To my knowledge, there had been three people in this world who could withstand the effects of prylene – my brother, my ma and myself. Since we’d been children, Ma had built within us an immunity – not to the poison itself, but to the smell of it. I could recognise it, but I was one of only two people alive who could walk away without drinking it.
I’d be safe – I’d been trained to ignore it – but Rose wouldn’t. I saw her face as the smell of the drink reached her. She went slack and dreamy-eyed, and lifted the goblet to her mouth.
I didn’t have time to think, only to act. I wrenched the cup from her hands. She made a wild, feral sound in the back of her throat and she came at me, reaching for the goblet, her eyes crazed with desire. Her fingernails raked through my skin; she wasn’t going to stop unless the poison was ingested. I took stock of my options, for one moment only. I could take this poison and give it to the two people who were standing outside our room – I could force them to drink it, and then Rose would be safe. But as I breathed deeply, scenting the people outside, I knew to whom the smells belonged. It was Ambrose and Ava.
And so – everything suddenly became very simple.
I downed the liquid in three big gulps.
Roselyn instantly blinked. She looked at me, at the cup in my hands. ‘What just happened? Was that … was that prylene?’ I supposed she recognised the smell because she knew things like that – knew herbs and medicines and poisons.
I nodded numbly. I had maybe ten minutes to live, if I was strong – which I was.
‘Oh,’ she whispered, horror-struck. ‘No! Oh no, oh Gods, oh my … why did you do that?’ Her eyes filled with tears and started to overflow. ‘No, no, no,’ she kept saying over and over again. ‘What can we do? What must I do?’
She stood up, trembling with terror. Dashing to the closet, she pulled forth her medicine kit and started tearing through it, muttering manically under her breath, naming herbs, what seemed like hundreds of them, barely able to breathe for her spoken inventory.
‘Rose,’ I murmured. I couldn’t move, or I would have gone to her. ‘Sweetheart, there’s nothing.’
‘There has to be something! There’s always something!’
‘Not for this. It’s all right.’
‘No it isn’t!’ she shouted suddenly, trembling as she stood to face me. Moonlight found her face, wet with tears and pale with shock. ‘It’s not all right,’ she added at a whisper.
‘Come here,’ I said sleepily. ‘I want you here.’
I watched as she walked slowly towards the bed, and when she reached the side she crumpled onto it, her face breaking in agony. ‘I would have died. I could have, for you. You should have let me drink it.’
I shook my head. ‘Don’t even say that.’
‘I’m no one – you’re a king. Why did you do it? Thorne, why?’
I frowned, the question hurting me. ‘Why must you even ask?’
‘Because I don’t know the answer,’ she whispered.
Somehow, in this moment I felt more wretched than I ever had in my life. Even Avery in all his terrifying splendour had not been able to crush me so perfectly as this woman’s simple question. How had I let her come to the point where she couldn’t even understand a simple act of love? How could it be that such enormous, life-changing feelings could go unnoticed by her?
‘Because, Rose,’ I murmured, looking into her bottomless eyes. ‘I love you.’
It seemed to take her a moment to understand what I’d said – a moment for the words to sink into her starved heart. ‘You do?’ she whispered.
‘Sweetheart,’ I sighed, gathering her into my arms. ‘You’re my life, my whole life. Everything I’ve learnt, everything I’ve become – it’s simply for the love of you. You deserve for every one of your wishes to come true.’
‘Thorne,’ she sobbed, shaking her head and clutching at me with all her strength. ‘Please don’t leave me. We can fix this. You can’t die. What will I do? What will I be without you? I’ll be nothing. I won’t exist anymore.’
‘No.’ I pulled back and looked into her face. ‘We are not bonded, my love. We are our own people, and I used to think you were so fragile, but now I know the truth – you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. You’re a miracle, a creature of sweet, gentle beauty, who came out of a cold, loveless world. Rose, you can have a new life. It will be a better life, without me to suffocate you. I … I made it very bad for you.’
She sobbed in agony at that. ‘Oh, don’t you dare say that.’
‘Move to the ocean, love,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t be frightened of it – love it. Help people with your gift. Don’t ever stop.’
Roselyn shook her head slowly. ‘Do you know what my deepest, most important wish is? The wish I make every moment of every day, with every part of my heart?’ She reached out and touched my face. ‘It’s simply for you to love me.’
My heart started beating strangely. I didn’t know if it was because of the poison, or because of her words.
‘And now you’ve granted me that wish, Thorne. You’ve given me the one thing I’ve ever truly wanted – you’ve saved my life just by loving me. And that … it seems to me like that must be enough to redeem everything else you’ve done. I think … I’m sure it means your soul is pure, for to save a life … that can only be the greatest, most noble act a man can make.’
My tears started to pour. How had she known? She’d looked inside me, deep down inside me, to my greatest fear, my greatest tragedy, and she’d dispelled it. I kissed her as gently as I could, but now I was shaking, my whole body was shaking. The taste of her lips – I knew I’d remember it for the rest of eternity, no matter where I ended up.
‘Tell my brother I love him, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Tell him he will be a magnificent king,’ I whispered, my voice breaking. Oh Gods, Ambrose – I loved him so much. ‘I only ever wanted happiness for him. That’s all.’
Roselyn sobbed even harder, her hands holding onto me so tightly it hurt. I wanted to make it better for her, wanted somehow to ease her agony, so I did the only thing I could that I knew would help her.
‘Count my tattoos,’ I told her, losing all of my strength and lying back on the bed. ‘Take off my shirt and count my tattoos. There’s a new one.’
I felt her pull my shirt over my head, but it was becoming hard to feel. There was no pain, just the sensation that everything inside me was slowing right down.
She counted the ink on my skin carefully, lovingly, running her fingers over each, unable to stop crying, and I stared up into her face as she did so. The gentle sound of her voice, counting as I’d heard her do a million times, every night before I fell asleep, washed over me and filled me with happiness. That counting of hers was as much a part of me as it was of her.
She came to the last tattoo – the new one. Her fingers stilled, and she looked into my eyes, understanding at last.
It was just one word, this tattoo, and it was over my heart – the place you were supposed to save for Marks, if you got them. Something had always made me ask for the Marks to sit lower. It had always seemed to me like something more important should go over my heart. And yesterday, I’d discovered what.
Roselyn.
She stopped crying and we looked at each other.
‘Promise you’ll try and count the stars again,’ I whispered. ‘Each time you do it, I’ll be there to help you, so don’t give up.’
She leant down and kissed me so gently I barely felt it.
‘Promise,’ I implored.
Roselyn nodded. ‘I promise.’ And then, and then, ‘I’m pregnant, Thorne. We’re having a child.’
I’d never known a moment of such happiness in all of my life. I’d been waiting, I think. All along – just for this. A child of my own, one I could love without limits.
My beast purred in purest joy, and he stopped rattling at the cage. He lay down next to me, tired and full just as I was. I felt his coarse fur between my fingertips, and there was an
easy sense of rightness. He would be with me, in the end.
I shared one last look with my wife, three last words, barely audible. ‘I love you.’
And I felt my eyes fall shut, and everything faded into thoughts of a family I’d never thought to deserve.
Chapter 24
Ambrose
I thought I’d understood. I thought I’d been able to imagine the kind of pain that comes with grief – real grief – but I didn’t. I didn’t understand at all until that moment, when I walked into that room and found my brother’s body, and understood that he was dead. A kind of black despair settled over my heart. A fury I could not contain. A cry escaped my mouth, an anguished sound that didn’t seem like it should exist.
Ava was behind me and she gasped as she took in the sight of the two of them and the empty goblet. Roselyn looked up at us from where she’d been lying over Thorne’s body. If I had doubted it, I believed his death completely when I looked into her broken eyes.
I turned and ran as fast as I could to the dungeons. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think. He was there, sitting in the furthest cell, staring calmly with his black eyes. I knew when I saw his expression that my guess had been right – it was Vincent who was responsible for the poison, for manipulating someone into administering it. And it was my foolish hunger for revenge that had kept him alive long enough to do it.
I unlocked the bars and stepped into the cell, towering above him. There was a smile in his eyes, and that was what undid me. I reached out and snapped his neck like it was a twig. As soon as I did, I screamed in fury, because it had been a mistake – I’d been planning to drag it out, make him suffer for as long as possible, enjoy his torture. This was too easy a death for Vincent. I wanted blood and agony. I lifted his body, small like a doll in my hands. I shook it ferociously, an inhuman cruelty in my hands and a need to forget, to disappear. How had I not stopped this? How had I let him die, my brother, my brother, my brother. Oh, Thorne.
Who had ever loved me, in this life, more than he?
‘Ambrose,’ a voice reached into the chaos of my mind and heart and seemed to bring me out of my daze. I turned to look at Ava. Her eyes were gold, so gold. I sank to my knees, unable to bear it. The weight was too heavy. She understood. She was probably the only one who could. She sank to the ground before me and wrapped me in her arms as I wept, violent sobs that wracked us both.
‘I’m me only because of him,’ I said.
Ava
The shock, I think, was what made it so hard – those moments when you told yourself it couldn’t possibly be real. You clung to those thoughts like they could save you, and erase all else.
Afterwards, it took a long time to let those thoughts go. With me, it had taken two years. This man in my arms had carried me through the unyielding sea of sorrow I’d been perfectly happy to drown in, and he’d given me reason to live. I was going to do the same for him. I could not carry the weight of his brother’s death for him, but I could carry Ambrose for every step he took, for every moment of the rest of our lives. I was strong enough for that, because I was a half-walker.
Epilogue
Ava
Along the curve of the bay a long, wooden bridge had been built. It travelled over the top of the cliff and down along the oyster farms until it reached the fortress. This bridge meant easy access to the small, secluded bay Ambrose’s father had lived in, which in turn meant people could quickly reach the best medical treatment in the country without too much hassle.
I walked along it until I reached the small cabin by the sea.
The cabin itself was unchanged, furnished simply, but the back of it led to a new section of housing, known as the infirmary.
Here Roselyn treated her patients, assisted by an army of physicians.
To my right the sun was setting gloriously, steeling the sky to its palest shades of pink and purple and orange. The bay water was still, but beneath its surface was a host of glistening silver teeth, the oyster shells this region of Araan was best known for.
I stepped into the crowded infirmary, walking by rows of patients. I spotted Rose – she was sitting next to a woman with an ugly red rash on her face. I watched Rose for a moment, noting the relaxed way she dealt with her patients, the kind smile at her lips, the knowing look in her eyes and the certainty with which her eight fingers moved.
She caught sight of me and her smile widened. I raised a hand, telling her to stay, and then I walked through into the private part of the house.
The fire in the living room was crackling loudly. Before it sat Ambrose with his nephew, playing idly with something I couldn’t see. A smell wafted to me from the kitchen and I wandered in to stir the massive pot of stew. Touching the end of the wooden spoon to the tip of my tongue, I tasted wild mushrooms, parsley and beetroot, smiling as I recognised the flavours Ambrose had taught me.
Words drifted in, the sound of a deep voice I knew very well.
‘… without a hope, plunging into the ice of the north. He vanished amidst blue veins and cracked fissures, never to be seen again.’
I went to the doorway and leant against it, watching them. ‘Bleak, for a kid.’
Ambrose looked up at me, smiling. ‘A kid should know how brave his da was’
Walking into the hot room, I sank onto my knees and gazed at the beautiful little boy. Only two months old, he already had his father’s strong features and pale blue eyes.
‘He’ll know,’ I murmured, reaching for his pudgy little fingers. ‘Stew’s ready, Your Highness.’
As he rose, Ambrose ruffled my hair in annoyance at the title. I smiled, leaning close to the boy’s face. ‘That’s his name, isn’t it?’ I asked in a baby voice. ‘It’s your name too, handsome. Your name is also precious, and adorable, and perfect, and—’
‘Don’t say anything you don’t mean,’ Ambrose warned from the kitchen. ‘He knows the rules – own every title anyone ever gives him. That way they’ll always remember his true name.’
I kissed his little toes, tickling his tummy. ‘Take your own advice then, Your Highness.’
‘Brat,’ I heard him mutter.
Rose wafted in from the infirmary, crossing to sit by the fire and pull her son into her arms. She was radiant – motherhood had made her so beautiful it almost seemed impossible. There was an edge to it, though, a shadow of sadness that walked with her everywhere, and I thought that this – as well as her happiness – was what made her so lovely. I spent as much time here as I possibly could, because I knew with perfect clarity what it felt like to lose a husband. I had not dealt with it like Rose had – with grace and sorrow – instead I had become angry and hateful, but there was something about Rose’s quiet, gentle manner that calmed me and made me happy.
She humbled me, and made me proud to know her.
‘Long day?’ I asked.
She simply smiled. ‘When are you leaving?’
I glanced at the door to the kitchen, then murmured, ‘In the morning.’
‘Why?’ she pleaded. ‘Why must you go? What waits for you there?’
I shrugged. ‘You know I have to. He doesn’t …’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t speak plainly, either one of you. You spend your days together and then you go to sleep alone, each as stubborn as the other and thinking the other indifferent!’
The sound of Ambrose’s deep singing drifted in to us, and I smiled without meaning to, sinking onto my back beside Thorne. He smelt like baby, that rich, sweet, clean smell. His fist found a lock of my hair and I felt near to tears.
‘Red and green and orange, all the colours of her eyes as she leapt from her tower and found the sea,’ Ambrose sang.
Don’t, I begged him. Don’t sing about Kaya. Don’t make me love you any more than I already do.
‘I should go,’ I tried, clearing my throat.
‘Ava,’ Roselyn said softly. ‘I spent a lifetime not telling my husband how I felt about him because I was afraid of his response. I’d give anything
to go back and tell him how I loved him, on that first day that I knew.’
I nodded, meeting her eyes. I kissed Thorne first, and then I kissed his mother, brushing her red hair off her forehead. Then I headed for the kitchen.
‘I … I’m leaving now.’
He turned from the stove. I couldn’t read his expression. It hurt to try, so I moved out into the bay, my footsteps taking me down to the waterline. Drawing a deep, deep breath, I willed my body to iron. Ambrose arrived beside me, his hands in his pockets. Together we watched the sea.
Ten months, since the day his brother died. Ten months I’d spent in his fortress, unable to leave, working for the treaty he and I had established together. Ten months we’d spent alongside each other without really saying a word, without letting a look linger too long, without touching each other the way I longed for. Neither of us admitted the fact that the peace treaty we were working for would not be happening if the first king were still alive – that was too bitter a fact to acknowledge. And neither of us spoke about what Thorne had claimed – that there might be a kind of magic that could set us free of each other – because that was so confusing it would drive us both mad. In any case, I was certain the idea of it had to be a lie. Falco would be searching the world for the spell if he thought it existed.
A sickness had pervaded my life, a sickness made of yearning and of silence. I couldn’t allow it to go on any longer. Even if this could be enough for me, just to be around him, it surely couldn’t be enough for him. We couldn’t have only a little piece of each other – if we couldn’t have the whole, then I had to leave him be, leave him to find a life of his own.
‘You’re really leaving?’ he said, but it didn’t sound like a question.
Avery (Random Romance) Page 35
