Thorne (Random Romance)

by Charlotte McConaghy

  But I caged the beast because I knew what most didn’t: that he had the strength – and the will – to devour not only the war god, but the whole world.

  ‘How do you know that story?’ I asked, too long after the moment had passed for it not to be strange.

  ‘Oh – didn’t I mention? Spying on the foreign kingdom.’

  My eyebrows arched.

  ‘We plebs do have a library, you know. You aren’t the only one interested in foreign culture,’ Finn muttered with a careless shrug. She was already onto the next thrill, cartwheeling alongside Penn and having Jonah judge who had the better form.

  I wondered if she knew what she’d just done to me. What she’d just made me question. The kernel at the heart of my existence. I wondered if she knew how close I had come to letting it all shift, before snatching my certainties back to my chest and holding them tight.

  She looked at me only once during the rest of the day. And in that look I saw that she knew very well what she’d done.

  We spent our first night on the rocky coast, trying to find boulders big enough to shelter against the screeching wind. Jonah made a blue fire that was so warm we couldn’t sit too close. Then he played his gita and sang. Finn harmonised with him every now and then and the moment was sweet, for I had been raised by an uncle who never stopped singing, and this made me feel very at home.

  When the song was over, Jonah kept plucking idly away, while Finn turned to Isadora. ‘I think enough’s enough, don’t you? I want to know where you came from.’

  Isadora said nothing, but stared into the fire.

  ‘Shall we guess, then?’ Finn flung her arms dramatically. ‘I think you’re a sea siren, come upon land to guide men to their watery deaths.’

  And, miraculously, it made Isadora smile.

  ‘A lake sorceress,’ Jonah agreed more softly.

  ‘An Ice Queen,’ I suggested.

  ‘A snowflake,’ Penn hedged.

  ‘How glamorous,’ she replied, ‘to be any such things. I am merely an orphan from the streets.’

  ‘How did you lose your parents?’ Finn asked.

  ‘How would you imagine I lost them, if I am driven to such a quest?’

  ‘Then you are as bound to break the bond as the rest of us.’

  Say it, I told myself. Tell them now. But I didn’t. I kept silent, guilt making a shell of me.

  I thought, for the first time, about what this meant. I’d been sent on a royal cause with an order given me by my King. But what was it for? He had given me no reason, no explanation. When sitting before me was a girl whose only reason in life was to save her da from a pitiful, slow death. It seemed nobler and better than anything I had ever set my mind to.

  As the fire crackled I stared into its blue depths and I thought about, not for the first time in my life, what it truly meant to be a prince. My answer, as always, was that I didn’t know, but that I was surely not going to be worthy of it.

  The others went to sleep huddled around the flames, but I couldn’t switch my mind off. At one point very late I sat up, needing to move away from the heat. My eyes, without my permission, went to where she was lying in between Jonah and Penn. Her hand was resting on Penn’s back, making very small circles to comfort him as he murmured in his sleep. It was not something I wanted to see, because it opened something inside; it made me ache.

  Rising quickly, I picked my way over the rocks until I’d climbed a very large one and stood atop it, gazing out at the ocean. There was no wind at all now, strangely – the air was dead still. Between the rocks were deep holes and fissures, easy to slip into and deep enough to kill.

  My mind went to Ma, as it did most nights, wondering how she was, hoping Howl was taking good enough care of her but knowing, as always, how no one could take good enough care of her when she had the memory of my da to compare them to. I had never known a moment of life without her catastrophic grief permeating our lives. Twenty years on, and it was still as though the wound had been inflicted yesterday. A part of me hated her for it, for the weakness of this, but that part was buried deep beneath a mound of shame, for Roselyn of Baath was the gentlest, sweetest creature who had ever lived, and anyone broken enough to hate her was a beast so far gone he had no hope of returning.

  I tried to imagine them together, but failed. Da was so unknown to me that I couldn’t even conjure the briefest fantasy of him.

  I smelt Finn before I heard her footfall. My whole body tensed, and I kept my eyes straight ahead.

  ‘Are you really so surprised that I would know one of your myths?’ she asked softly. ‘You must think us very uneducated in Kaya.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You’re so surprised you can’t sleep.’

  I shot her a look.

  ‘Surely I can’t have been the first person to ever think of it that way,’ she pressed.

  ‘I wasn’t raised in the palace. The opinions I have heard aren’t about the moon-snatcher.’

  ‘And yet somehow you seem to know that everyone in your country fears him,’ she murmured idly. ‘You know it so well it is ingrained in your bones, berserker prince.’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’

  ‘Why? It’s what you are.’

  ‘And shall I call you failed warder?’ I snapped. The sound of my voice echoed between us and off the rock faces around us. I felt mortified at the rudeness.

  ‘If you want,’ she said, unbothered, and I bit off the apology I’d been about to make.

  Unbothered. As always. What could I possibly say that could upset her? Was there anything? I supposed that if someone didn’t care about anything, then nothing would affect her. The notion aggravated me, for some reason.

  ‘How did you know?’ I asked abruptly. ‘That I was a berserker.’

  ‘Your eyes shifted red and you wanted to murder a whole tavern. It’s not the hardest conclusion to come to.’

  ‘No one else realised it. It isn’t a thing Kayans would ever know to recognise. Not anymore. But you did.’

  I turned to look at her for the first time. It was dark, but her yellow eyes were glowing like a wildcat’s.

  ‘How, Finn?’ I pressed.

  Her teeth clenched together, and I saw her eyes dart away as she tried to think of a lie. I would let her, if she truly needed to. I was beginning to understand the inexplicable truth that I would let her have or do anything she wanted.

  But she looked up at me and said, ‘When our skin touches I can feel your heart.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘I can feel every heart.’ She shook her head, struggling with the explanation. ‘The truths they hold inside them. The weight of them, or … the burden.’

  All the words in my mouth evaporated. The beast inside me lifted his face to the moon and in a moment of purest understanding he let out a long howl. Because he knew, just as I did, how wrong I’d been. The burden of another person’s pain was not a burden anyone should ever bear. Feeling the pain of every person you ever touched was too much. And burden, as I had come to understand at a young age, had a power unlike any to disfigure a soul.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ Finn said.

  With difficulty, I swallowed. ‘Ask you what?’

  ‘What your heart feels like.’ Her eyes looked huge in the moonlight. ‘I don’t know how to answer.’

  ‘I would never ask that. I only …’

  ‘What?’ There was something wary in her voice.

  ‘I only wanted to say that I misjudged you, and that I am sorry for the unkindness I’ve shown you since we met, because you are brave and I did that no honour.’

  She peered at me, her eyes narrowing. Her mouth fell open in disbelief. ‘Unkindness? Thorne, for Gods’ sakes! I am the only one who has been unkind, and yet –’ She walked away from me, shaking her head angrily.

  ‘Finn –’

  ‘How dare you?’ she snarled, rounding on me. ‘There’s nothing brave about me! And to presume you owe me some sort of pity is the most degrading, offen
sive thing I have ever endured.’

  ‘That’s not –’

  ‘Don’t! I don’t need you to have any sort of opinion about me whatsoever. I don’t want you even turning your mind to me. Do you understand?’

  I stared at her in the dark, wondering how in the world this had spiralled so badly out of control. I had no patience for miscommunication – not when I had lived a lifetime with someone who understood next to naught and needed explanations for everything.

  I took two steps and reached for her face, taking it between my hands. ‘I have no pity for you,’ I said firmly, looking into her eyes. Her irises shifted lime, lilac, navy, cream, peach, scarlet. She was breathing quickly.

  ‘I wondered tonight what kind of insult it would take to upset you,’ I murmured, keeping hold of her. ‘Little did I imagine it would be a compliment that would do it.’

  ‘Stop,’ she breathed, so softly I nearly didn’t hear it.

  ‘Stop what?’

  ‘Touching me.’

  I held her gaze for one second longer – it stretched indefinitely and within it I saw all kinds of impossible things, like a life in which she did not think me boring and I was not disappointed by her carelessness – and then I dropped my hands.

  ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘I hate it when you say that.’

  My mouth spread in a hopeless smile. ‘You can’t make me speak as you wish me to – I’m not a pet.’

  ‘Just as you can’t make me behave with the decorum you’d like.’

  We looked at each other, and I felt the look all over my skin, more intimate than any kiss on the neck I had witnessed her receive from a stranger. More intimate than anything I had ever known. I wanted this look to last forever, even as it became a kind of agony.

  Finn went to return to camp, and I watched her step down, and I saw her ankle pitch, and I moved, too late. My hand reached for her, and she reached for me, and it was bizarrely like the moment in the tournament, except that there were no warder charms to keep her from falling all the way to the bottom of the chasm. A breath left me as I heard her hit the ground with a whoomph of sound. A whole lot of rocks rumbled and fell, showering her. Some were big enough to kill her, if they landed on her head.

  ‘Finn!’

  A grunt left her, followed by a soft whimper, and then nothing.

  ‘Finn!’ I demanded, strangled.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she called up, and with the words something inside me that I had never realised to be tight loosened. As in, a thing that had been tight from the moment I was born until now, loosened. It shifted, let go its grip, ceased its unbearable strangling. I took a breath, and it was the first breath I had ever taken.

  I stared down into the dark, and I saw the twin dots of her reflective eyes, eyes so strange it didn’t seem possible they could belong to a human, and then I climbed into the chasm.

  Finn

  Pain splintered into my ankle. And my spine. I closed my eyes against it. My leg was trapped under some of the rocks that had fallen, and I tried to push them off, but most were too heavy for me to budge, and the rare few that were light enough simply crushed my ankle more upon shifting them.

  ‘Finn!’

  ‘I’m all right,’ I called. I just had to get my leg free and then I’d have no trouble climbing up. Honestly, it was deeply embarrassing that I’d fallen in the first place. Falling was not a thing that I did. Not when climbing rocks. Or climbing anything. Or just existing. I didn’t fall. But the big bastard up there had been blathering on yet again about how lovely everyone was except him, and I was tired of it because I didn’t understand how one person could be so unbearably blind to the fact that he was the loveliest person in the world and made everyone else living look like huge monsters in comparison – particularly me.

  And then the big, lovely bastard started climbing into the chasm with me.

  ‘Don’t!’ I snarled, horrified.

  Oh Gods. Oh no no no no.

  ‘Go back up, Thorne!’

  But he didn’t. He swung down, letting himself fall half the way and stumbling onto his side in what I could only imagine was a very painful drop. But he was moving again, scrambling to crouch over me.

  ‘You’re all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Ignoring my waspish tone, he started lifting the heavy rocks from my leg.

  ‘Don’t!’ I snapped.

  ‘Just – please, be quiet,’ he replied.

  So I fell silent, hating him and hating the world and most of all hating myself. ‘I don’t need you,’ I said softly.

  ‘I know that,’ he said, and then he finished freeing me.

  I struggled up, stiff with pain but not seriously injured. Stretching my muscles, I got the blood flow back into them and reached for the rocks. It didn’t take me long to climb to the top, but when I turned I saw that Thorne was having more trouble.

  I waited, telling him where to put his feet and hands for easier manoeuvrability, and he did as I said without question. When we were both finally safe once more we went back to the fire without a word, and I knew that it would be as if tonight’s conversation had never happened.

  But I couldn’t forget the look he’d given me, as if he’d realised I was suddenly a completely different person to the one he’d thought me. A part of me would derive a sick kind of pleasure in proving him wrong, in showing him that I wasn’t, in fact, good at all. But the other, quieter part of me would be sad when I inevitably let him down.

  Thorne

  ‘Do you wish to learn to fight?’ Isadora asked Finn the next morning. ‘I could show you some things.’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  ‘I have no desire to fight.’

  This took me by surprise, as it seemed to take Isadora. We both stared at Finn, confused.

  ‘You may not have a choice.’

  ‘What if you’re attacked?’ I agreed.

  ‘Then I’ll probably die.’ Finn shrugged unapologetically.

  I frowned, wishing I could believe she was only kidding.

  ‘You ignore danger but that will not make it disappear,’ Isadora told her impatiently.

  ‘Has my voice shifted to an octave they’re incapable of hearing?’ Finn wondered aloud.

  ‘Finn –’

  ‘Oh, just kill me now then! Anything but to listen to the pair of you! You’re both as tedious as each other.’ With that she strode ahead, dismissing us. Jonah caught up to her and they immediately got into some wildly animated conversation that required lots of hand movements and loud laughing. She honestly seemed like another breed of person sometimes.

  I hung back with Isadora. ‘Stubborn,’ the girl commented simply.

  I glanced at her and found myself sighing in exasperation. ‘Does she just wish to be contrary? If we forbade her from learning to fight I’m sure it would suddenly be the entire point of her existence.’

  Isadora tilted her head, watching Finn. ‘She’s frightened.’

  I frowned. ‘She’s not frightened of being harmed by any number of other dangers –’

  ‘Not of being harmed.’

  I fell silent. Neither of us spoke for a good while. I didn’t really know what to say about that and found myself wanting to change the subject.

  Something had been bothering me about the night Isadora and I had met.

  ‘You called me an Ice King,’ I pointed out eventually.

  She nodded but didn’t explain any further, so I didn’t question any further. We walked in easy silence until midday, when I looked back for Penn, only to realise I couldn’t spot him anywhere.

  ‘Hold,’ I called to the twins. ‘Penn!’ I shouted in a boom. I shielded my eyes against the hot sun and scanned every direction around me, but there was nothing except dry grass and rocks.

  ‘Penn!’

  Something in the grass rustled to my right. Drawing a deep breath, I searched for any scents that didn’t belong, my danger senses on high alert.<
br />
  Just as I was about to call out again, something launched itself from the grass and straight onto me. I moved, reaching to take the intruder and slam him to the ground, but caught a whiff of familiarity and a flash of red. My hands gentled and I rolled him to the grass, pinning the wriggling boy.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I panted.

  Penn giggled. ‘I’ve been stalking you all morning and you didn’t notice.’

  I sank back on my haunches, staring at him. My heart was struggling to slow; I’d truly thought something terrible had happened to him for a moment there.

  ‘Poor Thorne,’ Finn sighed. I looked up to see that the twins both appeared amused, and I felt like shouting at them. ‘You frightened him, Penn.’

  Penn whooped with delight, then ran ahead. Finn dashed after him, keeping pace. Jonah fell into step beside Isadora, so I hung back on my own this time, watching them all. I worried about what would become of us when they no longer had the strength to laugh at the darkness.

  Mount Barraka loomed, casting shadows and releasing plumes of smoke. The volcano had not erupted in decades, and even then it had only been small. She looked ready to blow. As we approached, the rocks grew darker, the air warmer, smokier. We skirted around the base, staying close to the sea as the wind was blowing inland. A few hours later we made it to the other side and found what Jonah explained was the Bath House, a famous spot that people from all over Kaya travelled to enjoy. It was essentially a walled sandstone inn, large enough to house several hundred people at a time, and it was full of dozens of different sized baths cut into the rock and heated by the lava beneath the earth.

  ‘We don’t have time for bathing,’ Isadora pointed out.

  ‘I’ve wanted to come here my whole life,’ Finn exclaimed. ‘I don’t care how uptight the lady is, nor how poorly she wishes to smell – I’m having a bath and anyone who tries to stop me will get a knife in the eye. Understood?’

  I hid a smile as we gave a mumbled ‘understood’.