She withdrew her hand and I regretted the absence of it immediately. Swallowing, I muttered, ‘Thank you for what you did.’
Isadora tilted her head, eyes searching me and deciding on something, though I knew not what. She turned without a word.
‘Wait. I have no idea who you are.’
‘I’m the reason you’re still alive.’
‘Penn is the reason I’m still alive.’
The girl gave me another one of those searching looks. She reminded me of a doll, her features so pretty and small it seemed as though she’d crack at the first touch. ‘I want only his safety,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘His safety means the safety of two nations.’
‘Do you work for the Emperor?’
‘I work for myself, and for Kaya.’ She disappeared without a sound.
I turned to Jonah and Penn. ‘Guess we’ll deal with the creepy death angel at another juncture. For now, we go nowhere without Thorne.’
My brother met my eyes and his turned yellow for love of me. ‘You’d let him be the death of us. Why?’
I drew a breath. I believed, and always had done, that there was a reason for everything. My fascination for dangerous things had led me to Thorne, and now he was going to lead us to the one thing I wanted most. ‘He’s the one who’s going to help us save Da. I know it.’
Thorne
I dreamt of walking along the beach with Finn, our hands entwined, and then of a man who looked like me turning to her and devouring her with violent, bloody hands and teeth. I woke with the image of her mangled body on the sand, and my father’s footprints leading away from it.
It was still dark and I was in another unfamiliar room. For the second time I found myself alone in a bedchamber with a woman I didn’t know. Not the same woman, not the wild one. It was the white and red one. The knife-wielder. She was perched on a stool, staring blankly at the door.
Feeling my regard, she turned her eyes to me.
‘Who are you?’
‘Isadora.’
‘What are you doing in my room?’
‘Watching.’
I rubbed my eyes, struggling to sit up. My body ached something fierce. ‘For what?’
‘Those who seek to kill you in your sleep.’
It came back to me in a rush – the tavern and the fishermen. Finn’s yellow eyes as I squeezed her neck, and a sweet counting voice reminding me of the boy I tried so hard to be.
‘Why did you help me?’ I asked, but Isadora said nothing. I took a breath to smell her and caught no hint of animosity. Nor did I smell fear, but there was definitely a certain wariness that intensified as I sat up. Which meant I did not trust her, but for now I did not fear any malicious intent from her. ‘Where are the others?’
She gestured to the room next door.
‘They need a guard more than I.’
Nodding, Isadora cast me a look I couldn’t read. ‘You are a long way from home.’
‘I suppose I am. Though we often forget that Araan hugs this very same ocean.’
‘I speak of your true home.’ Then she added, ‘King of the Ice.’
I frowned, but couldn’t think of how to reply. Felt suddenly disoriented. Isadora rose silently; everything about her was like a wisp of smoke. The softness of her voice, the fluid grace of her movements, the way she was there and then gone.
I sat for a moment, then rose to pour myself a cup of wine to calm my nerves. Something was scratching at me, at all of my edges … I felt swelteringly hot and pulled my shirt off urgently, trying to get air onto my burning skin.
There was a soft knock on the door and I padded over to it. In the darkness of the hallway she looked small and young. But as she stepped past me and into the flickering candlelight, as soon as I saw the expression in her eyes, I knew: Finn of Limontae knew exactly what I was, and that made her very dangerous.
‘I didn’t tell them,’ she murmured. ‘But I could.’ There was something hard under her voice. An edge of granite.
Warders and berserkers. Born to kill each other.
I walked closer and took a deep breath, tasting her smells and allowing them to sink inside me. No intent to harm on her skin, but then again, what powers had a warder in cloaking her scents? How could I possibly trust what I smelt upon her?
‘How did you know?’
She tilted her head, a slight smile playing at the edge of her lips. ‘Magic.’
‘How –’
‘Does it happen a lot?’
‘What?’
‘The blood fever.’
I licked my dry lips. ‘Who died in the Siren Nights?’
She blinked. ‘What’s that got to do with –’
‘Please, just tell me.’
‘Why would I do that?’ Finn ran her fingers idly over the windowsill. ‘Why don’t you tell me how many people the beast within has harmed.’
‘Did you read my mind?’ I pressed. ‘Is that part of your warder magic?’
Finn rolled her eyes, sighing. ‘No, Thorne. I didn’t read your mind. I can, if you’d like, but you’ll turn into a drooling pile of mush on the floor.’
My eyes narrowed. ‘But some warders can?’
‘Certainly.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s commonly known –’
‘How do you know what happens when you try to read a mind?’ My heart was beating a funny rhythm, because I knew. I knew what the answer had to be.
She turned her eyes to me, and they were black, abruptly. It was unnerving seeing such a gloriously bright gaze disappear to be filled with something that looked like it belonged in the darkest shadows of the earth.
‘His name was Sam. The boy who died during the Siren Nights. I know everything about him, every intimate secret he ever possessed, and I know because I tried to read his mind while he was swinging along that rope, and I killed him.’
A great chasm seemed to open up inside me, but there was nothing in Finn. No expression, no regret. Just that gaze of hers, the gaze that waited for my reaction, and craved it.
‘Will you laugh at the idea of such entertainment?’ I asked softly, unaccountably hurt by her, and angry with myself for being baited by a creature as broken as this one. ‘You do love to laugh.’
‘I do,’ she agreed. ‘Perhaps if you laughed more you’d be less likely to cause a mass slaughter every time you lost your temper.’
I felt heat rush to my cheeks. We looked at each other in the candlelight. She was clever, but seemed so sheltered from the reality of the world. Did she really value human life so little that she would encourage its risk for fun? I wondered if she’d seen real death, real violence, if she’d ever truly lost anything – and if she hadn’t yet, I wondered if it would make a difference to her careless nature.
Finn’s eyes dropped to my chest and I became suddenly aware that I stood in only my breeches. ‘I’ve never seen one,’ she murmured, moving closer to peer at my skin. Her voice and scent had changed, dropped to something sweet, and I reeled at the disorienting shift in her mood.
‘One what?’
‘A tattoo.’
She moved right up close and I had to turn my face away from the sight of her. It caused something to hammer against my ribcage. Abruptly, desire clawed at me, and I was shocked by it, by its existence and voracity.
Her finger lifted to trace the shape, and I knew in the moment before our skin touched that I would let her this time, that some sick part of me didn’t care if it woke the beast within and he destroyed us both. But a hair’s breadth before she connected, Finn changed her mind and dropped the hand. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘It’s supposed to be intimidating.’
She gave a breath of laughter. ‘It’s that too.’ Next she appraised the design on the back of my shoulder, moving around behind me so that I could feel the heat of her against my spine. My tally was there – the eighteen marks along my vertebrae – but she didn’t ask what they were a count of, and I was
relieved.
She moved to my front again, bending close to my ribs to look at the bird poised in flight, and the wolf with his head tilted back in a howl that sat over my heart. Oyster shells covered my left arm, and these she traced with fingers that did not quite touch, as careful as if she expected to feel the bite of their teeth. The last tattoo was on the inside of my wrist, a slender rose bud with a stem of prickly thorns.
‘Are they stories, these tattoos?’
‘Pieces of stories, maybe.’
‘And who knows these stories? Who have you given them to, Prince Thorne?’
I swallowed, confused. ‘No one. I … Who would want them?’
She straightened as a strange expression passed through her eyes. ‘Why didn’t you want me to touch you?’
So she’d noticed. I shook my head slowly, unsure what to say. Shame was hot like an iron poker in my belly. Here was the mortifying truth of the kind of creature I was. To tell her meant giving her ammunition, but maybe it would also warn her. And though in moments I truly, deeply disliked her, I would die before I hurt her.
‘The beast wants to destroy everything,’ I murmured. ‘But I think, most of all, he wants to destroy you.’ My voice was low without me meaning for it to be. ‘I could lose control of him at any moment, and I wasn’t sure, if you touched me, if I could …’
Finn shivered, turning her face towards mine. ‘I’m not scared.’
‘I know you’re not.’ Her scent was nothing like fear.
Then she said, ‘I want to kiss you.’
I blinked, straightening. There was wickedness in her eyes. ‘Because you think me a play-thing. But you don’t understand.’
‘I understand perfectly.’
‘You’re selfish,’ I said bluntly. ‘You would poke the beast because you don’t care about the outcome, you want only chaos, and you don’t have a single thought for what it would do to me to harm you.’
‘You’re scared of him, aren’t you?’
My mouth opened but nothing came out.
‘Thorne,’ she said clearly, ‘I want to kiss you.’
I was angry and freaked out, but the worst thing of all was that I wanted her to kiss me too. ‘And do you always get what you want?’ I managed to breathe.
Finn considered. ‘Yes.’
Without warning a laugh bubbled up inside my chest and escaped me.
It made her lips curl into a grin. ‘There it is,’ she murmured. ‘The first time I’ve heard it. It’s lovely.’ She moved closer. ‘I want to kiss the corner of that laugh,’ she whispered. Leaning closer, I could feel her breath on my lips. ‘Will you let me, Prince Thorne?’
As if, in this moment, there was a way for me to deny her anything.
‘Finn,’ I warned, and then I felt her lips on the very corner of mine. Something erupted inside me. Something so powerful I thought it would break free of my skin and incinerate the earth we stood upon. The cage within shook and I almost lost my hold on it, even so soon after the last loss of control.
But in that instant – in that one, impossibly stretched out moment – she jerked away from me.
Her eyes flickered ebony scarlet azure lime maroon tangerine – and then stopped abruptly on her normal shade of yellow. She was breathing quickly, as completely rattled as I was. She turned her back on me, walking several paces away, and I tried to calm myself, unsure what in Gods’ names was going on.
I watched, feeling utterly dazed, as Finn finally smiled an unbearably cold smile. ‘You’re just a boy,’ she murmured. ‘You’d take it too seriously.’
A deep breath of air left me and I felt the beast quiet down in his cage. It was like being liberated and destroyed at the same time. She felt nothing; she wanted only a thrill, and the idea of danger. She killed people and felt nothing. She had rot in her heart, and cruelty.
‘You’re probably right,’ I said softly. ‘My apologies, lady, for the way I’ve spoken to you tonight. I am not myself.’
Finn’s eyes dropped with disappointment. She left the room, and I knew that even with the rot and the cruelty, my beast wanted her. I didn’t know if he wanted to destroy her, or if he just wanted her, and what’s more, I didn’t know what the difference was.
Finn
Foolish, foolish girl. I had known what it was to touch his skin, and yet I had kissed him anyway.
I wanted nothing and no one except as a distraction. I wanted loud and bright and fast and wild. I didn’t want quiet; I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear it. Because in the quiet I heard the screams and I heard her voice whispering to me over and over and I couldn’t make it stop.
And when my lips touched his, even for just a moment, less than a moment, I felt the dark heart of him creep out to take hold of me, and the world went so quiet it was like a tomb.
Chapter 6
Falco
It was hot under the sweltering sun; I could see a single drop of sweat running down the back of Quillane’s neck and I wanted to lick it off.
‘… which part?’ I heard her ask Petir.
‘That section there, Your Majesty,’ he answered her.
I moved forward to drape an arm around Quill’s shoulder and peer down at the area he’d pointed out. Before us was an enormous training course that had been built and erected on the sand of the city stadium. Volunteers would partake in the course, and only the most successful contestants would be selected to set out in search of what we’d now started referring to as ‘the curse-breaker’. Privately, of course. If anyone who was bonded ever heard Quillane or I refer to the bond as a curse we’d be in trouble.
The section Petir was gesturing to was supposedly the most dangerous bit of the course, a climb that if failed, didn’t look very pleasant.
‘Is that safe?’ Quill asked worriedly.
Petir glanced at me and I shrugged. I’d given him the orders. I stood by them. ‘His Majesty wanted it to be challenging …’
Quillane turned her green eyes to me. ‘Then it’ll be your fault if people die? That’s fine by me.’
‘No one’s going to die,’ I smiled. ‘We’ll have warders at each interval in case something goes wrong. If they can’t get through something like this, then they’re not likely to be able to manage much in the real world.’
What went unspoken was the very real possibility that the curse-breaker could be hidden in any number of the uninhabitable areas of our country, and if that were the case, we’d probably never reach it.
‘Says he who would likely fall to his death on that first rope there,’ she murmured.
‘How cruel you are, my love,’ I replied, planting a kiss on her neck. ‘Have the preparations been finished?’
‘Yes, Majesty,’ Petir answered.
‘And have you tried the course?’
‘I have.’
We both looked at him, waiting.
He blushed bright pink. ‘I … did not do well, I am afraid.’
I snorted with laughter. Quillane sighed. ‘What catastrophe have you cooked up for us now, Fal?’
‘It’s hardly my fault! You just love to blame me for everything.’
‘When the shoe fits …’
‘Away with you, Petir,’ I demanded. ‘I want to ravish my Empress.’
Petir vanished with remarkable speed.
‘You may want to, but you’re not going to,’ Quill muttered, shoving me away.
I clicked my tongue. ‘I don’t understand this. When will you let me have you?’
‘You’re not my bondmate.’
‘And we’ll never have one! So why not enjoy ourselves?’
‘Has it ever occurred to you that I’m simply not attracted to you?’
I blinked. ‘No. Never.’
She laughed, turning to descend the steps onto the sand. I followed her and we wandered through the course, peering up at each section. I’d designed it months ago and delivered the sketches anonymously to the architect. I was pleased to see now that he’d followed just about every specification I’d mad
e. It would not be for the faint of heart, this course.
I watched Quill swing up onto a large wooden ladder.
‘Careful,’ I warned. There were no warders here to stop her from falling.
She balanced lithely on the narrow beam at the top, arms flung wide. I moved beneath her, though what I could do if she fell I had no idea.
‘We’re not all as clumsy as you,’ she pointed out.
‘Just be thankful that one of us is an easy target,’ I muttered.
I saw her turn in the moonlight to peer down at me on the sand. ‘What do you mean?’
I shrugged quickly, flashing her a grin. ‘Nothing.’
‘You think you’re a target?’
‘We both are, darling.’
‘But you more so than me? Why?’
I tilted my head, considering how truthful to be. I supposed it couldn’t do her any harm to know what I meant. ‘There is a clear path for anyone to tread should they want to dispose of me.’
‘And what path is that?’
‘Well, consider this. I spend an inordinate amount of time alone in bedrooms with women I’ve never met.’
Quillane’s eyes flashed aubergine with alarm. ‘You think one of the girls you bed is going to assassinate you?’
I laughed. ‘It’s how I’d attack me. Anyone with half a brain should see the opportunity in it. I can hardly imagine the Sparrow failing to spot it. And given I have no chance of defending myself …’
‘Then why do you continue to meet with them?’ she exclaimed.
I winked at her. ‘Because, Quillane, I really, really love women.’
She shook her head slowly. ‘There’s something terrifying about how foolish you are, Falco.’
‘Oh, come now –’
‘If you were killed, how do you think I would manage?’
I closed my mouth, good mood fading. Antagonising her wasn’t all that fun when she actually started to get upset.
‘Do you think I can do this on my own?’ she pressed.
‘I know you can,’ I replied honestly.
‘I shouldn’t have to. You should care about me, Falco, and your people, and your country more than you care about bedding whores.’