadly. ‘Listen to me, or your chance at redemption will fade.’
I closed my eyes, willing him to disappear. He didn’t. He walked a few steps closer, his shoulders square as they’d been before I’d helped kill him. I’d never seen a Kayan with such black hair.
‘Blood may be easy to wash from your skin,’ he said clearly, heavily, ‘but it stains your soul, Prince Thorne.’
And then he was gone.
Ambrose
I didn’t sleep a wink. She was under my skin. It was real, all of a sudden. She’d never wanted me back until today. She’d been so remote, so full of anger and hate, until now, until this new side of her. Could I be enough for what I’d awakened? It seemed impossible, given all of my failings. It also seemed impossible not to try.
I rose with the sun, unable to stand her closeness any longer. I climbed over my balcony and swung down onto hers. She was sitting inside the window, wrapped in the linen from her bed. I stopped, staring. Her hair was tousled and her golden skin glowed under the sun’s rays. She looked unspeakably sexy – and healthier than she had in all the time I’d known her, her body rid of all the marks of my violence.
‘Open the window,’ I told her.
Mutely, she shook her head.
‘Ava,’ I snapped, ‘stop this – we have to talk.’
‘Go away.’
‘I can’t stand it anymore,’ I told her through the glass. ‘You’ve a beating heart in your chest, and it’s strong. Don’t you understand? It’s not ruined – you’re not ruined. Do you know how I know?’
She didn’t say anything, but I could see the flecks of gold in her eyes, and wanted desperately to know what they meant. ‘I know because I can feel the rhythm of it beating in my own chest,’ I told her. I closed my eyes, running my hands over my head and groaning. ‘Gods, I don’t know how I can feel it, and it’s freaking me out, but I know I can.’
I didn’t know what to say after that. She wasn’t responding, she was just so still.
‘Open the damn window before I smash it in.’
Finally after what felt an age she unlocked the window and murmured, very simply, ‘Gold is the bond colour.’
And just like that, my life – my whole world – changed. Everything I knew changed, because I understood all at once that I had fallen in love with and become bonded to a Kayan woman. Our lives were irreversibly entwined for all the days and hours and minutes we had left. I would die when she died.
Which meant that there was no way for my brother to love me anymore. No way for me to return to the life I’d once had. It was all over now. Everything I’d ever known.
‘I don’t want this, Ambrose,’ she said bluntly. ‘I can’t have it. Bonding twice is … it’s sick – it’s an abomination. Once hurt enough, but twice … it’s a betrayal. An ending.’
‘No,’ I growled, overwhelmed and terrified. ‘It’s a beginning. You’re just too set on killing yourself to admit it.’ I paced the room. ‘I’ve always thought you were courageous, Ave, but you know what? You’re the worst kind of coward.’
‘Stop, Ambrose!’ she snapped, rising to her feet in a flurry of anger. ‘You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about! Get out of my room and leave me be!’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ I barked. ‘You’ve made my eyes change colour and you expect me to leave you be?’
‘Do you enjoy torturing me?’ she yelled. ‘You think you love me, but you have no idea what love is.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ I snarled. ‘You walk around with this idyllic idea of the perfect relationship, where everything is happy and easy, but that isn’t real! It’s just a suit of armour that you wear and you refuse to take it off. Don’t you feel this?’ I strode towards her and took her by the arms, shaking her a little. ‘I know you do. It’s messy and yes – it hurts – but it’s real. There’s no running away from it.’
She opened her mouth to argue, but I kissed her – angrily, roughly – and I knew it would hurt her, but I didn’t care because I wanted her to hurt as much as I did. She bristled, all fire and rage, and then she spat in my face, just as she had when first we met. I stared at her and could almost have laughed if I hadn’t been so furious.
‘Go ahead,’ she hissed. ‘Hit me. I know you want to.’
My hands shook as I gripped her arms and shoved her to the bed. I climbed on top of her, pinning her down, feeling both our hearts race. The sensation of two beats in my chest was dizzying. She put her hands on my shoulders as if to hold me off, but I realised she was clutching onto me. There was only a thin sheet of linen between her naked body and me, and the realisation was like to set me on fire.
I leant towards her again, our eyes locked in a silent battle. She struggled, but I took both her wrists in one hand and held them above her head, then I placed my other hand over her neck. She was breathing quickly, her eyes wide and changing between black and gold, over and over like they couldn’t hold to one colour. I leant my lips down to her jaw, felt her trembling beneath me.
‘Feel that?’ I whispered, laying my hand over her beating heart so the rhythm of it played into my palm. ‘That’s one strong heartbeat, kid. You’re alive and you want me. And, Ava, it’s allowed – you’re allowed to want me.’
She wriggled harder, trying to get one of her knees into my groin, but I held her still, allowing a slow smile to come to my lips. ‘Admit it, Ave. Admit you want me.’
‘Never,’ she snarled. One of her hands came free and she hit me hard across the cheek. I grabbed her and held her even harder, a breath of laughter escaping my lips. We stared at each other, unable to look away, and then I saw a very faint curve to her lips. I couldn’t stand it anymore – I had to kiss her. She struggled one last time, but once my lips found hers her whole body melted into softness, and her mouth lost all its hard edges. She kissed me back, hungry and desperate, and then she rolled me onto my back, pinning me down exactly as I had just done to her.
‘Even now, you’re still fighting me,’ I grinned. She smiled carelessly, something wild and untamed in her.
‘Sweetheart,’ she murmured, her breath hot on my lips, sending shivers of desire through my whole body, ‘You just think I’m fighting, but I’ve already won.’ And then she bit my lip, drawing blood. I laughed as she began to undress me.
Ava
His hands were burning me. My skin sizzled to the touch, so hot, everything inside me was way too hot. Dizzy, I stumbled out of the bed and pressed my palms and face flat against the cool glass of the window – it was like ice against my skin, impossibly sharp. I felt him move behind me – I could feel the very way he took up a room, inhabited every inch of space. His bare chest was like fire against my back, his lips felt like they were shattering bones as they ducked to my neck. My ragged breaths made condensation on the window as he moved his big, rough hands around to trace my shoulders and breasts and stomach. And when he leant around to find my mouth with his, the taste of him, the feel of him, it was all too much, too much sensation and feeling and pleasure, and I didn’t think my body would be able to handle it.
‘Ambrose,’ I gasped desperately.
My pulse was a racing pegasis, heavy hoof-beats and fluttering wings. I could feel him trembling behind me, could feel what I was doing to him, to his body and his heartbeat – the same as he was doing to mine. His fingers slipped down until they were stroking me and moving inside me, and my head spun, heat spreading. Colours burst to life in my mind, spreading my veins and my bones. His touch was blue and red and lightning silver. It was so sharp and so smooth I felt cracked from the inside and pulled in every single direction.
‘I have to …’ he groaned, his mouth hot against my ear. ‘Ava. I have to have you –now.’
I was lifted off the floor and twisted in his arms like I was a toy, a doll, so small and light I would float out of this room and fly away if he was not anchoring me with the heat and strength of his body. His chest was beneath my lips; he tasted salty and rough and sweet, and my fingernails were digging into the skin of his shoulders. I could feel his teeth nipping at my ear and my neck and then I was being pressed against the dresser and my legs lifted and went around his hips.
With trembling fingers, I traced his lips and found his eyes. He looked feverish, dazed, utterly out of control. It caused something to lurch in my chest – something skipped and hammered and tightened.
I gasped and felt his hands clench desperately. His mouth ducked down to my breast, taking the nipple between his teeth. I jerked against him in surprise, but he was already moving down, mouth gliding over my stomach and hands holding me too tight and tongue slipping inside me. Sounds left me in ragged gasps, and my body arched against the sensation, moving to a will of its own.
‘Ambrose, I—’ It was too much. But he kept going, and the feel of it built inside me, growing hot and sharp and making every part of me ache to have him deeper. With my hands in his hair, I yanked his head up. ‘Now,’ I demanded and he kissed me on the mouth, hard and fast and I couldn’t breathe – I was liquid in his hands, I’d do anything or be anything for him. I only breathed for him, and his hands on my thighs, and I couldn’t help but moan as he pressed himself inside me, moving deep, holding me so tight, eyes searching and finding all the pieces of me I thought were lost.
I covered his mouth with mine, head spinning – his lips and his tongue and his teeth. I couldn’t get enough of him, couldn’t get enough. ‘More,’ I whispered, and he moved deeper and harder and faster and everything else was lost and I was drowning in an ocean of him but it still wasn’t enough.
‘Ava,’ he uttered, his shaking hands holding my face. I looked at him and was shocked to see that his eyes were completely, blazingly, impossibly gold. I’d never seen eyes so gold, never imagined there could be a shade this colour in the world. I felt the atmosphere change, felt everything change. This was his I love you. This was a thousand I love yous. It was his forever and it was more gold than I had ever known, more of every colour, more than I would ever know what to do with.
I held his eyes with as much strength as I could manage as I felt my body shatter into a thousand pieces, bursting and exploding and filling with light. It was life bursting back into my soul. It was life and pleasure and touch and so much need I realised I truly had been dying, I had been wasting and now I could breathe because his lungs were working twice as hard, and they were giving me air, just as his heart was beating strong enough for the both of us. It was the beginning of something I didn’t know how I would ever face, or if I’d ever be ready for. The beginning of something that marked the greatest betrayal a Kayan man or woman had ever committed.
But who in this world had ever loved the way Ambrose of Pirenti did? Who had ever loved with such fire? Such courage?
Ambrose held me very tightly, and I could feel that his heart wasn’t slowing, just as mine wasn’t either. Searching my face with eyes blue once more, he said, in a voice broken under a great weight and shocked by what had passed between us, ‘You’re going to destroy me, Ava of Orion.’
My hands found his face and I whispered, ‘I’m here. I’m right here, and I’m staying.’
Closing his eyes, he rested his forehead against mine and breathed me in, and he held me while he whispered things in my ear, secret and nonsensical things, savage and perfect and frightened things, and all the while I did – I stayed with him, I stayed and stayed and stayed, but deep inside me was a dark place that didn’t know how long I would ever be able to stay.
We spent the night with words and touches. He said words like here? And like this? And other times he said no, let me show you, or this way, sweetheart, or tell me when, so that I would always be talking and telling him how I felt, and so that I would never disappear into guilt, as he somehow instinctively knew I might.
Slowly, under his touches, I felt my half-walker body find its way to whole. I gasped and trembled in a way I never had before, not even with Avery, and my ghost heart found a way to start beating again.
He was everything I’d thought he could never be – sweet and tender. And when he whispered, I adore you, I gave him all of myself, just for the night.
Ambrose
As the sun sank again and the moon rose into the sky, she lay in my arms, her fingers gently tracing the Marks over my heart. Her eyes were purple as she stared at them, and she was biting her lip. I looked down at her fingers on my tattoos.
‘Regret is a dangerous thing,’ I murmured.
She met my eyes, moved her fingers to touch my lips, and then traced them along the line of my scar. ‘Ambrose,’ she murmured.
‘Mm?’
‘Would you still … desire me if I wanted to be a boy again?’
I thought of the last hours from within the stunned, dreamlike haze I’d been in all night. It didn’t make sense, what she’d done to me. It was too big, too impossible, for a man who’d been contained in a very small box for his entire life. But the vulnerability in that question, in her face and voice and eyes, made me think of the night in the jungle when I’d held her hand as she wept. ‘You know,’ I said softly, ‘I kind of miss Avery. Tell him he can join me again whenever he feels like it.’
The purple of her eyes paled into a beautiful, clear lilac as she smiled. ‘You said before that I wear armour, and that I’m never going to take it off. But, Ambrose, if you asked, I’d take it off for you.’
I breathed out, feeling too many things at once. She was seriously starting to undo me. ‘I know,’ I said, ‘but, Ava, girl, what you need to understand about me is that I’d never ask.’
She nodded, smiling that same smile that had first made me fall in love with her. ‘I do. I think that’s why my eyes turn gold when I look at you.’
Later, much later, I found my voice again. ‘I told you, Ave. I told you that you could be sweet.’
A day and a night we stayed in bed together. We barely slept, instead spending every waking hour talking or making love. When she finally drifted off, I spent hours staring at the ceiling and trying to work out what I was going to do. We’d changed things, the two of us. And now we seemed to have backed ourselves into a corner with no way out except by breaking something. I had choices to make. Big ones.
In the early hours of the next morning Ava stirred slightly. ‘Avery?’ she murmured drowsily, reaching for me in the darkness. It made my heart clench with a simple pain.
‘No,’ I murmured heavily. ‘It’s Ambrose.’
She blinked, and I saw the grief explode, a tidal wave of it. She took a shuddering breath and then burst into violent tears.
‘It’s okay,’ I tried quickly, reaching for her, but she shivered and shook her head, overcome with the kind of grief that killed you. ‘What have I done?’ she sobbed, over and over again.
I didn’t know what to say, what to do. All the pieces of her that I’d thought were rebuilding had shattered apart once more and spread to the ends of the world. She was devastated, and I’d been so arrogant to think I could save her. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t keep her here with me – I wasn’t enough for that.
I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed as tightly as I could while she unravelled, wracked by violent, painful sobs and whispering his name like a mantra that destroyed me.