Chapter 23
Thorne
Would she ever understand? Would she live long enough to have the chance to? There was one thing I’d learnt in this lifetime – blood can be washed from skin, but it stains the soul.
Even as my wife tossed and turned, feverish with blood loss and pain, I knew I’d done the right thing. I’d stopped her from committing the gravest mistake we can ever make as humans. From taking a life. She might never understand, but I would know, for the rest of my life, that I’d saved Roselyn’s soul from the fate I’d created for myself, and that mattered more than anything else. More than two missing fingers.
Ava
I found him standing in the dungeon, hands gripping the bars. Deep within the shadows of the cell sat Vincent, cross-legged and staring straight back at Ambrose. Both men had a strange, eerie look to them. Neither moved or even blinked.
‘Ambrose! What in Gods’ names are you doing here?’ I hastened to his side, chilled to the bone by such a weird sight. ‘He can manipulate you if you go too near.’
He didn’t bother replying, just kept his pale eyes trained on the black gaze of the snake in the cage.
‘How did you do it?’ he asked softly. It sounded like a voice that belonged to a ghost.
Vincent’s lips curled into a smile. ‘So you know, then. At long last.’
Ambrose’s knuckles were white from clenching so hard, but nothing else betrayed the disquiet that must have been raging inside him.
‘I used his fear,’ Vincent murmured. He had a strange accent, one I couldn’t immediately place, and a slight lisp. ‘Only one type of fear is strong enough to allow me to manipulate someone for such an extended period of time.’ He licked his lips, and I realised belatedly that the tension in the space was making my heart thump out of my chest. ‘Love.’
Ambrose started. ‘What?’
‘Fear comes when love comes – that’s a binding, unchangeable fact. Rourke of Araan loved his son as much as someone can possibly love his child. I touched the very edge of it, of that fear for you – for your life, the fear of losing you – and he was mine. It was the simplest thing.’
I watched as Ambrose closed his eyes, and realised he was barely keeping it together. A sick feeling made its way into my stomach.
‘So you used my father’s love for me to make him want to kill me?’ Ambrose asked, his voice hitching into a black, humourless laugh. ‘How clever of you.’
I sucked in a breath, and in that moment, Vincent’s eyes snapped to me, straight to me, and he saw the truth. I felt fear, an ocean of it – fear for Ambrose, the man I loved. For his life, his happiness, every tiny thing about his existence.
I backed away, but the snake did nothing, simply smiled. ‘Human after all.’
Ambrose wasn’t listening. He strode past us and out of the dungeon.
I waited a moment, against all my better judgement. ‘What did you do to him?’
Vincent licked his lips again. ‘I made him a prince of wolves. He just doesn’t know it.’
I didn’t know where to go. The fortress was massive, and it was strange beyond words to be walking freely through it. Thorne’s first announcement, after the horror of the tournament, was that I was not to be harmed by anyone in Pirenti while I stayed. I had been walking the walls of this haunted place for two days, and I was still mildly surprised to be alive. Wherever I looked, I was met with an angry face, or one filled with loathing.
My stomach ached every step of the way, but my healing power was a miracle I’d not soon take for granted. Up my feet led me, without my knowing why. I only realised that it was his tug that guided me to the slaughter room after spotting him there. Ambrose was silhouetted against the huge back window. It was strange in such a cold country to have a window without any glass, or even any curtains.
‘That was where I killed him, just down there,’ I heard his soft murmur.
I crossed silently to his side and looked out of that window. In the distance was the sea, glistening under starlight. Directly below was a large field of long, yellow grass. It was a long drop. I remembered falling it myself – remembered being caught by Migliori and swept home to Kaya, thinking that I’d left my beating, bloody heart lying on the floor of this room.
With that memory in mind, I turned and looked at the spot on the floor where he’d been stabbed to death. I walked slowly over to it and stood there, wondering if I’d be able to feel some kind of residue – the remains of his energy, of his life. Hoping that maybe I’d meet his ghost, here in the spot where he’d died. There was nothing here. Nothing but cold marble, and as I turned back to Ambrose, I realised something very, very important.
He had grief in his life, grief big like an ocean – and suddenly it mattered more to me than my own loss. I missed two dead men now – my mate, and Ambrose’s father.
I opened my mouth to tell him, to say, I love you – I choose you, but he spoke first.
‘I’ve had Migliori tended to. Now that you’re fully healed you’ll be wanting to leave in the morning, I imagine.’
His voice was dead – empty. It froze every word in my mouth.
Frightened, I crossed to the window and peered up at his face. ‘Tell me what happened,’ I bid him gently.
His throat moved as he swallowed. Distantly, coldly he started to speak. ‘He challenged me. It was so strange. He’d never wanted the throne, never wanted anything except to live in peace, away from Ma. But still I thought it was real. I didn’t know. I didn’t … I should have known he couldn’t have … I thought the worst of him and so I killed him, and then I thought the worst of him for eleven years after. Until two days ago.’
Guilt, like a tide pulling him out.
‘Vincent is a kind of warder,’ I said, and then didn’t have a clue why. Ambrose didn’t need any more hatred for Kayan people. I kept speaking, like a fool. He needed all the truth I had, even if it meant pain. ‘Your mother was Kayan. I don’t know where Vincent came from, but he must have once had the potential to be a high level warder. The Queen used him to craft for her the life she wanted. She … was a half-walker, as I am.’
Ambrose turned to me then, and I almost recoiled at the detachment in his eyes. ‘Ava,’ he said. ‘You must leave. I can’t think of you in the same space as my ma. You were right about half-walkers – they hurt people.’
I froze, feeling my heart crack in half. Gods, how could it be possible for me to still be heartbroken? Hadn’t I had enough of that? Shouldn’t my poor, bruised heart be able to protect itself by now?
I felt like a child, suddenly unmoored by the loss of everything it knows. I felt ruined for love of him, for Ambrose.
But I nodded. ‘As you wish.’
He turned and started to leave, saying over his shoulder, ‘I should check on Rose.’
I said, ‘Wait.’
I said wait, and if I hadn’t spoken, the world would be a different place. If I hadn’t said a word, he would have walked down the stairs to Roselyn’s room, and he would have been in time to change the fate of everyone in this country, but I said wait, and so he waited.
‘You’re a very good man, Ambrose, regardless of whatever title people bestow upon you,’ I said softly, ‘and no one has made you that but yourself.’
He studied my face, managed to find some depth of kindness inside him to give me a crooked smile. ‘I’ll miss you when you’re gone, pretty boy.’
I swallowed, nodded. I couldn’t begin to describe the way I would miss him. It made no sense to me, the idea of leaving. I would live here forever, in this waking nightmare, with hatred and resentment and not a single hint of warmth, if it meant I could be near this man, but I had been slow and stupid, and I had chosen a ghost over a flesh-and-blood human who loved me to oblivion and back. Now I had lost him, because in his heart was the way his father had died at the hands of a Kayan half-walker.
I was too late.
‘Can I come with you to check on Rose?’ I asked.
Ambrose nodded so we walked together down the steps. We walked so slowly – unforgivably slowly. We came to the door of her room and stopped beside each other – I supposed it was a kind of goodbye – and still we didn’t go into the room. If we had … if only we had gone straight inside …
But fate had something else in store for us, and for those on the other side of that door.
Thorne
By the time Rose woke, two days had passed, and I was standing by the window in our bedroom, staring out into the courtyard. All the bodies had been burnt and the blood had been cleaned from the plinth, but none of it was so easily scoured from our memories. My own wounds had begun to heal slowly – I’d been hit by four arrows, but I’d survived. I carried far too much berserker blood to let small wounds like those kill me.
‘Thorne,’ my wife murmured and I whirled to see her gazing groggily at me.
‘Rose. How are you feeling?’
Her eyes were haunted as she stared up at me. I hesitated, then sank onto the bed beside her. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘You fell on your axe and chopped two fingers from your hand.’ I paused, then amended, ‘I pushed you onto your axe. It was my fault.’
‘You – you saved her!’ she remembered. ‘Why, Thorne?’
‘I didn’t save her – I stopped you from killing her.’
‘But … why?’ Her skin was pale and clammy, and there were deep bags under her brown eyes.
How could I explain this? I wasn’t sure it was something you could understand unless you’d done the unthinkable and taken someone’s life. ‘You’re pure, Rose. Your soul is completely untarnished. It seems to me like a worthy trade – two fingers for salvation.’ I shook my head. ‘We all have a beast inside us. I won’t let yours rule you like mine does me.’
She sighed heavily and slumped back on the pillow. I called for the healer to bring her pain medicine, and then we sat. I wanted to reach out and touch her, but I wasn’t sure if she would like that.
‘Do you hate me?’ I asked.
‘Why would I hate you?’
‘For your fingers. For … everything.’
‘This was an accident,’ she told me, holding her heavily bandaged hand aloft. ‘And I don’t hate you for anything else. But …’ and here she swallowed, ‘if you ever hurt me again, I’ll leave you. I’m not your possession. I can give myself to you, but you cannot claim me for your own. Is that … do you understand?’
I felt shame and relief – oceans of both. I didn’t know how I would ever find my way out of the darkness, but if I had any hope at all, then it lay within this woman. Clearing my dry, rasping throat, I said, ‘Never – never – again.’
Roselyn met my eyes. She gave a small nod. ‘What’s happened? The Queen – is she dead?’
‘She’s dead.’
‘Then you are King?’
‘Yes.’ But I would never have been able to handle the last two days of chaos without Ambrose. ‘I’ve named my brother King as well.’
‘Two Kings? Is that allowed?’
I shrugged. ‘If I say it is, then it is. I can ban things too. Like violence.’
She smiled. ‘I’m proud of you.’
The healer entered and set a tray down on the bedside table. His movements were strangely stiff and jerky – enough to catch my eye.
‘Drink all of that, my lady,’ he mumbled, his voice strange.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘It will help her pain.’ He didn’t meet my gaze, simply hurried from the room.
I shrugged it off, assuming he was as nervous as most servants were around me. ‘Rose, Ambrose and I changed the rules to name you Queen.’
She stared at me. ‘I can’t be Queen.’
‘Why not?’
‘I wouldn’t know how.’
‘I have no idea how to be a king. We can figure it out together, can’t we?’
She frowned, looking into her lap.
A sudden panic struck me. ‘Please, Rose? I need you. I can’t do this without you.’
Roselyn looked up at me, and then she smiled, the prettiest, gentlest smile I’d ever seen. It made me weak at the knees, that smile and the innocence of it. She was like the sun, and I her moon.
‘Of course,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll try.’
I breathed deeply in relief, and as I did so I caught the unmistakable scent of people approaching along the corridor. Their scents weren’t yet close enough for me to identify, but I knew Rose and I didn’t have much time alone. I wanted to tell her something, wanted to somehow say thank you for her courage, but before I had the chance, she reached for the goblet on the tray and took the covering off. ‘I’m not exactly the type of person they’re going to listen to though, Thorne.’
‘I’ll make them listen,’ I promised – and then I smelt it. It was the warm, citrusy smell of prylene. Deadliest poison in the world. Hundreds of years ago when prylene had been discovered, the use of it had been out of control. It was deadly because it had a singular, unavoidable trait – once you smelt prylene, once the distinctive scent of it reached your nostrils, you were dead. There was something about the poison that clutched onto your mind, rendering you powerless to escape the addictive, seductive pull of it. Until the poison had been ingested by someone or something, you would do anything to drink that draught. You’d kill a thousand men to get to it. The banishment had been put in place hundreds of years ago – the poison was too dangerous to even exist. All the crops of its plant had been burned and a death penalty put in place for anyone found in possession of it.
To my knowledge, there had been three people in this world who could withstand the effects of prylene – my brother, my ma and myself. Since we’d been children, Ma had built within us an immunity – not to the poison itself, but to the smell of it. I could recognise it, but I was one of only two people alive who could walk away without drinking it.
I’d be safe – I’d been trained to ignore it – but Rose wouldn’t. I saw her face as the smell of the drink reached her. She went slack and dreamy-eyed, and lifted the goblet to her mouth.
I didn’t have time to think, only to act. I wrenched the cup from her hands. She made a wild, feral sound in the back of her throat and she came at me, reaching for the goblet, her eyes crazed with desire. Her fingernails raked through my skin; she wasn’t going to stop unless the poison was ingested. I took stock of my options, for one moment only. I could take this poison and give it to the two people who were standing outside our room – I could force them to drink it, and then Rose would be safe. But as I breathed deeply, scenting the people outside, I knew to whom the smells belonged. It was Ambrose and Ava.
And so – everything suddenly became very simple.
I downed the liquid in three big gulps.
Roselyn instantly blinked. She looked at me, at the cup in my hands. ‘What just happened? Was that … was that prylene?’ I supposed she recognised the smell because she knew things like that – knew herbs and medicines and poisons.
I nodded numbly. I had maybe ten minutes to live, if I was strong – which I was.
‘Oh,’ she whispered, horror-struck. ‘No! Oh no, oh Gods, oh my … why did you do that?’ Her eyes filled with tears and started to overflow. ‘No, no, no,’ she kept saying over and over again. ‘What can we do? What must I do?’
She stood up, trembling with terror. Dashing to the closet, she pulled forth her medicine kit and started tearing through it, muttering manically under her breath, naming herbs, what seemed like hundreds of them, barely able to breathe for her spoken inventory.
‘Rose,’ I murmured. I couldn’t move, or I would have gone to her. ‘Sweetheart, there’s nothing.’
‘There has to be something! There’s always something!’
‘Not for this. It’s all right.’
‘No it isn’t!’ she shouted suddenly, trembling as she stood to face me. Moonlight found her face, wet with tears and pale with shock. ‘It’s not all right,’ she added at a whisper.
‘Come here,’ I said sleepily. ‘I want you here.’
I watched as she walked slowly towards the bed, and when she reached the side she crumpled onto it, her face breaking in agony. ‘I would have died. I could have, for you. You should have let me drink it.’
I shook my head. ‘Don’t even say that.’
‘I’m no one – you’re a king. Why did you do it? Thorne, why?’
I frowned, the question hurting me. ‘Why must you even ask?’
‘Because I don’t know the answer,’ she whispered.
Somehow, in this moment I felt more wretched than I ever had in my life. Even Avery in all his terrifying splendour had not been able to crush me so perfectly as this woman’s simple question. How had I let her come to the point where she couldn’t even understand a simple act of love? How could it be that such enormous, life-changing feelings could go unnoticed by her?
‘Because, Rose,’ I murmured, looking into her bottomless eyes. ‘I love you.’
It seemed to take her a moment to understand what I’d said – a moment for the words to sink into her starved heart. ‘You do?’ she whispered.
‘Sweetheart,’ I sighed, gathering her into my arms. ‘You’re my life, my whole life. Everything I’ve learnt, everything I’ve become – it’s simply for the love of you. You deserve for every one of your wishes to come true.’
‘Thorne,’ she sobbed, shaking her head and clutching at me with all her strength. ‘Please don’t leave me. We can fix this. You can’t die. What will I do? What will I be without you? I’ll be nothing. I won’t exist anymore.’
‘No.’ I pulled back and looked into her face. ‘We are not bonded, my love. We are our own people, and I used to think you were so fragile, but now I know the truth – you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. You’re a miracle, a creature of sweet, gentle beauty, who came out of a cold, loveless world. Rose, you can have a new life. It will be a better life, without me to suffocate you. I … I made it very bad for you.’
She sobbed in agony at that. ‘Oh, don’t you dare say that.’
‘Move to the ocean, love,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t be frightened of it – love it. Help people with your gift. Don’t ever stop.’
Roselyn shook her head slowly. ‘Do you know what my deepest, most important wish is? The wish I make every moment of every day, with every part of my heart?’ She reached out and touched my face. ‘It’s simply for you to love me.’
My heart started beating strangely. I didn’t know if it was because of the poison, or because of her words.
‘And now you’ve granted me that wish, Thorne. You’ve given me the one thing I’ve ever truly wanted – you’ve saved my life just by loving me. And that … it seems to me like that must be enough to redeem everything else you’ve done. I think … I’m sure it means your soul is pure, for to save a life … that can only be the greatest, most noble act a man can make.’
My tears started to pour. How had she known? She’d looked inside me, deep down inside me, to my greatest fear, my greatest tragedy, and she’d dispelled it. I kissed her as gently as I could, but now I was shaking, my whole body was shaking. The taste of her lips – I knew I’d remember it for the rest of eternity, no matter where I ended up.
‘Tell my brother I love him, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Tell him he will be a magnificent king,’ I whispered, my voice breaking. Oh Gods, Ambrose – I loved him so much. ‘I only ever wanted happiness for him. That’s all.’
Roselyn sobbed even harder, her hands holding onto me so tightly it hurt. I wanted to make it better for her, wanted somehow to ease her agony, so I did the only thing I could that I knew would help her.
‘Count my tattoos,’ I told her, losing all of my strength and lying back on the bed. ‘Take off my shirt and count my tattoos. There’s a new one.’
I felt her pull my shirt over my head, but it was becoming hard to feel. There was no pain, just the sensation that everything inside me was slowing right down.
She counted the ink on my skin carefully, lovingly, running her fingers over each, unable to stop crying, and I stared up into her face as she did so. The gentle sound of her voice, counting as I’d heard her do a million times, every night before I fell asleep, washed over me and filled me with happiness. That counting of hers was as much a part of me as it was of her.
She came to the last tattoo – the new one. Her fingers stilled, and she looked into my eyes, understanding at last.
It was just one word, this tattoo, and it was over my heart – the place you were supposed to save for Marks, if you got them. Something had always made me ask for the Marks to sit lower. It had always seemed to me like something more important should go over my heart. And yesterday, I’d discovered what.
Roselyn.
She stopped crying and we looked at each other.
‘Promise you’ll try and count the stars again,’ I whispered. ‘Each time you do it, I’ll be there to help you, so don’t give up.’
She leant down and kissed me so gently I barely felt it.
‘Promise,’ I implored.
Roselyn nodded. ‘I promise.’ And then, and then, ‘I’m pregnant, Thorne. We’re having a child.’
I’d never known a moment of such happiness in all of my life. I’d been waiting, I think. All along – just for this. A child of my own, one I could love without limits.
My beast purred in purest joy, and he stopped rattling at the cage. He lay down next to me, tired and full just as I was. I felt his coarse fur between my fingertips, and there was an easy sense of rightness. He would be with me, in the end.
I shared one last look with my wife, three last words, barely audible. ‘I love you.’
And I felt my eyes fall shut, and everything faded into thoughts of a family I’d never thought to deserve.