Petir and Coll went through the bodies, searching for identification, but found only the tattoos of the Sparrow on the backs of their necks.
‘Your Majesty?’
I licked my lips, feigning discomfort with the corpses and swinging back up onto my mount. ‘Home. But don’t mention anything to the Empress – she’ll be outraged at having missed the fun.’
A few of the men grinned, and then we kicked our mounts forward over the grassy hills of Galincia. In the distance the city loomed, its red and gold walls a thing of sparkling beauty against the backdrop of the ocean.
At the gates I pulled my blindfold tightly over my eyes and allowed Petir to lead my mount up the winding streets to the palace. As usual, the sounds of my city were how I lived it, learned it. The trickle of lazy stone fountains. The clip clop of our horses’ hooves on the sandstone. The soft murmurs of citizens as I passed them by. I knew when we neared the markets as there was a clatter of noise – the shouts of haggling, workers dragging crates and getting ordered to hurry up, the cries and laughter of children as they ran through the stalls … Smells hit me, the light and tangy scent of citrus fruits, the deep scents of resin and various oils, stalls full of incense, horse shit and always the glorious smell of salt from the sea breeze.
At the stables, Petir helped me off my mount and then guided me inside the palace, where at last I was able to take off my blindfold and my shoes. Padding across the cool marble, I traversed the airy chambers with their high roofs and open windows until I found her standing on the Eastern balcony. Dropping a kiss on the back of her neck, I was rewarded with an elbow to my stomach.
‘Oof. Mercy, Quillane.’
‘Don’t sneak up on me.’
‘Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me.’
The Empress turned her cat-eyes to me, lips twitching. ‘Did you catch anything?’
‘We did indeed.’ I hesitated, then flapped a hand flamboyantly. ‘Six Sparrows, as it were.’
Quillane’s angular face lost its amusement immediately. ‘Inside Galincia? Surely not!’
‘Actually, I’m quite sure, since the gruesome sight of their corpses will plague my dreams for months.’ I shuddered, making a face of distaste. ‘They smelt quite horrid. Did you know dead bodies had such a stench?’
She shook her head at my idiocy, her straight black hair swaying silkily. I wanted to run my hands through it. But I always wanted to run my hands through it, which meant I’d come up with ways of distracting myself from it, just as I did with her beauty. The Empress Quillane was one of the strangest looking women in Kaya, one of very few people born with jet-black hair and green eyes that rarely changed shades. She had feline grace and strength in her muscles, but her skin wasn’t the bronzed shade of the coast-dwelling folk of our lands – instead, it was a pale shade of creamy white. She had endured whispers her whole life that claimed she looked more like she belonged in Pirenti, and before her election to power she was even subjected to a warder’s proof of parentage.
‘We stray closer and closer to war with every passing day.’
‘We will not initiate civil war,’ I stated flatly.
‘We won’t have to, Falco. It is coming for us. And when we make our announcement I cannot imagine the chaos …’
I shook my head, allowing myself a moment of gravity before I had to don the cloak of joviality once more. ‘Hundreds of years of war over, only to start fighting amongst ourselves. I am ashamed.’
Quillane sighed and rested her elbows on the sandstone balcony. Silently, we watched the sea crash against the rocks below the cliff our palace was perched on. Gulls circled the sky above, screeching their joy at traversing the wind pockets.
‘What is it that they think this will achieve?’ she murmured.
‘They are angry and hurt. And they follow a madman who will not stop until he has led them all to destruction.’
‘Our spies have yet to learn his identity.’
‘He will not be an easy man to find.’
I dreamt of him, some nights. The Sparrow. I had come to understand that my fate and his were irrevocably entwined. And some nights, when I woke sweating from the terror of his approach, I knew that when he and I finally came face to face, as we must, only one of us would live through that day.
Quillane
I watched him out of the corner of my eye, wondering at the darkness of his mood. It wasn’t strange that my Emperor would feel the black dread of this looming war, but it was strange for him to allow me to see him this way.
It was a rare day that Falco of Sancia deigned to discuss anything serious, and I wanted to take advantage of these fleeting moments. ‘I want to meet with Brathe and Lutius.’
‘I’ll send for Brathe, but I don’t want Lutius in my palace. Not now.’
‘It’s not the time to be alienating the warders, Fal. We’ll need them.’
‘They’re the reason we’re in this mess,’ he muttered. Which happened to be true. The warders were the ones who’d kept the truth of the bond from us all these years, and admitted the truth only when Queen Ava and King Ambrose of Pirenti had threatened to tear down their temples unless they spoke the truth at long last.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said faintly, distracted by thoughts of the northern nation.
He sighed, eyeing me sideways. Falco, Emperor of Kaya, was an obscenely beautiful man. Golden hair tied at the nape of his neck, eyes the colour of sparkling diamonds, a wide smile of perfect white teeth … Even I sometimes found myself staring at him in astonishment, wondering how such a man could have sprouted from the loins of two such plain parents. Taller in stature than most Kayans, he was lean and strong. It was a pity, however, that his body happened to be utterly useless. Unable to wield a sword or throw a punch, disastrously uncoordinated and full of cowardice, Falco’s only real qualities were the sharpness of his mind and the compassion in his heart. His ability to make whomever he smiled at believe themself to be the most special person in the world was both a skill and a detriment to him, as more often than not, the sudden absence of that smile would break the same person’s heart.
‘Fine, have them both sent for.’ He paused, eyes dropping to the length of my body. ‘You’re looking delicious today, darling. Did I mention that?’
I looked away. ‘You know the princeling arrives today.’
Falco sighed as if he couldn’t care less. ‘The beast, you mean? Son of the slaughterman? I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about you and I going into that closet over there, and I want to talk about how I could teach you the meaning of life with only my tongue.’
‘You may not want to talk about him, but he is all too real. We’ll have to receive him soon.’
‘And have him traipse in here with his bloodied animal skins and human bone jewelry? The man is a savage. He’d stain our pretty white marble floors with his filth.’
The serious discussion was over, clearly. Shaking my head, I turned and headed inside.
‘Darling, you slay me,’ he laughed. ‘Just one little lick? I promise you’ll love it.’
‘I’d cut off that tongue before it came anywhere near me.’
‘You don’t know what you’re missing, my love.’
Maybe I didn’t. But regardless of how pretty or how charming my Emperor was, regardless of how I loved him, he wasn’t the one I wanted, and never could be.
With my gauzy skirts billowing behind me, I returned to my private chambers and removed a key from around my neck. Behind the bookcase was a passageway. Only three people alive today knew about this passage, and the chamber it led to. Falco was not one of them, and I’d die before I did him the disservice of telling him.
Securing the door behind me, I crept along the tunnel until I reached the bedroom and found her cross-stitching by the single window. Her blond hair fell across her face as she looked up at me.
‘Have you eaten, sweetheart?’ I asked.
Smiling prettily, she nodded. Radha had been mine for eighteen years. A
nd for eight of those I had kept her in this room. Each time my eyes turned gold for her, my heart broke a little at the terrible cruelty of the life we led. The injustice of the ambition in my veins and the passion in my heart that meant she lived her life locked out of sight of anyone in this kingdom.
‘Did he fall from his horse again?’
I shrugged. ‘Probably. I didn’t ask.’
Radha gave a soft trickle of laughter. Everything about her was sweet and soft. I tried desperately to be more like her, but I was too cynical to keep it up for long.
‘He was attacked by six Sparrows.’
Radha paused, lowering her embroidery. ‘Oh, Quill.’
I nodded, slumping into a chair beside her. ‘They grow bolder every day.’
‘So what will you do about it?’
I shrugged.
‘You know what the answer is,’ she murmured gently.
I met her golden eyes and felt the bond pull at us both. An ache in my skin, in my bones and my gut.
‘Send troops in to control them.’
‘I send troops, and they’ll see it as an act of warfare, which means that there will be an ocean of bloodshed. They are too many and too well armed for us to expect any other outcome. I don’t want violence in my country.’
‘You will have it anyway, my love. Making the proclamation as you did and having your people seek out the end to the bond has excited everyone. And if you let the rebels grow in numbers and strength, if you fail to show yours, they will bring the war to you and the bloodshed will be much worse.’
I closed my eyes, resting my head against the chair. ‘I can’t make that decision on my own.’
‘You may have to,’ Radha told me gently. ‘What help will you get from Emperor Feckless?’
‘He’s not feckless,’ I muttered, without much conviction. Radha didn’t dislike anyone, but if she did, I believed it would be Falco. They’d never met, but she’d heard enough about him to be equal parts amused by his antics and exasperated with his failings.
I heard a rustle of silk and then she was upon me, her small frame sliding onto my lap, her lips tracing the shape of my jaw. ‘You’re a brave woman, Empress.’
My hands went to her hips. ‘I’m not. If I was, you’d live with the country’s eyes upon you, as you deserve, instead of hiding in here as if I’m ashamed of you.’
She made a soft sound. ‘You’d lose your throne.’
It shouldn’t matter, but it did. There were too many things I wanted to do, to achieve. I wanted a new life for Kaya. I wanted peace. And I couldn’t fight for that unless I sat on the throne. ‘I want you out of here.’
‘I won’t be apart from you.’
A conversation we’d had every day for years.
‘How do you breathe?’
‘I think of you and it’s easy,’ she said, and then kissed me. A powerful hurricane consumed us; this was how she and I loved each other, with obsession and need and an impossible desperation.
But when those things waned, when we chipped away at them until they broke, what would we have left?
Unbreakable, the bond was said to be. Some days I felt the untruth of this. Because when the day came that this life was too much for her, when she forgot who she had once been within the confines of this prison cell, and when she finally grew to hate me, what would the bond mean then? What would it be worth?
And it was in moments like these that I wished my kingdom were a different place. In this different place, there would be no law against the Emperor and Empress having bondmates, and there would be no law against two women ruling together. And in this different place, Radha would walk free, and our eyes would turn gold, and everyone in the kingdom would see and rejoice instead of burning us at the stake.
About the Author
Charlotte grew up with her nose in a book and her head in the clouds. At fourteen, her English teacher told her that the short story she’d submitted was wildly romantic but somewhat clichéd, so she decided to prove him wrong – and write a novel. Thus began her foray into epic fantasy, with sweeping romances and heroic adventures, and as much juicy drama as she could possibly squeeze in.
Her first novel, Arrival, was published at age seventeen, followed by Descent when she was twenty, launching The Strangers of Paragor series, which is adventure fantasy for teenagers.
Soon she started her first adult fantasy novel, Avery, the prologue of which came to her in a very vivid dream. This novel didn’t come together fully until she had finished a degree in screenwriting at the Australian Film, Television & Radio School in Sydney, and then all at once it seemed to fall into place. Avery will be the first book in a new series called The Chronicles of Kaya.
Charlotte currently lives in Sydney, studying a Masters in Screenwriting, which allows her to explore different aspects of her writing and indulge in her passion for film and television. She will, however, always be a novelist at heart, still unable to get her nose out of the books.
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Captivation
by Nicola Moriarty
Captivation is an intoxicating ghost story … True love never dies.
After Juliette lost her beloved husband Danny, she closed herself off from the world, tormented by her grief.
But now, just as she is finally preparing to move on, she senses he has returned. Is he trying to come back to her?
How can Juliette say no to the man she loves more than life itself? And why would she want to when Danny’s methods of persuasion have her weak at the knees …
Yet there is always a price to pay. And when their passionate love starts to turn sinister, will she find the strength to finally let him go for ever?
The first paranormal addition to the Random Romance series, written by the author of Free-Falling and Paper Chains.
Available now!
Anybody But Him
by Claire Baxter
What happens when you fall in love with the man you hate?
Nicola Doyle’s dating record is a disaster, and it doesn’t improve when she returns to Redgum Valley, after an absence of twelve years, to look after her increasingly eccentric parents. There, she’s thrown into regular contact with Blair Morrissey – the very reason she couldn’t wait to leave town in the first place.
The decade-old scars are still raw from that humiliating day in high school – when Blair went from the boy she loved to the boy she hated.
Except Blair doesn’t seem to be a ‘bad boy’ any more – in fact, he’s charming, infuriatingly helpful and extremely attractive.
If only Nicola could forgive and forget . . .
A deliciously funny rom com from Random Romance.
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Just Breathe
by Janette Paul
Opposites attract in this funny, touching and deliciously romantic novel as hippie Dee meets millionaire businessman Ethan – and her calm world is turned upside down …
Dee Nichols is a free-spirited yoga teacher, albeit a broke one. But she’s not interested in money or possessions or thinking too far into the future. After surviving a terrible car accident, she’s just happy to be breathing.
Then Dee meets Ethan Roxburgh at a Christmas party. As the head of Roxburgh Holdings, and a regular in the social pages, he’s the opposite of what Dee wants in her life. Until a job modelling yoga in a TV commercial turns Dee into an overnight celebrity …
Thrust into a whole new world of business and PR (as well as high-heels and plunging necklines) Dee is out of her comfort zone and suddenly Ethan is perfect – as a mentor. Or would be, if she wasn’t so damn attracted to him. After all, he’d never look twice at a short, accident-prone yoga instructor with market-stall couture …
Then Ethan does look twice – and life gets sweet and sexy as hell.
Available now!
One Little White Lie
by Loretta Hill
When one little w
hite lie turns into a red-blooded reality!
What do you do when your best friend is the serial match-maker from Hell?
Single girl Kate Dreson knows that her friend, Lisa, is not going to leave her alone unless she tells her that she is happily dating someone. Who knew that one little white lie could so blatantly backfire?
The imaginary boyfriend she described to her friend so lovingly suddenly walks into her life and starts making himself comfortable in it.
Trapped by her lie, poor Kate is powerless to stop him. But the real question is, does she really want to?
A hilarious rom com novella from Loretta Hill (author of bestselling The Girl in Steel-Capped Boots).
Available now!
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Version 1.0
Avery
9780857981288
Copyright © Charlotte McConaghy, 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Random Romance book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Avery (Random Romance) Page 38
