Thorne (Random Romance)

by Charlotte McConaghy

  ‘Do you think we can afford to embarrass Pirenti?’

  ‘I’m tired of pandering to them. We are at peace. We shouldn’t have to feel as though we constantly walk on eggshells. Ava will not bring war to us.’

  ‘Who knows what she’ll do.’

  ‘Come now, this talk is dull,’ I announced. ‘Let us drink and be merry!’ I sculled the rest of my flagon and called for another.

  Thorne

  It was to be a time challenge, and our team drew the last place. I looked up at the covered box and knew the Emperor and Empress would be watching from there. As we waited for our turn from a cordoned-off area that allowed us to hear the other contestants but not see them, Jonah moved to my side.

  ‘Is it appropriate for you to be doing this?’

  I shrugged. ‘They could have stopped me. They haven’t.’

  ‘The people won’t like it,’ he warned me. ‘They’ll think it’s unfair.’

  ‘Trust me, I am no better at rope climbing than any Kayan.’

  ‘Not just this,’ he said, gesturing to the tournament. ‘All of it. The fact that you could be included in the search for something so important to Kaya. They’ll think you have no right to it.’

  ‘And what do you think, Jonah?’

  The boy’s eyes shifted to a deep crimson as he said, ‘It doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is a promise I’ll make to you now. If your presence in our lives causes harm to anyone I love, I don’t care that you’re the Prince of Pirenti – I will destroy you.’

  I met Jonah’s gaze. ‘I understand. My promise to you is that I will destroy myself before I let harm come to any of you.’

  He seemed slightly taken aback by that, but after a hesitation he shook my hand.

  ‘If you two are finished measuring masculinity, maybe we should talk strategy,’ Finn suggested.

  ‘What knowledge have you of strategy?’ Isadora asked her. It was obvious she was regretting having been grouped with three teenagers. Four, including me.

  Finn shrugged, crouching to the ground and using her finger to draw the stadium in the sand. I was impressed at her ability to remember such detail – she had each of the pylons, ropes and hanging cages memorised, and marked them all out.

  Jonah recounted the instructions we’d been given. ‘Each cage holds a key guarded by a soldier. We have to collect all six keys before we can unlock the box on the last platform. These nine platforms here also have soldiers guarding them, so we have to either be able to fight them or get around them somehow. Makes sense for us to split up and aim for a key each, and whoever gets theirs first can go for the sixth. Then we meet up at the last platform.’

  ‘Sounds like a hoot,’ Finn declared.

  ‘Any number of things could go wrong with that,’ Isadora pointed out.

  ‘Well, we can at least have a vague plan, and if it doesn’t work we improvise,’ Jonah replied. ‘Penn and Finn, you two go for these first cages. I’ll take this side one, while Thorne and Isadora, you two head past us for the keys behind the final platform.’

  ‘If we’re the stronger climbers, shouldn’t we be climbing the furthest?’ Finn queried.

  ‘What makes you think you’re stronger climbers?’ Isadora asked.

  Jonah explained, ‘If we take the first cages, we’ll have to carry the keys further. It’s safer if Thorne and Isadora, who have less experience on ropes, have the least time with the keys in their possession, because if they fall after having claimed them we’re immediately disqualified. If they fall before that, the three of us can get their keys and continue on.’

  I nodded, satisfied that he was right despite the obvious judgements of our abilities. I wasn’t insulted, but I could tell Isadora was.

  ‘The three of you,’ she said. ‘What do you plan to do when you reach your cages and the guard won’t let you take the key?’

  ‘We’re not quite as helpless as you seem to think we are,’ Finn said.

  ‘Then answer me. How?’

  They didn’t have an answer.

  ‘The best course of action is to allow Thorne and I to get the six keys.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Finn’s eyes shifted to steel grey and her air of fun-loving mischief was gone in an instant. ‘And what shall we do during that time? Twiddle our thumbs?’

  Isadora shot her a pointed look.

  ‘You’ll waste too much time,’ Jonah protested. ‘It’s a race, remember? You can’t possibly gather all six keys between the two of you and hope to beat the other teams.’

  ‘And when you fall with your keys because a guard is attacking you?’

  Finn sat forward slightly, and now I saw a sharp-edged smile at her lips. ‘We will not fall.’ I stayed quiet because the truth was simple. I was far more worried about myself falling than any of the others. Grace and balance were not talents of mine. And the worst part of all? I had not been kidding when I told Finn I had a crippling fear of heights.

  Our time came and we returned to the arena. The crowd in the stands screamed its excitement, heady with whatever it had just witnessed from the other teams. A warder moved to meet us at the starting pylon.

  ‘Are there training warders amongst you?’ he asked us.

  Jonah raised his hand.

  ‘What stage in your training have you achieved?’

  ‘I’m in my fourth year.’

  ‘You are permitted to use the magic you have been taught, but nothing further.’

  Jonah and Finn both grinned at each other.

  ‘Please climb onto the first platform.’

  We did so, scaling the ladder to stand atop the wooden plinth. The view from up here was dizzying. I edged to the middle, willing myself not to look down, but one quick glance nearly made me vomit in horror. The bottom of the chasm was at least two hundred metres away. Clenching my eyes shut, I took a deep breath through my nose and tried to calm myself.

  Bow out. Tell them you can’t do this.

  I opened my mouth to do so, but my gaze fell on Finn and I stopped. She had obviously forgotten that I’d told her of my fear, or perhaps she hadn’t believed me at the time. I spotted the guards on the platforms and saw that they were real soldiers, trained in combat. Finn, who was thin and scrawny, would never make it past the first one. I wasn’t sure what Jonah was capable of with his magic, but I didn’t think Penn would get past a guard either. Which meant I had to do this – they were going to need help.

  As we lined up Finn looked straight at me and I realised she hadn’t forgotten at all, because she said, ‘You can do this.’

  The bell tolled and we were away.

  I knew immediately that I couldn’t follow the plan. It made sense theoretically, but not when you took into account our different skills.

  I looked at Isadora and nodded towards Penn. ‘Go with him.’ She nodded, knowing what I meant. The slender girl leapt after Penn, who had shot off over the ropes, swinging easily towards the first cage, quick as a monkey.

  Jonah and Finn had also leapt into their climbs, taking different paths to their cages. I followed Finn slowly, forcing myself not to look down. Nausea crept up and I swallowed the hot flood of saliva in my mouth. Everything seemed to be shaking as I swung out onto the rope. My entire body was dangling over a huge crevice and I didn’t like it one bit. I liked solid earth – bodies like mine with a heavy centre of gravity needed their feet in the soil or everything turned upside down.

  Something hurled into my body and I looked around to see that there were catapults flinging rocks at us. As if I needed any more obstacles. I jerked out of the way and my sword promptly fell all the way to the ground. Watching it, I cursed profusely under my breath, dizzy with the sight.

  Finn was approaching the first cage. But she paused, looking back for me. Before I knew it she was swinging back.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she panted. ‘Keep going.’

  My jaw clenched and I tried to remove my left hand in order to swing forward. But the damn hand had a mind of its own and would
n’t budge.

  So Finn budged it for me. She took the wooden sword over her back and whacked it onto my knuckles. My hand let go and I nearly fell, jerking against my right grip.

  ‘Get a move on!’ she snapped.

  I reached forward and clutched wildly at the rope. My eyes darted down to the bottomless pit beneath me and caused my head to spin.

  ‘Eyes forward, big guy,’ Finn ordered. ‘Keep them on me. Aren’t I beautiful? Why would you want to look at anything else? Now let go with your right hand or I stab it.’

  ‘I’m slowing you down.’

  ‘You are indeed.’

  I let out a long breath and unclenched my fingers, lurching forward an arm-span.

  ‘Great. You’ve moved half a metre. Only about a thousand more of those to go. You know, I sort of thought you were joking when you mentioned a fear of heights. Who’s really afraid of something as banal as heights? I assume you’re not afraid of a whole lot of other dangers, being a giant and all, so why this? It’s only a drop to your death. Would probably be quite a pleasant way to go, really …’

  As Finn rambled on I used her voice to anchor me as the ground would normally. She edged her way backwards and I followed at a snail’s pace, every so often trying to glimpse where the others were but unable to get a good enough look from my perilous position. Long minutes passed.

  ‘Thorne,’ she said suddenly. ‘Open your eyes.’

  At the tone of her voice, I did as she said. She was hanging from the rope in front of me and something about her expression was the wildest I’d seen it.

  ‘There are metal hanging bars to your left. If you can reach them, you can pull yourself up and crawl along the top of them. It’ll be a lot easier than trying to swing like this. But to do that you’re going to need a considerable leap through the air.’

  I stared at her, frozen.

  ‘Do you understand what I’m saying to you?’

  Swallowing, my throat felt like it was closing up.

  Finn edge closer, so close we were almost touching. Her lip curled and she whispered, ‘Where’s my fierce berserker prince? Let him free. Let him show me what he can do.’

  I felt the words strike inside me and take hold of my beast, who had been curled in sleep, but now rose to his full size and gave a roar of pride. Every one of my thoughts turned to keeping him caged, and the fear of falling was forgotten; there were much darker things to be afraid of.

  Finn smiled. ‘Show me.’

  I started swinging to the left, back and forward, gaining momentum. Timing it right, I let go with both hands and reached for the distant metal bars. My hands were slick with sweat as I caught hold and nearly fell, but I gripped tight and pulled myself up onto the top. As soon as I felt my hands and knees land on something solid my head cleared, grew sharp.

  Looking around, I reacclimatised myself to what was going on. Penn was perched on the top of his swinging cage, poking the guard through its holes. Isadora was hanging from the bottom of it, stabbing the man’s feet and ankles. As I watched Isadora resorted to a different method. She opened the cage door, swung herself into it, cracked the soldier over the head and caught his box before it dropped. She swung herself out and leapt back to the rope. But Penn was still on the top of the cage, and the soldier was still conscious. He climbed out to attack Penn, but that was when the small boy did an incredible thing. He untied the knots connecting the cage to its tether, and just as the cage pitched and fell away he launched himself through the air to grab hold of Isadora’s outstretched hand.

  She managed to hold onto him, groaning aloud with the strain. But he quickly scampered up and took hold of the rope, swinging forward as though nothing had happened. I would have been heaving my guts up if I’d been on a falling cage.

  It had dropped to the ground, but hadn’t been destroyed upon impact; I suspected warder magic was being used to ensure nobody died.

  Jonah had already claimed his box – the cage he left behind was open and burning with a blue fire, the soldier nowhere to be seen.

  I turned quickly back to Finn who was swinging arm over arm to her cage. Crawling after her, I concentrating not on the gaping chasm below me, but on what was ahead. Our cage hung suspended mid air. It was made of tightly bound wicker and was big enough to hold a man. In this soldier’s hands were a small box and a wooden sword.

  Finn paused, considering the best way to tackle it. If I were in any way nimble or light enough to manage it, I would climb on top like Penn did, reach through the holes and put the man to sleep by placing pressure on his neck. But since I was neither light nor nimble, I couldn’t help much. So I kept moving forward towards the first platform, to where I could see a soldier waiting. This soldier had a proper sword, not a wooden one.

  As I passed Finn I heard that she was whispering quickly to her soldier through the cage, and I caught a whiff of fear – not hers, but his. Curiosity spiked inside me, but I forced myself forward to clear the path for her. Reaching the plinth I ducked beneath the swing of the sword and hammered my elbow into the guard’s ribs, sending him flying into the air and down towards the ground. My breath froze in my chest as I watched him fall, only to be caught in what seemed like an invisible net. Thank Gods.

  Finn got the box from her guard without resorting to any kind of violence – the man just handed it to her – and now she held it between her feet so she could swing arm over arm towards where I waited for her on the platform. She arrived just as I heard an odd hissing sound and looked down to see an enormous scorpion climb onto our platform.

  Finn yelped in surprise. The creature was at least four metres long, and barely fit on the block of wood with us.

  ‘Hand me your sword,’ I told Finn and she did so quickly.

  I watched the scorpion’s long razor sting rise ominously behind it; it watched me as I inched closer. With a quick feint of the sword to the right, I ducked around behind and snatched the scorpion’s stinger while it lunged in the wrong direction. I was just about to haul the huge thing into the chasm when Finn made a strangled sound and hurled herself towards me. I didn’t know what she was trying to do, but the scorpion was too fast – it had a second stinger that curled out and jabbed me in the arm.

  White fire erupted in my wrist as I dragged the scorpion over the edge.

  ‘Gods damn it,’ Finn snapped. Without waiting she placed her mouth over the puncture wound and started sucking. My blood trickled down her chin and neck, long pale rivulets of red. I didn’t know how much time passed as I watched the macabre sight of her head bent over me and got lost in the sensation of her lips against my skin. There was an itching pain but eventually she spat onto the ground and looked up.

  ‘Can you feel that?’ she asked, tapping on the soft flesh of my underarm.

  I nodded.

  Finn breathed out, dropping my arm. ‘I got it out then. Come on.’

  I stumbled after her, dazed.

  This time I kept a good hold of the sword and dispatched the next three soldiers in our path, sticking to the tops of the metal bars.

  Penn and Isadora were making an excellent team. Together they’d circled around for the furthest key, Penn as quick as Isadora was deadly. They now had two and were going for a third. Jonah was approaching a second key, having been delayed by something I’d missed during the scorpion debacle. But he looked rattled, and his left arm was hanging limply at his side.

  A rock sailed through the air and clipped my ear, reminding me to stay alert. The scorpion poison had addled me, but I was still conscious, so that was something.

  ‘I’m going to help Jonah with the last –’ Finn started to say but was abruptly cut off as something swooped out of the sky at her. She screamed in surprise as the huge sea eagle raked its talons through her shoulder.

  There were dozens of them, careening through the sky.

  I lunged for Finn as I saw her feet slip off the edge of the bars. My right hand was holding the sword, so I didn’t think as I threw my left arm out. But it
was slick with blood from the scorpion sting. Our fingers slipped and she fell, as quickly as that.

  Finn

  Time slowed and the world froze around me. Everything ceased to exist except the knowledge that I could stop this fall if I wanted to. Dark power curled in my belly, coiling itself in readiness, and if I but breathed in this moment I would will my body to reappear back on that plinth. It was a terrifying awareness. A notion of being capable of so much more than I’d ever allowed myself to be.

  But if I did that they would know I had used my forbidden warder power, and I would not only be disqualified from the quest, I would be sent to the cold prison of the warders, most terrible place in all the world.

  I made my choice, and the world erupted into movement around me. Air whooshed past me, my stomach lurched out of my body and a scream was ripped from my throat.

  ‘Jonah!’

  Swift as lightning my brother turned towards me, flinging his hands out even though one of his arms had been broken by a rock. I felt rather than saw his eyes turn completely white with the power coursing through him and my body stopped mid air. He wouldn’t be able to lift me now, not without my help. So I began to channel my own coil of power through the bond between us and into his body, praying that there were no warders close enough to feel the transference of energy.

  Slowly I rose through the air as Jonah whispered a stream of fierce words and sent everything the two of us had into manipulating the air around me. Thorne reached out and grabbed me, pulling me back onto the platform.

  There was a long moment of silence, and then I felt the noise around us slam into me – the crowd was screaming in excitement and awe to have seen such magic. It was a mighty wall of moving, throbbing energy, spectators having jumped to their feet to cheer with abandon.

  I laughed breathlessly: this was fun.

  ‘Get Jonah,’ I panted to Thorne.

  ‘But you –’

  ‘Please, Thorne. He won’t be able to move.’

  Thorne nodded, going for the hanging rope that connected our platform to Jonah’s, atop which my brother had collapsed in a heap. The Pirenti Prince clenched his teeth in discomfort and his hands trembled badly, but he didn’t hesitate. He swung out onto the rope and started making his way inch by slow inch towards Jonah.