You are a giant.
But that wasn’t true, was it? I was small, the smallest thing in this world, incapable of anything of worth. I would lose Thorne, and I would lose Ava, just as I had lost Da – by my own hand – and all because I wasn’t strong enough to face the evil that was my ma.
Searching the sky, I couldn’t see Ava, and I knew it must be my fault. It was all my fault, every broken piece of this.
Ava
There was a guard at the entrance to the dungeons. I knew it was my only chance at escape.
‘Hey!’ I called.
He looked at me. ‘What’s wrong, kid? Sick of that cell?’ He chuckled. I could have killed him just for that stupid chuckle.
‘I need a drink of water.’
‘Too bad.’
‘Please,’ I whispered. ‘I feel really sick.’
He raised an eyebrow, not impressed. ‘You get one cup of water a day, and that isn’t until the morning. So shut your damn mouth.’ He’d unwittingly walked a few steps closer to me.
I said something very softly under my breath.
‘What?’ he snapped angrily, moving up to the bars. ‘Speak up, imbecile.’
Ignoring all the pain in my body, I leapt up and grabbed his neck, pulling it straight into the bars. He was knocked out cold and slumped to the ground. Stupid Pirenti brutes.
Now all I had to do was get the keys from him. I could see the bulge of them in his pocket, but couldn’t reach them through the bars. Sighing in frustration I grabbed the edge of his pants and painstakingly dragged him towards me, my fingers aching. At last, I managed to reach the keys and let myself out.
He had an axe on him, too big for me to wield, so I stole his bow and arrows instead, even though this would probably be just as futile. Still dizzy from my beating, I struggled to sneak through the hallways. Lost, I began to despair – the dark stone corridors all looked the same to my addled mind.
A young female servant collided with me and stared. It was obvious I was Kayan. Our eyes met and I knew I had to stop her from running, but instead I just waited for her to leave. I didn’t have it in me to harm a servant, not an innocent one. Stumbling into the wall, I blinked to realise that I had been here before – I’d leant against this exact patch of wall.
Please don’t tell me I’ve fallen in love with a coward.
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. The last words we’d ever spoken to each other were here, right here.
Ava, girl, I can’t have you hurt.
And all I’d said, like the terrible brat I’d been, was, Whatever, Ave. Let’s go already.
Too many things to regret. I had to keep moving – for him, for Avery.
Tracking the hall back the same way I’d entered the fortress two years ago, I found the massive entrance chamber. With the festival taking place outside, the only people I came across were servants, and they did nothing to stall my progress. Finding my bearings, I remembered the hours I’d spent studying the map of this building and knew the only possible way I could go was up.
The floor pounded beneath my feet and two heartbeats thumped in my chest. I might already be too late. Finding my way there was taking too long, wasting far too much time. At last I found the balcony to the courtyard and emerged into a sea of roaring, screaming voices, a wave of frantically moving bodies pressing in against the railing, shoving each other, fighting, tearing and jeering in their excitement.
Good Gods. The air was stolen from my lungs in one moment, one breath. Ducking beneath legs and fists and enormous male bodies, I wound my way to the railing and peered over. Above, the sky was very black – the moon was barely there, a sliver, a memory of a moon – but the ground was brightly lit so that all could see the carnage.
Blood splattered the sand, turning it the terrible shade of rust. Bodies lay scattered everywhere – bodies that had all died badly, torn to pieces or left to bleed to death. A jostling elbow found my back, lancing pain up my spine, but I ignored it, because I had seen Roselyn. Her head was in a guillotine, and she wasn’t moving at all, she was just perched there, as serene as she’d ever been, right in the middle of the chaos.
There. There was the Barbarian Queen – her hand on the guillotine’s lever – and Thorne too, covered in blood, mighty axe sticky with it. They were both there on the sand, and here I stood, with a perfect bird’s eye view and no one to notice my bow and arrow. I could feel it; could taste it, my vengeance was so close.
But then – then I saw it. Ambrose on his knees, a sword tip to his heart. Fury struck. No. This was not a choice I was going to make. I refused for my revenge to cost this high a price. It was unjust, impossibly unjust.
Turning, I pushed through big, sweaty bodies as they grappled and fought for space, snarling like the beasts they were. I took blows to every part of my body, and was shoved against the wall so many times I lost count, but I had to get to a better vantage spot. Hoisting myself up onto the edge of the railing, I used a wooden pillar to steady me as I drew an arrow.
Two shots. I would only have time for two. One for the Queen, and one for the slaughterman. Thorne’s arrow would need to find his eye, because that was the only way to take him down. Afterwards, I’d be dead too. There were hundreds of screaming Pirenti soldiers at my back, and when they saw me execute their royalty, I’d be lucky to last two seconds.
‘Take him down!’ the Barbarian Queen was shrieking, motioning for the soldiers to do something about Thorne, who was bearing down on her. Some of the men looked confused, not knowing whether to obey the Queen or side with the princes. Most of them chose the princes, but there were about four who drew their bows and fired.
I watched as each of the four arrows sank into Thorne’s body, two in his chest, one in his thigh, another in his arm. Stupid – they had to get his head. He blinked, but there was something terrifying in his eyes – something beautiful as he stared at his wife and didn’t falter. He surged towards the Queen, ignoring the arrows, and I knew then that he’d never give up, not ever. He was going to take my revenge from me.
I stretched my bow taught, grimacing at the pain it caused. The weapon was too big. I didn’t have enough strength in my forearm to keep the arrow from wobbling. Fuck. Panic was in my heart, making it wobble like the arrow. If I didn’t finish this, nothing would matter. There’d be no justice, no vengeance – no point at all to me having survived for two years when I shouldn’t have.
I drew a breath and steadied myself, moving through the pain and banishing all the unsteadiness from my limbs. The bow stretched taught and deadly. I could do this. If I let this shot loose now, I could take him through the eye, and I could set my soul free. I could be with Avery again – follow him as I should have done long ago.
You weren’t the first, a voice whispered inside me, sudden like a weapon thundering through my body – a voice I knew very well. I would have wept, then, if I hadn’t been so frozen.
Ava, you weren’t the first. She was, and look how the loss has defined her. What will you become if you surrender to hatred? A creature I can no longer love? A woman I no longer recognise?
I shook my head desperately. You need to be avenged.
Not so.
You’re asking me to choose Ambrose instead of you, I told him.
I heard Avery’s memory whisper in my mind, No, petal. I ask you to choose your soul, over not having one at all.
I closed my eyes and time froze around me. It was the simplest decision, the hardest. I could have sat there on that railing forever, in between the two of them.
This was never about revenge, petal, he told me softly. You told the slaughterman yourself – all of this is simply about trying to find forgiveness.
Forgiveness? I choked. How could I possible forgive them?
And he answered, For me. You can forgive them for me, because I am not alive to do so.
So, in the end, there was only one way to move. I opened my golden eyes and turned towards Ambrose. Avery’s voice echoed in my mind, simpl
e words.
Who has ever loved as boldly as he does?
Need rose up inside me – a sense of wanting so profound it shook me to the core. How foolish to ever think I could deny it. Swinging my taut arrow around, I let it loose and watched as it sailed straight towards Vincent’s heart. And watched, too, as he sidestepped to avoid it. His black eyes moved up and found me, and he smiled a slow, chilling smile.
As we gazed at each other, I saw him tighten his hold on Ambrose, and the prince started to lose his struggle. Ambrose’s hands shook and a look of despair filled him. His sword broke skin, blood spilling down his chest.
I didn’t think. I threw myself over the balcony, catching hold of it tightly and sliding as fast as I could down the side of the building. I skidded out of control, losing my footing and scraping down the stone. My fingers caught hold and I felt one of them break in an effort to hold my body. I didn’t pause, I kept climbing and falling but I knew I was moving too slowly, so I threw myself the rest of the way to the ground. I landed in an awkward roll that crunched my shoulder out of its socket, and then I was up and running, spots before my eyes, but he was there in the distance and I was running like I’d never run before. All of my desperation was building inside my chest like a great ball of fire that burned, burned, burned and burst free, speeding out of me and into Ambrose, knocking the sword flying free from his body.
I saw Vincent’s eyes sharpen as I ran towards him, and I watched as he turned the full extent of his power to me. I felt nothing – only the same cold touch I’d felt in the dungeon. His expression faltered as I ignored his efforts, then it turned to one of panic. I sensed him try harder, but I was upon him, sending my fist into his face. He received the punch, letting it rock him on his feet, then ducked low to attack me physically. Pain shot through me as he slammed me with a right-fisted blow to my abdomen. I had taken a very bad beating already today, and my poor body was not prepared for any more, which only meant I had to be faster than he was – had to end this quickly.
Dancing backwards, I dodged his next blow and threw my own, a fast jab to his ribs. I skidded to my knees and cracked my elbow into his sternum – I felt bones break. He fell to his back, but in the moment it took me to follow through and bear down on him, he drew a small knife from his sleeve and thrust it into my stomach.
A gasp left me, a strange, white, endless seeping of air from my lungs.
‘Ava!’ I heard Ambrose roar.
I stumbled back, pressing my hand to the wound and turning very slowly, dazed, to see him standing a few paces away, immobile. What was he doing? Why did he not come to me? Then it was obvious – Vincent was holding him frozen, making him watch as I died. I sank to my knees, staring at Ambrose.
‘Don’t,’ I heard him utter. ‘Don’t go.’
My eyes flickered – azure, lime, peach, scarlet, indigo, tangerine, steel, ebony, gold – unable to hold fast to one colour. Vincent moved before me. His broken eyes were soulless. ‘What are you?’ he asked me. I couldn’t speak. ‘You’re impossible. No one is fearless. No one.’
The sky was very black above, and there was no moon that I could see. I heard wing-beats at the edge of my vision.
I will send your body back to the sea.
He had said that, hadn’t he? Or was I simply imagining it? I couldn’t hold to the truth, couldn’t recall his face. It occurred to me that I did know one truth, just one. If I died here, he wouldn’t be able to take me to the sea, because he would be dead too. Just as I had denied it all this time, I now knew that the bond had captured us as undeniably as it caught all Kayans. Ambrose would die.
Which meant that I could not. Dragging my eyes from the inky night above to the monster before me, I felt the slow, sluggish rhythm of my heart pick up strength.
‘No,’ I said to him, just one word.
Vincent blinked, watching me closely. He smiled his twisted smile, and that’s when I moved. Through pain and despair, I struck the side of his head, causing him to trip and drop his knife. My wound tore but I held one hand against it, even when my knee went into his groin. I had him on his back and sagged on top of him. Blindly feeling around in the sand, I found the knife and brought it to his throat.
‘What are you?’ he asked again, a whisper this time.
‘I’m just a woman,’ I murmured, and then I began to cut.
‘No!’
My hand faltered, blood sliding over my fingers.
‘Ava – don’t,’ Ambrose ordered.
‘He should die,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ Ambrose agreed, ‘but not by your hand. I’ve a thing I must settle with the snake – his life belongs to me.’
I frowned, seeing the desperate rage in his eyes, and knew that this was a score he needed to settle himself. Turning the knife, I used the hilt to knock Vincent unconscious and heard Ambrose sag from his invisible prison. Moments later his hands were on me, lifting me away from the snake, pressing the wound in my gut. ‘What will you do with him?’ I asked softly.
I had never seen a gaze so terrible as the one Ambrose turned on Vincent’s body. ‘I have other plans for him.’ That was when I saw that there was something very wrong with him, with my Ambrose. There was a pull at the edges of his eyes, a tightening around his mouth, a kind of hollow ache behind his gaze.
‘What has happened?’ I asked.
His gaze moved to somewhere behind me and I remembered (how amusing!) that Thorne and the Queen were still there, still alive. ‘Kill her,’ I said. ‘You must kill her.’
He nodded once, bleakly, but when he looked at me his eyes held none of the love I had grown accustomed to. I reached for his hand, a weird, jerking motion. But Ambrose was already gone. And as I lay bleeding on the sand among so many other bodies, my tissue and muscles knitting themselves slowly back together, I didn’t know if he would ever come back.
Roselyn
As soon as the fear left me I felt control flood back and I started to rise from the guillotine. I’d barely moved when a hand slapped my cheek, fingernails raking into my skin and stinging painfully. A gasp of surprise left my mouth, and then a strangled scream as those same hands clutched at my hair and dragged me back into the stocks. This time, the bolt around my neck was secured and I couldn’t move at all.
The Queen squatted before me and her icy blue eyes stared straight into mine. ‘I’ve waited years for this moment,’ she said. ‘Will you count how many seconds it takes you to die?’
Fear like a fluttering raven in my breast.
That’s when his voice slammed into the two of us. ‘Let her out of there!’
She turned to face Thorne. He was drenched in blood, breathing like the beast would claw free at any moment. Some ancient, primal part of me responded to the sight of him like this, his eyes taken over by a force so wild it was undeniable. His axe glinted in the moonlight and I thought him terrifying and beautiful.
‘How could you do this to me?’ she asked him, looking for all the world like the picture of a mournful, betrayed mother.
He shook his head, blinking quickly, trying to regain his clarity of mind. ‘I only regret how long it has taken me.’
‘What is it that you are trying to achieve?’ she questioned him calmly. All around was a cacophony of screaming, fighting soldiers, but here in this small space it was very quiet. ‘You were never made for leadership, my son. You have never been more than a follower.’
‘I’m the first prince,’ he grunted.
‘And how I have wished, since the day he was born, that your brother had been my first.’
I steeled myself, heartache blooming inside me. I looked at my husband, expecting a terrible pain there at hearing the truth so nakedly put, but instead I saw him smile with an old, warm kind of pride. ‘As have I,’ he responded simply. ‘My brother is a far better man than me.’
‘And will you die for him?’ the Queen snapped.
Thorne replied, ‘A thousand times over.’
A look of panic crossed the Queen’s fa
ce, and I saw her realise the danger she was in. ‘Don’t come any closer!’ she screamed, grabbing hold of the blade’s lever. ‘I’ll kill her right now!’
My mind was racing – I didn’t know what to do, how to help him. I was trapped, yet again, by my own incapacity.
‘Kill her, Thorne,’ I told him. ‘Be done with it.’
Thorne stepped forward so that he was now at the base of the stage, staring up at the two of us.
‘I’ll do it!’ his ma screamed again, hysterical.
‘You let that lever go and I’ll tear you limb from limb,’ Thorne growled. ‘You know I will, and you know I’ll enjoy it, Ma.’
She laughed, her voice empty and mocking. ‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t possibly hurt your precious ma. You owe me everything, Thorne. Your whole life belongs to me. You love me, just as you love this country, and the way I rule it. You haven’t got the stomach to kill me.’
‘I do,’ he replied softly. ‘Because you made me this way.’
He threw his axe and I watched as it twirled through the air. The Queen watched it too, and she moved. I’d had no idea a woman her age would be able to move so fast, but she did. The axe clipped her shoulder, slicing off a chunk of flesh. She screamed out in pain, sinking to the ground. Thorne jumped onto the stand and undid the bolts that held me in place. I winced as I stumbled out of the guillotine and stared at where the Queen was grimacing on the ground.
‘You’ll pay for this,’ she whispered, glaring into her son’s face.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But it will be the Gods who punish me. It will not be you.’
He reached for her neck with his huge hands, and I felt a gruesome chill take hold of me. I couldn’t let this happen – couldn’t let him strangle his ma to death. This would be an act he would never be able to redeem himself from.
Searching around for a way to stop him, I was saved the effort.
‘Thorne!’ came a voice from across the sand, and I glanced up to see the second prince running for his brother. Thorne wasn’t listening – when I turned back I saw he had finally gone berserker. Ambrose plummeted into him, tackling him from the stage. A great cloud of dust burst up around them as they landed heavily. It was so thick I could barely see them through it.