Ambrose
When she focused really hard, she got this little crease in her forehead, and she bit her lip every time she thought something wouldn’t work. Also, she had a habit of humming under her breath. All these little things I was starting to notice made me realise how good an actress Ava really was. As Avery, she’d managed to refrain from her usual mannerisms, and had taken on a completely different persona. But now, here, under the infinite blue sky and atop the endless green sea, she was transforming back into the woman she’d once been.
The two of us had borrowed some fishing spears from one of the fishermen sitting on the edge of the wharf, and then we’d made our way a little further down to where it was less crowded. My guards – four of them – were lined up on the wharf behind us while we stood thigh-deep in the cool water, scanning for carp. I hadn’t had a clue what one looked like until Ava had stabbed a big grey fish on the end of her spear faster than I could blink. Now we had a small pile on the rocks behind us, all of which had been caught by her. I’d missed about thirty in a row.
‘I’m sick of this rubbish,’ I announced sulkily.
Ava laughed, a trickle of sound. ‘You’ve got no patience. Let me guess – you’ve always been instantly good at everything you tried?’
I flashed her a crooked grin. ‘Of course.’
‘Well some things require effort and discipline, Your Majesty. Keep trying and you’ll get something eventually.’
I rolled my eyes and had another stab, this time missing the fish by a hair’s breadth. I clicked my tongue in frustration.
Ava waded over to me. Startling me, she grabbed my spear hand and repositioned it above my head. ‘Relax your shoulder,’ she murmured. Her hands forced both my bare shoulders down, so that my back wasn’t so tense. Then she covered my spear hand with her unbandaged one and waited for a fish. ‘Let your arm go limp. I’ll show you how it should feel.’
We waited, frozen still. I was sure she could hear my heart pounding – it sounded so loud in my ears. All my nerve endings seemed attuned to where she stood behind me, and the heat coming from her body. Without warning, my mind went straight to the night she’d washed the wounds on my back, and the way she’d touched me. A woman’s beauty is in her strength, and her passion. Gods, I should have known. All those little clues kept coming back to hit me and make me feel humiliated all over again. Honestly – how dumb did you have to be to not recognise what gender someone was?
Ava’s arm moved lightning quick, jabbing downwards into the space the fish had just swum into. Grinning, she held up the wriggling prize, our hands still entwined on the spear.
‘See? Jab faster and stronger. You’ve got the muscles, so use them. Don’t think about it, just act.’
I glanced over my shoulder and she must have realised how close we were standing as she quickly moved away and went back to scanning the water. I watched her blond hair glistening in the sun, and her strong, tanned arms taught with muscles. She belonged to the water, I now saw. I’d never known a woman to be so strong, so capable. I was surprised to find it a massive turn-on.
‘What are you smirking about?’ she asked me.
‘Nothing.’
‘Well don’t watch me – watch the water.’
‘Yes, ma’am. How old are you really?’
‘Twenty.’
‘And Avery? How old was he when he—?’
‘He was five years older than me.’
I didn’t ask any more questions after hearing the pain in her voice.
The next time I struck out for a fish, I tried to anticipate where it was swimming and focused on letting my instincts guide my arm. ‘Yes!’ I shouted, holding up the fish. ‘Woo! Who’s the master now?’
She rolled her eyes, but I saw a smile curve the corners of her mouth. ‘That’s one to my ten.’
The catch renewed my fervour for fishing, and I decided that maybe I did like it after all. I changed my mind after an hour without another catch. ‘Can we go in yet? I’m getting burnt.’ My skin wasn’t as used to the sun as hers was – it was paler, and probably much redder after today. Ava came back from her thoughts as if realising I was still there, and I wondered, not for the first time, where her mind had been. I could certainly guess.
Ava
We ate lunch in Ambrose’s room. He was only allowed outside for six hours in every twenty-four, so we were going to save the last two for a visit to the warder’s temple this evening. Ambrose got to the plates first, and lifted the lids to find various cheeses, fruits and what appeared to be quince paste.
‘Excellent,’ he grinned. ‘This will be perfect for lesson number two.’
‘Lesson two?’
‘In food appreciation.’
‘No way – the stew was enough appreciation for me.’ I didn’t want another breakdown, given how prone to fits of self-indulgence I seemed to be lately.
‘Cheese is my favourite food.’
‘Everything is your favourite food.’
‘Come on – let me show you,’ he implored.
I hesitated.
‘Take that piece of cheese there,’ he instructed.
I brushed my hair behind my ear and picked it up.
‘Now put it in your mouth.’
I shot him a look. ‘Right, thanks for that.’
He watched as I put the piece in my mouth.
‘What now?’ I asked around the food.
Ambrose laughed. ‘Now you chew, loser.’
I couldn’t help but laugh too. ‘Oh.’
‘Wait,’ he added. ‘Slow down. Keep the piece in your mouth and let it sit on your tongue – don’t swallow it too fast.’
I stopped chewing.
‘Suck it a little bit. Feel how it melts? Taste how its flavour intensifies after a few moments?’
The cheese started to melt just as he’d said, and as it did it burst to life in my mouth. My eyes widened, stunned by the incredible power of taste. I love all the pieces of you. Dear Gods, I couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t stand to have those words anywhere near me – they were monstrous. I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed.
Ambrose grinned. ‘I knew you could still taste. You were just being stubborn. Try this one next.’ He passed me a slice of crumbly cheese, darker in colour. ‘Chew it slowly.’
It had a sharp bite to it that was completely different to the smoothness of the last mouthful.
‘Good, right? Can you taste the saltiness?’
I nodded reluctantly. It occurred to me that he was watching my mouth very closely, his eyes resting intimately on my lips. I felt instantly uncomfortable, and my heart started speeding up. I’d never presume to deserve you. I swallowed too quickly, and the lump of cheese hurt my throat. Grabbing another piece, I stuffed it in my mouth.
‘You haven’t forgotten about the simplest pleasures. You just needed reminding.’
‘By you?’ I scoffed, bits of cheese spraying from my lips.
‘I know the things that you like,’ he told me simply. And then he said, in a different voice, ‘I know exactly how to make your cheeks flush with pleasure like that.’
I stopped. He stared at me, unperturbed. I swallowed too fast again, the massive lump making its way painfully down my throat. ‘Don’t be stupid. I can’t feel pleasure, Ambrose, or anything like it.’
His eyes moved to my throat. ‘I can see your pulse fluttering under your skin, and your pupils are dilated slightly. Your fist is clenched so tightly your knuckles are white. If I were to guess, I’d say your body is starting to get very warm, very quickly.’
I moved away from him but came up against the wall, my heart thumping in disbelief. What was he doing?
‘If I ran my tongue over your jaw just now, down your neck, over your collar bone, around the curve of your breast to your nipple, I know exactly what would happen to you.’
Holy shit. I dared not move, speak, even breathe. My thoughts were scattered and nonsensical. Ambrose didn’t move any closer, but the way he was gaz
ing at me, the tone of his voice – it was as though he was caressing my whole body.
‘You’d gasp at first,’ he murmured very softly, his eyes dropping to my legs, my thighs, the space between them. ‘Then you’d close your mouth quickly, embarrassed at the sound, but soon you’d forget about embarrassment because your breathing would be quickening sharply, making your heart thump and your skin tingle. You’d moan, like you couldn’t believe what your body was doing to you, how it was betraying you. Then you wouldn’t care about even that – you’d be gone, lost. That’s when I’d take you.’
‘Stop,’ I managed to rasp.
So he stopped. He sat there and watched me calmly, with no expression at all. But his eyes were watching mine now, and I knew that I’d be giving everything away, that the colour of my gaze could never lie.
I stood and turned my back on him. ‘We’re going to the temple right now.’
‘I haven’t finished eating—’
‘Now.’
Ambrose
All right, yes – it was a dirty trick. A very dirty trick. But I’d had a burning question inside me, and now I had my answer. Ava of Orion was not a ghost. She was very far from it. Regardless of how wrong it was, all the threads of my life now came down to a very simple fact: I had to have her.
At the very top of the mountain, just beyond the building where we were lodged, was a large marble temple. It had no walls, just a floor and a roof that sat atop marble pillars. Kayans didn’t even worship their Gods like they worshipped their warders.
He was standing in the very middle of the space, his hands extended, moving a dozen round stones through the air around him without touching a single one. The air seemed to throb and move with his breath. It held the stones aloft and he glided them where he willed. His long blond dreadlocks floated around his head, his eyes were wide and completely white, and his skin was a bright, translucent shade of blue. I felt my own skin crawl just looking at him.
I had been raised, like all children in Pirenti, to fear and loathe the Kayan warders. They’d haunted my nightmares and crept through the shadows of my imagination throughout my childhood. Tales of their destruction and power were legendary. They were nigh on impossible to kill, so if a man were ever to succeed in destroying one, he received a tattoo over his heart to symbolise the honour and power of his achievement.
Ava and I hadn’t brought up my own Marks since that initial night when she’d seen them and hated me for them. For the first time, I wondered if it was such an honour to carry the evidence of the blood on your hands with you wherever you went. It was a bit like being branded a murderer.
We stood at the edge of the temple and waited. After a moment the stones in the air went still, and the warder turned his white eyes towards us.
‘Ava,’ he murmured softly, his voice cold and thin. ‘What are you doing with this creature?’
Ava stiffened beside me, but all I could do was stare at him, at this man who was more powerful by far than any person I’d come across, save the two others of his kind that I’d killed. Instinct told me to draw my sword. The very core of me yearned to destroy this monstrosity – he was unnatural and the kind of harm he could cause with the flick of a wrist was too dangerous. Instead I fought the urge, fought it with everything I had, simply because of the girl standing next to me.
The warder’s mouth curled into a cruel smile. ‘Go ahead, Prince – try your very best to swallow that vileness inside you. It won’t change what you are.’
‘And what’s that?’ I asked through gritted teeth, my eyes gaining a certain familiar coldness of their own. This depth of anger was what preceded my worst violence.
‘A barbarian killer,’ he said. He moved his left hand and I felt my shirt tear away from my body. He pointed straight at the black Marks over my heart. ‘Ambrose. You have a strong body and a strong heart, but your mind is very weak. The weight of your past crushes it, and you will never be strong enough to withstand that.’
I stood frozen, naked. The ground was shifting and swaying, because there, at the edge of my mind, was the memory I had forbidden myself to ever relive, the one I locked away like the monstrosity it was. The very worst day of my life. The beginning and end of who I was. Ava could not see me like this; I’d burn the world down first.
Taking hold of my anger like a thick blanket between my fingertips, I used it as a shield over my soul. I started to walk. I could feel the adrenalin coursing through my veins, empowering my muscles, heightening my strength. My hand didn’t go to my sword – not yet. Instead, I turned my eyes to what I knew would soon come.
Sensing my attack, the warder sent his stones flying straight at my head. I ducked low, dodging each one with several quick sidesteps, still advancing. As the last stone whizzed by my head, I leapt into the air, drawing my sword in one motion and slashing it towards the warder’s neck. He lifted his hand to fend me off and sent a burst of air at me, but I was expecting it. He was strong – very strong – but I’d fought his kind before, I’d trained for it, day after day – it was my job. I pulled myself out of my jump by tucking my knees under my chin and flipping to the ground, narrowly avoiding a gust that would have sent me slamming painfully into the marble floor. My arm whipped out as I landed, slashing my sword towards the back of his ankle.
He didn’t make a sound, though he stumbled to avoid the cut. I was on my feet and about to turn for another attack, but wasn’t quick enough to duck the second blow he sent towards me. It pummelled straight into my chest and sent me flying through the air. I landing heavily against a pillar and felt the marble crack into my spine. All the wind was knocked out of me as I crumbled to the floor, but it wasn’t going to be enough to stop me. Letting out a loud snarl of fury, I dragged myself to my feet and reached for my sword once more. The warder lifted his hands for another burst of power, but before either of us could move any further, there was a command from the door.
‘Stop!’ Ava screamed. She was standing framed by two of the pillars, the mighty view exploding behind her, and her eyes had gone completely white, just like the warder’s. Her brilliant golden hair seemed to be floating around her and for a moment she looked like some sort of goddess. She’d flung her hands out towards us and suddenly I couldn’t move – I was frozen, as though my limbs had locked. Then her eyes changed back to violet, her hands dropped to her sides, and I felt my body return to normal.
Both the warder and I stared at her.
‘Get out of here, Ambrose,’ Ava demanded, her eyes flashing angrily. I cast a hard look at the warder. He didn’t return it, too busy staring at Ava. I strode from the temple, sheathing my sword as I went, shaking with pent-up energy.
‘You won’t be able to run from what you did forever,’ his voice followed me out into the sunshine. ‘I see you.’ The words were like another of his blows; I stumbled on the path and started to run.
Pounding down the steps, I flung myself sideways into the jungle, losing my guards and winding up at the very edge of the cliff. The flying horses careened through the air and I wanted, desperately, to be atop one, soaring away from this cursed island and all its devils. I wanted to be simple, ignorant – blissfully unaware and full of hatred for these Kayan freaks like I’d been for the first twenty-five years of my life. Instead, I was trapped here with the growing knowledge that I was changing into something complicated, and that change was making the memory – the one memory that mattered – more powerful than it had ever been.
Ava
I would deny it until the day I died, but deep down, I’d never been more thrilled than when I watched Ambrose soar through the air and strike the warder with such deadliness. It was unfathomable. I’d seen warriors before, seen soldiers training and fighting, but I’d never seen anyone move the way Ambrose had just done. He was a blur – graceful and swift as any warder, which was supposed to be impossible. But so many things these days were being proved achievable, even when they shouldn’t have been – and they all seemed tied to this Pirenti man.
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My momentary astonishment vanished, however, with the overwhelming sense of horror at what was unfolding before me, and before I knew it I was screaming out for them to stop, and sending each ounce of my will into forcing them apart. My eyes changed colour, and I felt every inch of my skin tingle. Just for a moment it felt like I was underwater, then I blinked the sensation away and looked at the two men before me. What I saw in Ambrose’s eyes nearly undid me, because I didn’t understand it, nor the way it ground into my bones. But then he was gone from the temple, and I stood alone with the warder.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told him, my voice dry. ‘I had no idea he would …’
‘I told you – he’s weak.’
What I’d just seen seemed anything but weak to me, but I kept my mouth shut.
‘You, on the other hand, are the opposite.’ When I looked into the warder’s milky eyes, I felt them stare inside me – to everything I was and could be, everything I’d seen and done, every single thing that made me who I was. Just as all of his kind, he was judging my energy as a whole. ‘What you just did,’ he said to me, ‘was the beginnings of high level soul magic.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You’re a warder, Ava. Or you could have been if you’d been trained properly.’
I stared at him. ‘No I’m not. I’m no one. My parents were fishermen. I couldn’t possibly …’
He shrugged. ‘You must have the blood in your ancestry. If you’d been trained as an infant, you could have been very powerful, but now …’
‘Now it’s too late?’ I murmured. ‘Why?’
‘Because you only have half a soul,’ he told me calmly as if it was obvious, and I closed my mouth with a snap.
‘The path you have chosen is a worthy ending for a woman as strong as you.’
My eyes dropped to the ground and I felt them prickle as the next words left my lips. ‘Do you know … do you know why I’m still alive? Why I didn’t die?’
I looked up to see an expression of confusion pass his face. ‘No. I cannot see. It’s meant to be impossible. I feel the power of your bond – all bonds – and it is inescapable. You should be dead, Ava. You’re unnatural.’ He was emotionless as he said it, as he always was and would be.