Avery (Random Romance)

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ he roared, pacing around me like a furious, caged beast.

  My head spun as I breathed through the pain.

  ‘Ava,’ he barked. It was the first time he’d ever used my name, and something inside me started to very slowly unfreeze. Against my will, the world began to shift on its axis. Ambrose crouched before me, and as I opened my eyes all I could see were his blue ones. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You climbed onto the roof, so I followed,’ I replied.

  ‘Your hand.’

  ‘I punched a mirror.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why did you come up here?’

  We stared at each other. He lifted me slowly into a sitting position, where I cradled my hand against my chest.

  ‘They were going to shoot you,’ I murmured.

  ‘So you said you’d get me down?’

  I nodded. ‘Why did you come up here?’

  ‘To see if I could spot the prison. I needed to understand the space. I couldn’t breathe not knowing where I was.’

  His face was tense, his eyes shadowed. ‘And can you see it?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I can’t see a damn thing except sea. Endless sea.’

  I closed my eyes. The truth built inside me and started to come forth. ‘I didn’t lie to be cruel,’ I murmured. ‘I lied to protect myself. And because … because it was easier to be him than to be me. When I used his name and his skin it didn’t feel like he was so far away.’

  He rubbed his eyes, pacing away from me. I used the moment of silence to turn and look around at where we were. The view was dizzying, as if we stood alone at the top of the world. The sea went out to meet the sky, blue on blue. To the left was the top of the mighty waterfall, and flying through the air were dozens of wild pegasi, swooping and whinnying with delight. I watched them for a long moment, thinking of Migliori. Above us the deep grey of storm clouds drew nearer.

  ‘Marla said she’d organise daylight privileges for you. I can take you down to the wharf.’

  Ambrose smiled cruelly. ‘Like a dog on a leash? Don’t they have any idea? I could tear this whole place to the ground using only my hands.’

  I swallowed, unable to take my eyes from him. He paced, every inch of him vibrating with a kind of enraged energy. In this mood he was a very dangerous man. ‘Don’t give them a reason to kill you.’

  He turned eyes of the palest blue to me, eyes that had in one moment gone dead. ‘No one kills me. They try and they fail.’

  I felt cold, the bite of the wind reaching my bare arms.

  Ambrose crouched in front of me, his expression glowing like that of a wild animal. ‘Men of Pirenti are forged in iron, like the Holy Sword itself.’

  ‘What about the women of Pirenti?’

  ‘They give life. They come from the earth and they go back to the earth when the breath is gone from their bodies.’

  I shivered. ‘In Kaya we send our dead back to the sea,’ I murmured very softly, still gazing into his eyes. ‘That’s where I want to go.’ I took a breath, and felt the ache around my heart tighten. ‘That’s where I want you to send me.’

  He jerked backwards, shocked. ‘Me?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  I reached for his hand and gripped it tightly. ‘You’re my best friend, you idiot. Who else could do it?’

  He closed his eyes, and my hand, without my permission, found its way to his cheek. He leant into the touch, exhausted. ‘Ava …’

  ‘I keep asking myself why this happened,’ I told him softly. ‘How you and I could have possibly ended up here, together. I think I’m supposed to help you realise.’

  ‘Realise what?’

  ‘The man you will be.’

  He opened his eyes. Mine shifted to navy, and something else – another colour. Another colour I couldn’t feel, couldn’t bear to.

  Ambrose

  As carefully as I could, I started to pull the glass from her hand. ‘Relax it,’ I ordered, tapping her wrist.

  Clenching her jaw instead, she managed to un-fist her hand and turn her face towards the ocean. Long tendrils of her blond hair blew into my face, and I felt a fat raindrop land on my neck. She didn’t make a sound as I dug the glass out, trying to get to all the little pieces before wrapping a piece of her sleeve around the hand and tying it tightly. ‘You won’t be able to climb back down now.’

  Ava didn’t say anything. She hadn’t said a word since the man you will be. I had absolutely no idea what that meant, no idea who that man was supposed to be. I did get the feeling he would be better than whatever I was now. Whoever he was, this woman wanted him to bury her at sea when she died. And standing on this roof, I knew it was the most important thing anyone had ever asked me.

  ‘I’m trying, Ava,’ I said, still holding her wrapped hand in my lap.

  She lifted her eyes to me. The purple shone so bright under the darkening sky – that purple made me into a new version of myself. I said, because it mattered, ‘You asked me if I could see you. I would ask you the same question.’

  Ava frowned, eyes searching me. Small flecks of gold had appeared within them, dancing like flames.

  ‘I’m an imperfect person,’ I muttered, ‘and I’m very different to you or anyone else you know. But I’m trying – I’m trying for you.’

  Ava blinked and removed her hand from mine. ‘What?’

  ‘You said I need to change. Well, Sword, if that’s what you want, then I’ll try.’

  ‘Why?’ she demanded, abruptly horrified. I think she knew what was coming, she must have – it was written over every inch of her body, the way a person gets when they know they’re about to be attacked.

  I smiled hopelessly, unable to think of any more excuses not to tell her. I’d been born twenty-five years ago, and I’d lived twenty-five years of bleakness. I’d never thought there would be anything different, anything more. But now there was this – now there was her. Whose smile might be the death of me, the life of me.

  So I said, ‘Because I love you.’ Stupid – I felt so stupid, saying that out loud, but I couldn’t have avoided it, now that she was in my life.

  The silence stretched out around us. I saw her eyes change colour a hundred times, a thousand, so fast I couldn’t keep up.

  Ava drew a breath. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  I shrugged, letting her see the truth.

  ‘You don’t,’ she stammered. ‘You couldn’t possibly. You’re just seeing me as a woman for the first time, and you desire me. That’s not love.’

  ‘Sword, yes, I desire you,’ I said softly, voice a rough growl. Her eyes turned black. ‘I want you so badly I can barely see straight. But that’s not it – I mean, it’s not everything.’

  Carefully, with a hand trembling ever so slightly, I reached out and touched her cheek. She flinched like prey, then stilled. I let my fingers trace her lips, all the delicate, soft lines of them. I wanted to keep touching them for every second of the rest of my life. I wanted to kiss them until they bled, until neither of us could breathe. I wanted a life that was not my own, one I’d never be entitled to because I came from a damaged, violent country.

  It hit me then – who was I to love a creature like this? I didn’t deserve her, and there was no lifetime in which I ever could. She loved a man I now remembered – a man with black hair, who had stood straight at his death and died for his country. A man who had known the line between right and wrong. And here I sat, a complicated mess of compromised beliefs and stretched morals. All I had left, all I possessed, was this one stupid truth.

  ‘I loved you when you were a man, and I love you as a woman. I see you as you are, Ave – broken into pieces and suffocating – and I love all the pieces of you, no matter how small they’ve shattered, nor how far they’ve been scattered.’

  I stopped talking with a breath of incredulous laughter. I sounded like a lunatic, an imbecile. I’d never wanted to say anything like that in my whole life. I’d barely
known words like those existed. Did she have any damn idea how absurd this was for me, how impossible? Looking at her, I think she did realise, but she was who she was, and all the reasons I loved her were still there. I saw it in her face, her eyes – the way she pulled away from me. She was supposed to have no fear, and yet in that moment I believe she feared what I was doing to her.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, her eyes wide. They’d gone a strange shade now – a deep, beautiful russet, flecked through with gold. ‘Don’t love me, Ambrose – it’s such a waste.’

  My other hand moved to hold her face between both of mine. I didn’t know how to explain. I had tried and failed.

  She stood and moved out of my reach. ‘It’s the nature of the bond. I can’t love another person. Nor do I want to – I’m loyal to Avery.’

  A sudden sickness made its way into my guts – a belated realisation. ‘You used his name?’ I whispered, so startled I almost wanted to vomit. She’d said it earlier but I hadn’t even noticed.

  ‘What other name would I choose?’

  I closed my eyes. I felt like the greatest fool in all the world, humiliated to my very core. I’d managed to fall in love with the identity of the man I envied most.

  ‘The bond is a curse, a cruel one,’ Ava said. ‘I will die once I’ve finished what I started, and then what will you have but a memory?’

  I felt empty. I understood how Ava felt, to have lost someone she loved. It was like she’d been pulled physically from my grip, though really she had never been there to begin with.

  ‘You were born to love someone, Ambrose,’ she told me. ‘You have so much to offer – so much you don’t realise about yourself. I’m just not that person. I’m a ghost.’

  I stood and faced her. The rain began to fall. So much rain here, so many storms.

  ‘I didn’t tell you so that I could have you,’ I said. ‘I’d never presume to deserve you. I told you so that you’d be sure.’

  I watched her swallow – my eyes followed the movement of her throat and the pulse beating in her neck. ‘Sure of what?’

  ‘That I’ll do as you asked. If you’re gone before I am, I’ll send your body back to the sea. I’ll do that for you.’

  Ava closed her eyes and I saw a tear slide from beneath one of the lashes. ‘Thank you.’

  I smiled gently. ‘Come on. We’ll have to face them at some point. Climb onto my back.’

  Wordlessly, she did as I said, and I slowly lowered us down the wall, now slippery with rain. ‘I won’t let us fall,’ I promised over my shoulder.

  ‘I know that,’ Ava replied. ‘I’ve always known that.’

  Chapter 11

  Thorne

  It took us a long time to get home from the hut on the border – we were both exhausted. As we plodded along in silence I couldn’t forget the sound she’d made upon seeing the dead animals. There was so much fear and violence beyond the tiny life she knew, and I’d always been careful not to let her near any of it. But that, that had been too much for her, and I could feel her retreating inside her head. I sighed, confused.

  As we walked, I thought about the way she’d stood before me and reached out to touch me – a feat she had known would most likely be deadly and yet had done anyway. Part of me was screaming that it was a kind of treason to protect Kayans in such a way, and to let them escape, but I couldn’t bring myself to see it that way – the bravery of her actions seemed too noble to be punished.

  And then there was the simple story of how she had saved a man’s life when Kayans had first attacked the fortress. It made no sense to me, to the kind of fear I knew she possessed.

  Roselyn stared into the sky as we walked, lips moving silently.

  ‘What are you counting?’

  She flushed and quickly glanced down. ‘Birds.’

  ‘How many have you seen?’

  ‘Twelve red-breasted finches, four swallows, a pelican, and a blue woodpecker. Thirty-six wings and thirty-six eyes.’

  I looked at her, impressed. ‘You know a lot about birds.’

  She shrugged bleakly. ‘My mother loved them. She knew every bird’s name and all of their habits. I only saw the pelican here because we’re close to the sea.’

  ‘Your mother,’ I murmured. ‘The one who knew about medicine, too. She sounds … special.’

  Roselyn bit her lip and turned away. Her mother had died two years ago. I remembered those days with aching clarity, because I’d spent them alone in our rooms while Rose had been out trying to save her ma. When she’d come back, she’d been like a shadow. I’d tried to hold her, to talk to her, but I wasn’t good with things like that, and the pain of it had hurt, so I’d had to leave it – leave her, and go north into the ice.

  We kept walking. I spotted a small, brown bird and pointed it out. ‘There’s one!’

  ‘That’s thirteen finches. They’re the most common in the forest.’ As she spoke she smiled, and it was so real, so unhindered that it lit up her eyes in a way I hadn’t seen in years. I knew she’d come back from the horror of what she’d seen this morning.

  And in that moment I felt a stab in the guts, because there was only one week until the solstice.

  Back at the fortress that evening, I was called upon to attend my mother in the execution room. I knew exactly what it meant, what it always meant.

  ‘Why must I be the one to do this?’ I asked her as I arrived.

  She blinked in surprise at my words. ‘Because you are the prince. You and I do this together – it’s family tradition.’

  ‘Can we not just send them to the prison isle?’

  ‘I had not thought their crimes merited such punishment,’ Ma said thoughtfully. ‘That fate has only ever been for Kayans and army deserters. But if you disagree, my son, then …’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly, no idea what had come over me. It wasn’t right to send these people to be tortured when I could end their lives quickly.

  She peered at me a moment. ‘You are the slaughterman of Pirenti. Do your job without constantly disappointing me.’

  Embarrassment struck, and a desperate need to please her, to show her that I could be the man she longed for me to be. ‘Of course.’

  In truth, the executions had never bothered me before. In the past I’d enjoyed them – enjoyed the way they seemed to delight my mother. But now … I didn’t know what had changed, but something had. Maybe it was the fact that Ambrose was gone – he was usually the one to put up a fight, and his blatant disloyalty had always offended me. Now, I seemed to be taking on his role.

  It was odd and unnerving, but all of these squeamish feelings had started the night I’d learnt that Rose was in love with my brother. My little brother, who never did any of the slaughtering. Who was as gentle as a Pirenti man could be without getting murdered for it – who was kinder to her than anyone else in the fortress. I clenched my fists, stretched my muscles, and willed myself not to think about it. Not now.

  My ma handed me the knife, and the prisoners were led forward. The sun was sinking and I could see it through the mighty back window. For some reason, my mind wandered back to an evening very much like this one a couple of years ago – the night Ma had been stabbed. The Kayans had escaped out that back window – those we hadn’t killed. I’d wanted to have it blocked off in case a future attack ensued and they used it again – it was clearly a weak spot. But Ambrose had fought tooth and nail to keep it open. Just because there is ugliness, it doesn’t mean we should forget about beauty.

  Did Rose love him because of those words? And all the other words that came from some place inside him that had managed to salvage poetry in a blood-drenched world? Looking out to the sky, I was irrationally glad that window was still there – glad I could at least breathe fresh air while I did this.

  I thought of the black-haired man from that night years ago, as I often did. He spent a lot of time with me now, because he’d come here, into the very heart of our strength, and he’d attempted to kill our queen. He’d come very,
very close – closer than anyone ever had. In the end, he’d died on this stone floor, just as they all did. But sometimes when I couldn’t sleep at night I thought back to him, to that young man, and I was stunned anew by his valour. The bravery of such a mission and the way he’d died, with shoulders straight and eyes focused. It was so strange to me, to think of a Kayan that way. Never before had I considered them to be brave, or worthy of anything at all. His eyes – they haunted me sometimes – had turned gold in the end. It confused me, kept me up at night. I wished I knew his name, which was stupid.

  Pulling myself back to the room, I glared down at the row of Kayan prisoners before me. There were people crowded around – mainly my own soldiers, come to watch. And at the very back I caught a glimpse of Roselyn’s red hair. Here again where she wasn’t supposed to be. Again she’d forgotten. I couldn’t let her distract me, couldn’t let her inside my head right now. I drew a breath and focused on my task.

  My ma grinned at me, and then went to work. She slit the first man’s throat with ease. The smell of his blood filled my nostrils and I felt the usual excitement unfurl in the base of my stomach. As I executed our prisoners with my mother, hands shaking with the need of it, a thought occurred to me for the first time in my life. She makes me do this because she knows how the blood affects me. She knows it is the only way to control me – to unleash the beast inside me and use it as she wills. She’s been doing this since I was a child – cultivating my bloodlust. It was like a shock to my system, realising all of this at once. And yet I could do nothing – I was trapped within the prison of my heritage, trapped within the need for violence I could never escape. There was too much blood around me to stop what I was doing, so I simply continued to kill.

  And that was when I realised that I wasn’t the strongest man in the world after all. I was the weakest.