Thorne (Random Romance)

  About the Book

  Lovers in Kaya have always died together, bonded in death as in life. But a cure for the bond has sent rumours like wildfire through the land. A team of young Kayans will be sent on a quest to find the answer and, with rebellion brewing, the very nature of love is at stake.

  The beautiful but reckless Finn has never shied away from danger, and ending the bond means more to her than anyone knows. This adventure sounds thrilling to her, but Finn has always been willing to risk too much, and for the first time must face the idea that she has something – or someone – to lose.

  Crown Prince Thorne, in the neighbouring land of Pirenti, has grown up rejecting the legacy of his father’s blood, keeping caged the beast that lies dormant within. But the moment he sets eyes on the wild girl from the Kayan cliffs, his usual caution hasn’t a hope of surviving.

  As the world crumbles around them, can Finn and Thorne cast off the shadows to find a love stronger than either imagined? Or is their true challenge to find a way to embrace the darkness within?

  An enthralling romantic fantasy about finding true love against all odds, Thorne is the second book in The Chronicles of Kaya series.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  More Random Romance

  Avery

  Losing Patients

  Down Outback Roads

  Copyright Notice

  Loved the book?

  For my sister Nina

  The people of Kaya die in pairs.

  With the forging of the soul magic, so is forged an unbreakable bond between those in love. When one dies, so shall the other, and forever will it remain so … Unless in the turning of the world the day comes when one is born with both the frozen blood of the north in his veins, and the hot winds of the south blazing through his soul.

  Then shall he, and only he, have the power to break the unbreakable bond.

  – From the writings of Agathon, First Warder of Kaya

  ‘What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.’

  - Werner Herzog

  ‘Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb.’

  - Sue Grafton, I is for Innocent

  Chapter 1

  Thorne

  There are red clouds in the sky and they are dripping blood.

  I tilt my face back to feel the drops on my skin and taste them in my mouth. They are acrid and familiar, their thickness as always a disturbing reality. I can feel them filling me up, filling me from the tips of my toes, up my legs, my stomach and chest, my arms, my neck, right up through my throat and mouth until they reach the very top of me. When I move all I hear is slosh, slosh, slosh.

  And then I am leaking blood that is not my own, and it hurts.

  ‘Thorne.’

  It’s feathers and rosewater and shadows, that voice. It’s every part of me that I like.

  ‘Thorne.’

  The blood explodes from my skin, tearing me to pieces –

  I felt a sharp awareness of my body, the giant hulking weapon I hated. I used it to orient me without opening my eyes. Rough linen sheets beneath me, rubbing against my arms and legs in an irritating way I was all too accustomed to. Smells hit me – lamb and rosemary stew boiling on the stove, and the scent of soap so familiar it filled me with comfort. Beyond those, as always, was the confusing smell of the ocean. This, I had always thought, would follow me to my grave.

  I was aghast to feel the liquid still on my lips, trickling into my mouth, but when I licked it I tasted not the heavy iron of blood but the fresh salt of tears. I dashed them irritably from my cheeks and opened my eyes. In one lurching, graceless movement I was sitting up, looking at my mother. The rising sunlight made her seem wraithlike; her burnt ochre hair hung tangled around her porcelain skin and her eyes were very large.

  ‘Just a dream, Ma,’ I murmured. ‘I’m fine.’

  She kept looking at me and I wondered where her mind was this morning. ‘You screamed,’ she said softly, her voice the delicate thing I’d known all my life. That voice was the thing I knew best in the world.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What was it this time?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Please?’

  I hesitated, then decided as I did most mornings – but not every morning – that the truth was best for Roselyn. ‘I was full of blood. Not my own.’

  Something passed over her eyes, too quick for me to interpret. ‘You’ve not spilt a drop of blood in your whole life, Thorne.’

  I climbed out of bed and made my way to the kitchen. Sometimes I didn’t know what world she lived in.

  Grabbing the oldest, stalest loaf of bread from the bench, I tore into it hungrily. Once I’d finished the loaf I sat at the table and let Ma serve me a big bowl of stew, then a second bowl. She poured me several glasses of goat’s milk, and the meal filled me up somewhat, though in an hour or so I’d be hungry again. My body annihilated food as if it thought it might starve at any moment. It was painfully inconvenient most of the time. Thankfully, the men in Pirenti understood. No, actually – they thought they understood, but they didn’t, not really. Not one of them truly knew what it was to yield a berserker’s appetite.

  Ma put an unopened envelope on the table before me.

  ‘How many times?’ I asked.

  ‘Twelve.’

  So I opened and closed it twelve times before I read it. Once I’d finished I looked at her swiftly. ‘When did this come?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘It’s from Ambrose.’

  She went still like she always did when my uncle was brought up. Her brown eyes probed me, eyes that were vastly clever but more often than not absent.

  ‘He wants me for business. Says if it’s all right with you that I’ll be away for some months. Ava will stay with you while I’m gone. Which means the twins too.’

  Roselyn loved the twins. She considered and I watched her lips move very slightly with silent numbers. Her eyes drifted to the window and she disappeared. I reread the letter, cleaned up after my breakfast and then sat down again without her noticing a thing.

  ‘Ma?’

  Her eyes travelled a long way back to rest on me. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t have to go. Ambrose would understand.’

  Her eyebrows knitted together. ‘Don’t be silly, darling. I have to get used to it at some point – you’re a man now. I have work to keep me occupied. I’ll be fine.’

  I reached out and took her hand. As always, I was a creature made of uncertainties. I wanted to stay – there was never an inch of me that felt okay about leaving her here alone. But I wanted to wander, too. I wanted to meet people my own age. I wanted to see something other than the endless oyster farms that spread before me, silver and flickering in the moonlight. I’d cut my feet on those shel
ls a thousand times, and each time I’d smiled, because my own blood was nothing to fear.

  I was anxious to stay, anxious to go, pulled in two directions, skin stretched over bones as if they belonged to a dried out old skeleton. And under those bones, under the skin and the flesh and the muscle and even under the blood, was something else entirely.

  A monster trying to whisper his way out of my heart. Mostly I kept him caged. But he was cunning and he was strong, and sometimes the cage strained so hard that I knew it would not hold forever.

  ‘You could come with me,’ I suggested.

  Ma tilted her head, thinking about it. Perhaps making wishes.

  ‘I’m not sure how I’ll control myself.’

  Roselyn shook her head firmly. ‘You will be fine, my love. You know the rules. You know exactly what to do when you feel it begin.’

  There was a question on my lips, a painful question. One I had never spoken aloud for fear of the answer. But the question had consumed my life, and if I really was supposed to be growing up, leaving home, then I ought to know the answer. ‘Did he fight it? Or did he give in?’

  I watched the way her eyes gathered more depths, as they always did. Infinite depths where my da was concerned. She’d seen so many things in him that nobody else ever saw, understood so many things about him that were impossible.

  ‘In the beginning,’ Roselyn said softly, ‘he was more beast than man. That was when the blood spilt, oceans of it. But at the very end he fought like no ordinary man could. He fought with strength only his blood could have allowed him.’

  ‘He died fighting it then,’ I said flatly.

  She shook her head. ‘On the day he died he’d already beaten it. He was a long way beyond it.’

  I was a creature made of uncertainties, except for the one single thing I knew: I would never beat the beast.

  I wasn’t strong like my da had been.

  ‘Do you know what the King wants you for?’ Ma asked me.

  I met her eyes. ‘He’s sending me to live in Kaya.’ And for the first time in a long while Roselyn looked truly frightened.

  The chill of the wind outside eased as I entered the royal rooms to see the fireplace blazing. At my heels walked Howl, my enormous white Alsatian and best friend; he would cry for me when I left, but I wouldn’t leave Ma without any protection.

  A tall figure stood in the doorway that led to the princesses’ room. He was dressed in a magnificent grey fur cloak and had wind-bitten cheeks as if he had only just beaten me through the night. A smile spread his lips and the King of Pirenti took me in a rough hug.

  ‘You get uglier every day, kid,’ Ambrose murmured.

  We looked at the two sleeping girls, their beds lying within a shaft of moonlight. They had their father’s dark hair, and when awake they gazed at you with eyes as violet and clever as their ma’s.

  Howl took his place at my side; he was large enough that I could thread my fingers through his fur without having to lean down.

  ‘My feet lead me here every night,’ Ambrose admitted. ‘Just to watch them.’

  They were miracle children, of sorts. Ava had been told by a warder physician that her half-walker soul would never bear children; her body was too damaged. And yet fourteen years later came twin daughters, much to their parents’ complete delight, and the joy of the nation.

  ‘What do you need?’ I asked softly.

  Ambrose sighed, resting against the door. ‘A change is about to come upon Kaya. There might be a way to break the bond. Falco and Quillane are going to want to use it. Ava and I need you to stop that from happening.’

  I frowned, looking sideways at him. ‘You would preserve the bond?’

  ‘We would. At any cost.’

  ‘Why?’

  Ambrose didn’t respond, his eyes growing distant. I stroked Howl as I waited for my uncle to speak.

  ‘It will be dangerous,’ he said bluntly. ‘But we trust no one else.’

  I clasped his shoulder. ‘I would be honoured, my King.’

  Ambrose smiled again, looking at me. ‘I blinked and you became a man. How did that happen?’

  I returned his smile, but the truth was that I had never really been a child to begin with.

  Finn

  All I wanted was a hat. Was that too much to ask? Jonah was at my side, elbowing me in the ribs at regular intervals, and Penn was tugging on my hair to get my attention. I felt likely to kill them both. The sun was beating down on my uncovered head, glancing off all the windows of the buildings around me, blinding me with its brightness, and we’d been standing here for over an hour. All of this might have been fine under normal circumstances – I usually liked public announcements – but there was a gallon of last night’s ale still making its way through my body, and I was very close to vomiting.

  All I wanted was a damn hat.

  ‘It’s your own fault,’ my idiot brother told me smugly.

  ‘One more word and I’ll kick you in the groin.’

  ‘Do you know what this is about?’ Penn asked for the thousandth time. He was on repeat this morning. Sometimes when he got something stuck in his head – a question or a thought, a word or a colour or an image – it tended to come out of his mouth over and over again until someone screamed at him for mercy.

  ‘No,’ both Jonah and I replied forcefully.

  ‘But look,’ Jonah pointed out, ‘soldiers are here, and several warders, so I reckon it must be important.’

  ‘Do you think they’re finally going to address the rumour?’ I wondered aloud.

  Eighteen years ago the first peace treaty in known history between Kaya and Pirenti was drawn up. Ten years after that a rumour started. I had no idea where it originally came from, but it had seemed like an incredibly nasty rumour. A cruel whisper that no one could believe: that there might, somewhere, be a way to break the bond.

  As the rumour grew in strength, Kaya began to crumble. The very idea divided the regions, rekindling the oldest argument – was the bond a gift or a curse? Should we treasure it, or fight to survive it?

  I wanted to know the answer more than anyone, because if it was true, and there was a way to end the bond for all Kayans to come, then I was going to be the one to break the curse once and for all, and no warder’s magic, no army of berserkers – nothing at all in the entire world – would stop me.

  At the end of the public square was a raised wooden stage. This was where they held award ceremonies and punishments. I’d seen a Pirenti man hanged there, but that had been a long time ago. No one had been hanged since the peace treaty had started to take effect. Now the square was saved mostly for fairs, markets and performances, the countless swinging corpses of war just an unhappy, ghoulish memory that haunted the cobblestones.

  I fixed my eyes on the stage and begged the Gods to let whatever was happening start soon. The sun, which I normally welcomed like a lover, was starting to become the worst kind of nightmare, seeping into my head and making it throb.

  ‘Can we go?’ I asked. ‘This is stupid.’

  ‘It’s your own fault,’ Jonah repeated.

  ‘What’s my fault?’ I snapped. ‘The sun? All these people? This stupid announcement?’

  ‘No, drinking too much and acting like a sourpuss.’

  ‘Sourpuss,’ Penn agreed with a secret giggle that nearly made me crack a smile.

  The damned horn finally blew, and I groaned aloud in gratitude.

  Several people proceeded onto the stage. The first was Brathe of Sancia, general of Kaya’s royal army. He was taller than most Kayans, and so bald that it hurt my eyes to look upon the glaring surface of his skull. Next came Sharn and Valerie, the two royal informants of the Emperor, ruling residents of Limontae. They were always dressed the same – in the gold of their eyes when they looked at each other. For eight years people had protested the fact that a bonded couple held such high positions. It was unsafe. But the Emperor had never done anything about it, which meant no one could.

  Next came the
head warder Lutius. He was terrifying as always, though in this moment his eyes and skin were a normal colour. His creepy white hair was worn in about a thousand braids, which I’d always thought looked hideous, frankly.

  Famous as they all were, the first four people on that stage probably received all of half a glance this morning, because when the fifth emerged into the sun and climbed up onto that stage I felt an immediate hush befall the crowd, and then as though on the exhaling of a communal breath a frantic rustle moved through us. Whispers and fidgeting and general disbelief rose.

  Because here for everyone to see was a giant of a man, and he was unquestionably from Pirenti. There’d been no one born in Kaya who had ever looked like that, not since the dawning of the world.

  There was fear, then. Indelible fear. The crowd wasn’t prepared. Too many had died at the hands of the Pirenti pigs. For too many years we’d fought in the wars against them. Even for those of us like Penn, Jonah and myself, who were too young to have seen any violence, there was still a bone-deep awareness of danger that came with the northern giants. Parents and grandparents had been killed. Cousins and aunts and uncles. No family had been spared the savagery of the Pirenti. And not even peace could erase the fear or the grief.

  I could feel it around me as if it were a living, breathing thing. And yet. In me there was nothing but a dark, destructive excitement. Against all better judgement, I loved it when life suddenly became unpredictable.

  He was a monster of a man. The second tallest man on that stage came only to his shoulder, and only barely. His chest was an enormous barrel, his arms muscled like tree trunks. He wore his hair shaved very short like all Pirenti soldiers did, and his skin was pale and ghostly like a Kayan’s would never be.