Avery (Random Romance)

by Charlotte McConaghy

  ‘The sun’s moving into place,’ a voice said from behind me, and I smiled as I turned. Avery had a green feather in his cap, and he wore that grin of his, that devil’s grin that seemed to say, I’ve a secret about you, but I’ll never let it pass these lips of mine.

  ‘Pretty soon you’ll start burning, if you stay up here.’

  ‘I don’t burn,’ I said, put out by the insult. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I was on my way,’ he said defensively, but in the blink of an eye, his tone changed completely, growing earnest. ‘I’m always, always on my way to you, Ava.’

  ‘I’ve needed you.’

  ‘I’m here now, petal.’ His black hair was shiny and smooth in the sunlight. His eyes were gold.

  ‘What should I do?’

  He frowned, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Avery, I need help. I don’t know where I am.’

  He continued to peer at me in an odd way. ‘You’re … in between. You have to choose.’

  ‘Choose what?’

  ‘Just … choose.’

  My fists clenched in frustration. ‘Avery. I—’ I walked towards him, inhaling his scent, all the lines of his face I knew so well. My heart ached and ached with an aimless longing, an absence, a huge gaping hole. ‘What is this?’ I whispered, pleading.

  ‘It’s just …’ he shrugged, seeming sad for the first time. ‘I don’t know, petal. It’s just in between.’ And then he added, ‘I love you, if that helps. I love you taller than this tower and bigger than that ocean.’

  I closed my eyes, wanting him, needing his touch, but unable for some reason to have him. I couldn’t feel his skin, but I could feel the heat from the looming sun, and the cool of the gentle breeze, and then—

  ‘Ava.’ A different voice – a deeper voice. My eyes flew open, and there he was. My Ambrose.

  A gasp left me and I flung myself into his arms. He gripped me so tightly all my breath fled me, but I held on just as hard, desperate for some reason I couldn’t fathom.

  ‘Do you remember all those songs I sang when we were in the tunnels?’ he asked, his lips against my hair, his hands along the length of my spine.

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘I know them because my da used to sing them. He had a better voice than I do – mine’s rougher. He had an amazingly clear tone and when he sang it was a miracle.’

  I pulled away and looked up into his face, astonished. ‘Your voice is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I love how rough it is.’

  ‘He lived here, in this cabin,’ Ambrose went on as if he hadn’t heard me, ‘with his wife and daughter. They were out here because he’d been banished. Thorne and I would sneak here every week. He loved Thorne just as he loved me.’

  ‘Cabin? What cabin, Ambrose?’ I stared into his eyes, trying to understand him, but all I could see was grief, and it dwarfed me. ‘Where is he now, your da?’ I asked urgently. He had never once spoken to me of his father, not that I could remember now.

  ‘I could tell you about the times I went to Kaya, but they might hurt you,’ he murmured.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rose said I should talk to you, but I don’t have any nice stories to tell you. No nice memories. They’re all … tainted by something or other.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Ambrose?’ I was starting to panic. He wasn’t making any sense. ‘I don’t need you to tell me any stories – I need you to tell me what to do. I don’t know where I am!’

  I started backing away from him. I didn’t like this, didn’t like being up here anymore. It was too hot, the sun was too harsh. Sweat beaded over my skin, and my heartbeat picked up speed.

  ‘Ambrose,’ I said again, pleading now.

  And that’s when he looked at me properly. He saw straight into my eyes, and his gaze sharpened. ‘Ava?’

  ‘Yes, I’m—’

  ‘Ava! Sword, girl, you need to listen to me. I’ve worked it out.’

  ‘Worked what out?’

  ‘Remember what the warder told you? You have power.’

  ‘Dormant power,’ I stuttered.

  ‘A warder’s power. You can use that power to heal yourself.’

  I shook my head. ‘Don’t be absurd …’

  He didn’t listen to me, just stormed across the roof and took me by the arms, shaking me gently. ‘That’s it, love, concentrate. I’ll be here the whole time.’

  ‘What in Gods’ names are you talking about? I can’t heal myself! And why would I need to? I’m fine!’

  But then he said, ‘If you don’t do this, you’re going to die, Ava. Do you understand? And I can’t handle that. I can’t even come close to handling that.’

  Something tightened in my chest, like a fist around my heart. Reaching for his face, I cupped it tightly, rising onto my toes to be closer to him. ‘I’m fine, Ambrose,’ I told him firmly. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Come on, Ava,’ he pleaded. ‘Please try.’

  Why wouldn’t he listen? I felt dizzy with a strange disorientation, an aimless longing. It hurt me, to see him so upset. So I leant up and kissed his lips, holding him close, and as our mouths touched, a slice of bright light cut through my mind, through my body, the tower, the ocean, everything in the world, and it became so clear, so perfectly obvious.

  My body was dying. I could feel every single inch of it, every tiny piece of broken, burnt skin – all the pain it was struggling through, the slow way it was giving up. And with my lips against his, I knew exactly how to stop it, how to fix the pain. I could cut it off, could reach out and smooth it away. I could become more than it.

  ‘Before I try,’ I said, ‘I have to tell you something.’

  He stared at me, waiting.

  ‘Are you listening?’

  No answer, just his stare.

  ‘Don’t forget – you mustn’t ever forget, okay?’ I swallowed and told him. ‘You’re my talisman, Ambrose of Pirenti.’

  Ambrose

  It only occurred to me as I was falling asleep beside her, dozing in and out of that strange state of half-consciousness. It came from the snippet of conversation with the warder I’d overheard back on the island. I jerked upright, blinking against the dim firelight, brain scrabbling to hold onto the threads of my sleepy thought. My heart started thumping.

  ‘Ava?’ I leant over her face, holding her shoulders and feeling the faint, tremulous bond between us, the one she would not allow or acknowledge. If I could hold onto it, if I could squeeze it so tight that she had to feel it, I might be able to get through to her. ‘Ava! Sword, girl, you need to listen to me. I’ve worked it out.’

  Thorne and Rose entered the cabin, my brother’s footsteps so heavy they practically shook the floorboards of the house. I ignored them, focusing instead on Ava – willing her to hear me.

  ‘Remember what the warder told you? You have power.’

  ‘She what?’ Thorne demanded. He pointed a meaty finger at Ava. ‘That girl better not be a warder, Ambrose. If she is, I’ll tear her to fucking pieces.’

  It took all my control to stop myself lunging at him in fury. My skin crawled with aggression, a nameless beast inside me. ‘You won’t lay a finger on her,’ I warned very softly.

  Rose swallowed, placing a hand on her husband’s arm.

  I turned back to Ava, and slowly – very, very slowly – I saw her breathing change rhythm. Roselyn sank to her knees and removed the bandage from Ava’s face, inspecting the wound. As we watched the deep gouges started to close up, skin and tissue knitting together once more.

  A shout of disbelief left me and I rocked back on my haunches. ‘Holy Sword.’

  The burn healed itself completely, so that there was only bright pink scar on Ava’s cheek. Rose started removing all the other bandages and inspecting each of the burns – they were all healing with varying speeds.

  I felt ragged with relief, buoyed up with joy. Bounding to my feet I let out a roar of excitement, turning to my brother with a grin that split
my face apart. He stared at me, clearly incensed by what was happening, but I saw the moment when my joy reached through to him, and he started to grin too. Before I knew it, he was grabbing me in a bear hug and lifting me off the ground, and then the three of us were dancing around Ava’s healing body.

  Chapter 18

  Thorne

  I’d never seen my brother so happy – not since his father was alive – and yet every part of me was screaming that this girl, this abomination, had to die. She was healing herself, and that was black magic –warder magic. I’d kept quiet about her being Kayan, knowing she would die and that this nonsense would soon be over, but now she was alive and healthy, and my brother was under some spell of hers, convinced he was in love with a witch.

  Something had to be done.

  ‘Rose,’ I said, pulling my wife out of earshot. ‘I want you to take Ambrose outside and help him collect water.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she replied softly. ‘When she has woken—’

  ‘No – now.’

  Roselyn looked at me in confusion. ‘Surely he will want to see her wake? She is not far from it.’

  ‘I need you to find a way to take him outside and keep him there for a good few minutes. Do whatever you must. Do you understand me?’

  She stared. ‘I … I find it difficult to lie …’

  ‘You don’t have to lie. Just tell him you need help getting water for the girl.’

  She swallowed, nodded once, a jerk of her head – she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  On impulse, I grabbed her hand. ‘It’s all right,’ I promised her. ‘It will be all right very soon.’ But instead of reassuring her, it only made her more frightened. I could smell the spike of it on her skin and it stung me.

  I watched her move to my brother and speak to him softly, outlining the speech with her hands. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, but Ambrose was so used to that from her that he didn’t realise anything was wrong. He hesitated, staring at the Kayan girl, but whatever Rose said convinced him and soon the two of them had swept outside into the wind.

  There was a rake going at my insides, claws against flesh, teeth snapping bone – I wanted blood.

  Approaching quietly, I knelt over the witch. She was sleeping peacefully now. Her skin was badly scarred but I knew the difference between old wounds and new. I reached for her neck; it was tiny, no more than a chicken’s neck in my hands. In that moment her eyes flew open.

  I froze. They were such an incredibly fierce shade of violet – I had never seen its like, anywhere in this world. Nothing in my life had ever been so purple; it caused me to pause.

  ‘I know you,’ she rasped softly. Her eyes faded to the colour of snow. It was ugly and demonic – it reminded me of what she was.

  My lip curled and I managed to find focus. My hands tightened.

  ‘I’ve seen that expression on your face once before,’ she whispered. It chilled me to my core.

  ‘We’ve never met,’ I told her.

  ‘I’ve watched you – and I’ve seen you in my dreams.’

  I squeezed, watching her cheeks flush red. Her eyes stayed white and she stared at me, into me – into my Gods-damned soul. ‘I won’t have you destroy my brother with your magic.’

  Roselyn

  My hands wouldn’t stop shaking as I led Ambrose out onto the grey, windswept seashore. Salt water – I’d told him we needed salt water to wash her wounds and stave off infection, but the words felt like ash in my mouth.

  Wind cut into my skin and whipped my hair into my eyes. Ambrose put his hand on my back to steady me and help me forward. It felt very strange to me. I had imagined his hands on my body many times over the years, but now I could think only of my husband, and what he had commanded me to do. Where did loyalty fit into the scheme of things? How much sin could I commit for the man I loved?

  There was a beautiful young woman in there – a woman who had dressed as a man and stolen into our country. I had no idea why she had done such things, but there was something vast about the courage she must possess.

  I stopped on the rocks and turned to look at Thorne’s brother – his younger, more handsome, more charming brother. Thorne was the feared; Ambrose was the beloved.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I said.

  ‘What, Rose?’ Ambrose shouted over the howling wind.

  ‘We must go back – right now.’ I turned and started running. Ambrose understood and overtook me. As he flung the door open, the orange firelight from within showed a clear, nightmarish view of Thorne knelt over Ava, his hands around her throat.

  Ambrose let out a mighty roar and charged his brother, pummelling into him and crashing the two of them to the floor. I watched in horror as they grappled, wrestling wildly, blows heavier than any I’d ever taken.

  Ava sat up, her hair wild, her eyes white. ‘STOP!’ she commanded, and there was an unnatural loudness to her voice, a chilling power that echoed and throbbed within the walls of the hut. There was magic in that word, and the brothers stopped, whether from shock or something else, I didn’t know. Standing slowly, unsteady on her thin legs, Ava’s hair began to float around her. She was like a goddess or a demon – something so far from anything I had ever known that she struck fear into my heart.

  ‘Stop,’ she said again, very softly.

  ‘Warder filth,’ Thorne spat. ‘I’ll destroy you.’

  Ava’s mouth curled into a terrible grimace of loathing. ‘Nothing would give me more pleasure than tearing your skin from your bones, barbarian pig.’

  I watched as Ambrose came to his senses and realised that Ava was more of a threat to his brother than he could ever be. ‘That’s enough,’ he said. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘Brother,’ Thorne snarled. ‘You must kill her. She’s warder blood. Kill her!’

  ‘Shut up, Thorne,’ Ambrose hissed.

  ‘Ambrose,’ Ava said, still staring at Thorne. There was a terrible note of pleading in her voice, of pain. ‘He killed—’

  ‘I know,’ Ambrose interjected firmly. ‘We will have this out, but not now. Now you’re barely standing.’

  Ava’s hair fell to her sides and she swayed on her feet. Ambrose moved to catch her and help her sit, but she didn’t for one second take her white eyes from Thorne.

  ‘Ambrose,’ my husband said suddenly. ‘You will report. Now.’ He wasn’t an older brother speaking anymore – he was a commanding prince. ‘Who is this woman, why is she on Pirenti land, and what the Sword exempts her from being slaughtered where she lies right now?’

  Ava snapped her teeth in a feral, savage way, and for a moment she seemed like an animal come in from the wild, not a girl. I wondered if the torture had done something to addle her mind – I had never come across a soul this strange.

  Ambrose straightened and faced his brother. ‘I’ve a story for you, if you’re calm enough to listen.’

  Thorne nodded stiffly.

  ‘When first I saw Ava I thought her a boy – she dressed as a man and called herself Avery – but on the sea journey to the prison we were shipwrecked.’

  Ambrose went on to tell a tale I found myself disappearing into, of a man and a boy from enemy lands who had survived together on an island way out to sea. Of the journey through cold and wet caves, underwater and over sea, fighting beasts and injuries and everything they thought they knew about each other, ending finally at the prison he’d meant to take her to all along.

  ‘I want something different now,’ Ambrose finished. ‘I want a different Pirenti and a different life for you and me, brother.’

  Thorne hadn’t moved a muscle. I couldn’t for one second predict how he might react to this, because under all the stories of survival was a deeply impossible love story. Finally he said, through gritted teeth, ‘Is she a warder, or isn’t she?’

  Ambrose looked weary as he shook his head. ‘She is not. She has dormant powers that were never explored, and never can be.’ He took a step closer to Thorne. ‘Brother, I never, ever believed I could be capable of saying these
words, but hear them now. If you mean to hurt Ava again, I will kill you, or die trying.’

  And the promise was so steady, so true, that I saw it break Thorne’s heart. For the first time an expression of deepest pain moved through him, and then he was gone, disappearing into the fading light of the night outside.

  Ava

  Waking to a face so like Ambrose’s and yet so different was disturbing. It only took me a second to know it wasn’t him – to know this face was blunter, less handsome and more scarred. I recognised the man and felt my hatred for him come upon me like an inferno. Even once he was gone from the hut, my eyes stayed white.

  ‘Ava,’ Ambrose said, sinking to his knees before me. ‘Are you all right?’

  I nodded, unable to speak through the fury.

  ‘I thought you would—’

  ‘You protected him,’ I snarled.

  Ambrose blinked. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and I will again. He’s my brother.’

  ‘He was the one— His hands— I watched him …’ My own hands were shaking, my voice trembling.

  ‘I know,’ Ambrose snapped, grabbing my face tightly. ‘I know, but I need to tell you something about Thorne.’

  I swallowed, not wanting to hear it, not wanting to know anything that could diminish how deeply he deserved punishment for what he’d done.

  ‘I told you he is half berserker, yes?’

  ‘I don’t care what he is—’

  ‘I told you that, yes?’

  I nodded reluctantly.

  ‘What that means for Thorne is that he literally has no control over his bloodlust. Often times when he is taken by the beast he has no memory of it after. Mother uses this against him. He slaughters for her because she knows how to trigger the beast. The part he played in Avery’s death was not a choice of his own—’

  ‘Oh, stop!’ I gasped. ‘Stop, Ambrose. How dare you?’

  His mouth clicked shut.