‘We need more food supplies anyway,’ Jonah agreed, ‘since the giant eats four times as much as any normal person.’
Blushing, I led the way into the House, paying coin from our royal expense purse and renting two rooms, one for Isadora and Finn and the second for the males. I wondered if the girls would end up murdering each other during the night, but frankly would rather endure torture than try to intervene.
The others headed straight for the baths, but I hung back, checking the rooms – their entrances and windows, the locks and security. Hesitantly I made my way through the halls, passing people who stared at me in fear. At the first baths I could see Finn and Jonah languishing in the warm water, laughing as Penn did bomb dives into the pool and annoyed all the other patrons.
I couldn’t spot Isadora – she seemed driven by the need to be perpetually alone. I knew immediately that I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s fun, so I bypassed the pool and went strolling through the rock gardens. I kept to the empty pathways, scenting people and avoiding them.
As I was about to turn back I caught sight of a figure through the branches of an olive tree. It was a woman, and she was so pretty that I couldn’t help but sneak a proper look at her. She was on her knees before a pool, reaching in with a long tree branch to fish something out. A few soft curses left her mouth, and I could smell real worry on her skin.
I walked to her side to see that there was a gold bracelet sitting at the bottom of the pool. She would be able to reach it if she put her arm in the water, but for some reason she must have not wanted to get wet.
‘Let me help you,’ I offered, sinking to my knees to reach in and pluck the bracelet free. Her scent hit me full force, and I swung around to see that the woman was trembling with fear. She backed away from me, eyes white and emerald, white and emerald.
‘It’s all right,’ I tried quickly. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to frighten you.’
She shook her head, stumbling over a loose rock.
‘Please, I would never hurt you –’
But she was already dashing away.
A sick kind of guilt filled me. I didn’t belong here. The gold bracelet in my hand was cool and smooth. It was precious to the woman. But she hadn’t given it a single thought since the moment I stepped too close and she was faced not with her treasure but with a creature from her nightmares.
I placed the bracelet on a stone bench where she would be able to find it and then I quickly walked back towards the room, praying to the sword that I wouldn’t meet anyone else along the way.
No such luck. There were people blocking the path before me, and I saw quickly that one of them was Isadora, her hair and skin unmistakable in the afternoon sun. Around her were five children and they were poking her with sticks. I was so dumbfounded that my feet fell still and I forgot to do anything but stare.
Isadora tried to move through them but they blocked her way and jabbed her from all sides, calling her words like ‘demon’ and ‘monster’ and ‘hideous’.
I came to my senses and hurried towards them, but I was beaten to it. Finn had appeared from the other end of the path and in her face was a look of such fury I thought it a miracle the earth didn’t incinerate beneath her feet. She grabbed the closest boy by the back of the neck and kicked him so hard in the backside that he yelped and sprinted away.
‘Get out of here, you snot-nosed little brats, or the demon and I will come to your rooms tonight and eat your souls out.’
They ran, squealing with shared excitement.
Isadora was expressionless as Finn and I converged on her.
‘What a bunch of shits,’ Finn commented. ‘Why didn’t you beat some sense into them?’
‘They’re children,’ Isadora pointed out.
‘And?’
‘Are you all right?’ I asked her. Isadora merely nodded and went inside.
Finn and I looked at each other.
‘I thought you didn’t want to fight, huh?’
‘Oh no, you misunderstood – I’m more than happy to fight those smaller and weaker than me,’ she replied, deadpan.
I started laughing, and a slow smile found her lips. Her eyes turned violet. And then sank to a deep, dark purple, so dark it was almost black. It caught me, the scent of this shift. Trapped me in a different kind of cage, one with bars that felt at once completely new and also like they’d been waiting for me all along. She was dripping wet from the pool and I was abruptly aware of how her shift clung to her body.
Without a word, she turned and walked along the path, descending a set of steps I hadn’t explored. And without a word, I followed her. At the bottom of the steps was a lemon tree, its scent heady and delicious. It was not as heady and delicious, however, as the scent of Finn, and this was why my beast made me follow.
Beyond the tree was a small bath that overlooked the sea, and it was completely empty. Finn climbed into the water and gave a long sigh of pleasure. ‘Don’t make me force you,’ she warned without opening her eyes.
I glanced around to make sure we were alone before removing my shirt and breeches, leaving my undershorts. Stepping into the bath, I sank to my chin and felt warmth spread my muscles with a kind of agonised bliss.
‘My parents met at these baths,’ Finn said with a smile.
I watched her face, the lines of it, the shape of her mouth, the dark lashes resting against her freckled cheekbones.
‘Do you want to hear the story?’
I nodded, forgetting she couldn’t see me. It didn’t matter – I didn’t think she cared if I wanted to or not.
‘Da was here to sell his catch to the kitchens, and he was carrying two huge nets of carp over his shoulders as he wound his way through a thousand screaming children in the halls. He was young then, brash and confident with what he called “the entitlement of youth”. He was handsome too, as Ma told it. Sun-drenched cheeks, muscles made for trawling fishing nets. Quick to laugh.’
I could see Finn in the description, and understood where she’d come from. This Alexi was a far cry from the man I had met in her house last week though, the one crippled and shrunken by loss.
‘As he drew nearer to the kitchens, he grew more and more frustrated by the chaos, and started snapping at the kids to move out of his damned way!’ Finn grinned as she spoke, obviously remembering the way her ma used to tell the story. I felt right there with Alexi, surprised yet again by how she conjured such images with her words.
‘And then Da stumbled, careening into something, and both the nets of fish unravelled from his clutches to spew all over the poor creature who’d been unfortunate enough to collide with the fishmonger. Da looked down, about to erupt into a burst of frustrated curses, when instead he stood speechless. For it was a girl. Small and plain, less good-looking by far than he, and covered head-to-toe in stinking raw seafood. But she was laughing. As Da stuttered a mortified apology, she simply said it was a lucky setting for it and that she would forgive him if he took the bath with her. And they bonded, just like that.’
I smiled as she finished and looked at me. ‘It’s a good story.’
‘It’s an excellent story.’
‘You tell it well. You tell all stories well.’
‘The secret is in the embellishments,’ she revealed.
‘So which bits were actually true?’
‘If I told you that, it would spoil all the fun.’ She laughed at my expression. ‘How did your parents meet?’
I shrugged. ‘She was sold to him for marriage.’
‘Oh. Lovely.’
Finn swam a little closer. Her cheeks were flushed from the warm water, and her eyes were pale, pale yellow, like a field of wheat or a distant sun. ‘What is it about you?’ she murmured to herself.
I held her eyes. Held them and held them.
Then I noticed that one of her hands was resting over the surface of the water and beneath it the liquid was inexplicably forming tiny orbs that floated up into the air.
My eyes widened and sh
e followed my gaze, closing her hand with a snap. The water abruptly returned to normal.
Something in her breathing hitched and she stood up. ‘I want salt.’ Then she waded to the side of the bath, climbed over the stone wall, and started picking her way down the rocks to the seashore. Apparently we weren’t going to talk about whatever that was.
I followed. Felt as though I had no choice in the matter anymore: where she went, I went. What I didn’t understand was why.
The ocean was shockingly cold when it crashed into me. Finn was ahead, diving under already, looking like a fish. I pushed my way out and ducked under; it was like coming alive, like my body finally knew how to work, to breathe, to be here, be present. It felt so damn good I laughed. I wanted and needed and I was tired of denying that. So maybe I could just let myself have this, for a little while. Sun and sea and Finn’s laughter.
Finn
After our swim we sat on the warm sand, letting the sun dry our skin. There was a strange, almost unbearable restlessness thrumming beneath my surface.
‘I want to try something,’ I blurted, knowing it was a bad idea but unable to help myself. Wasn’t that always the way of things? My foolish heart running towards cliffs and leaping over their edges without care for the consequence. It was easy to blame this part of me on Sam and on Ma, but I knew that in truth I had been like this since the moment I was born, and nothing would ever change it.
Thorne and I were both resting our arms on our raised knees, and he glanced over his shoulder at me.
‘Touch me. Skin on skin. Just a little.’
‘Really?’
‘I just want to try it.’ I was nervous, actually. Which was unusual.
Thorne pressed the tip of his index finger against the skin of my ankle. And there he was, all of him. The beat, beat of his blood through his veins. The thump, thump at the very centre of him. And the suffocating roof of the world crashing down atop him, bowing his strong shoulders until they were weak, shrinking him into small small small –
‘Stop, stop,’ I panted. He snatched his finger away and the feeling receded immediately, gone as if it had never been there.
He searched my face closely, but he didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell him.
Swallowing, I bid him, ‘Try again.’
Thorne hesitated, probably not exactly liking the idea of what I was experiencing of him, but then he reached the back of his hand out and brushed his fingers over my wet foot, gliding them up over my ankle and around the underside of my calf.
This time I got crushing weight. But I also got a sudden rush of cold so intense it felt as if I’d been frozen from the inside. My eyes flew open and met his, but whatever he saw in my face did not make him remove his touch. He circled his fingers around my ankle and clasped it in his big hand, touching me more firmly.
The ice slipped away, as if thawed, and I got earth and sea and sharp glittering edges and, and something – what was that?
‘More,’ I murmured, distracted.
And that was when Thorne bent his head to press his lips to the inside of my ankle, and I actually – embarrassingly – gasped. Because the thing I couldn’t grasp became an overwhelmingly sweet lightness. It tasted of cherries and felt like whispers against my skin, and it was fast like fluid animal strength melting through trees and surrounded by pine and roughage and warm warm warm.
The air left me in a great big rush and I needed more. I needed more and more and more for infinity. He knew; he could smell it on me, and I in turn knew this because I was allowing myself to stay with his touch, to really feel it, to feel beyond the first layers of it. It occurred to me that I did not touch anyone enough to feel beyond the initial sensation to the complexities of what really lay in their hearts, and this, for the first time, was a revelation. Of Thorne, and of me.
Thorne moved his mouth up the inside of my leg, tickling the underside of my knee and then sliding around to the soft length of my thigh.
I reached to press my hands against his shoulders and back, wanting more touch, as much as I could have. I could feel his heart beating in time with mine and I started to confuse all the pieces of him with all the pieces of me, my mind scattering more with each kiss. His hunger was draping my skin like a veil; I could taste it in my mouth. He could taste salt, and he said it; he called me ‘Salt Girl’, with eyes that darted up to rest on mine, eyes I could see berserker and boy and man and beast within.
I went in and out of my body. One moment I was in our wet skin, slippery against each other, and the next I was in the forest of his heart, running scenting hunting, strong and alive and free. One moment I was the burn of his mouth against my skin and the flicker-pound of my heart, then I was trapped in ice and surrounded by the most mournful howl I had ever imagined, knowing knowing knowing the baying belonged to the moon-snatcher himself.
And then he moved his mouth up the inside of my leg, all the way, and I felt his tongue inside me and
and I was nothing but a set of nerve endings a sky drifting dark around me a rising heat a trembling ache and wings lifting me up up up.
Sensation exploded through my skin and fizzed down my spine, burning everything in its wake. I was the volcano above us, a burnt out husk but also a river of raging lava and a sea of inexplicable oyster shells.
It took me a long time to come back, to find that my body felt familiar to me again, and not some gloriously animal creature made for desire and nothing else. Slowly I became aware that I was still lying in the sand, and that Thorne still had his large hand on my ankle, his thumb circling my skin idly. It made it impossible for my mind to hold to any single thought.
‘Enough,’ I managed, and he removed his hand from my skin, and I became Finn again. Sitting up, it was as though I shook off layer after layer of impossible feelings and sensations and images, until I was alone again in my head and body.
I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to handle anything like that again, and I had a very acute awareness of why warder powers were so dangerous – not just to the world around, but to the warder. What if touch was always like that for me? What if I never escaped the intensity? I’d always been careful, not wanting to touch too many people, not wanting to feel what it made me feel, but now that I understood the full extent of what my touch could bring I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle it again. Which seemed an incredibly lonely life to live.
‘Finn,’ Thorne murmured, and I looked into his face and realised that he was concerned. And the look was enough to rip my vulnerable heart into a thousand tiny thumping pieces.
‘I’m fine,’ I said quickly. ‘I just wasn’t expecting …’
My eyes were shifting colours quickly, moving through too many shades to name. He watched each shift, then murmured worriedly, ‘You wanted fun. I gave you fun.’
‘You sure did,’ I agreed.
It was in that moment that we both realized the hilarity of this and burst into exhausted, hysterical laughter. Even though feeling all the secrets in Thorne’s soul was something very different to fun.
The Bath House was in a flurry of movement when we returned. It took us a few tense moments to work out that two separate bonded couples had gone missing from their rooms.
‘They probably just left,’ I said, thinking it obvious.
Jonah and Penn had found us in the corridor, already having spoken to the house owners. ‘All their belongings are still in their rooms,’ my brother explained.
‘Did the couples know each other?’ Thorne asked.
‘Had nothing to do with each other, as far as the owner knows.’
‘How long have they been missing?’
‘They each travelled with companions who’ve said the respective couples both disappeared two nights ago.’
‘And have only reported it now?’
‘Suppose so. The owner said that over the last month at least half a dozen bonded couples have gone missing from their rooms and have yet to return for their belongings.’
I frowned. Th
at was very weird.
We returned to our rooms to change from our wet clothes. I was alone in the chamber I shared with Isadora. I never had any idea to where the girl disappeared. Perhaps she just didn’t like being around us. Made sense – I wasn’t exactly welcoming. As I dried myself with a towel I couldn’t help thinking about the bonded couples, and something about it stuck in my mind, nagging at me.
Because I was alone I didn’t bother dressing, but walked to the window, enjoying the sensation of the ocean wind against my raw skin.
Where had I been asked about bonded couples recently? The men in the forest, I remembered. Sin and his gang had been searching for bonded couples and warders, which I’d thought unusual. My fingers ran through the grooves in the sandstone walls, idly using the rough feeling to focus my mind. Eight couples missing from the one establishment. That was more than enough to assume there was foul play involved. And if it was somehow involved with Sin’s men, or warders, then that was even more strange, for they’d been on the other side of the country.
I was about to turn for my clothes, feeling hungry, when I realised belatedly that the room next to mine had a balcony, from which I was clearly visible standing in my open window. And on that balcony was Thorne, watching me.
Our eyes met and I felt his gaze ignite every inch of my skin. I gave a laugh of astonishment and saw him blush bright pink, dropping his eyes quickly. He looked mortified at having been discovered.
I could have gone inside. But that thought lasted less than the shadow of a moment. Instead, I decided to play. I moved to the railing so he could see me better, and as his eyes flicked up again I saw surprise turn to something dark. I could feel those eyes as they darted over my hips, my arms, shoulders, breasts. I could feel his lips on my salt skin even now, just as intensely as I had on the beach.
Would this be the only way I could touch without the tumult of someone’s secrets assailing me? With looks and memories?
A voice called to him from inside his room and he turned reluctantly to reply. Moving inside, he paused briefly to meet my eyes. A small, shy smile curled the corners of Thorne’s lips before he disappeared.