Isadora

by Charlotte McConaghy

  Falco had been shivering with fever for hours. My vision grew spotty and I fought a wave of nausea, of fear.

  And that was when the boy reached to lay his cool hand gently on my cheek. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said. ‘I won’t leave you.’

  It broke something inside me and I began to weep.

  He waited with me until help arrived, speaking soft words I was too tired to comprehend. Four Pirenti men and two Pirenti women came, all wearing oil cloaks against the rain. The women were beside themselves with worry, trying to rouse us while the men lifted us onto stretchers and carried us at a run into their village.

  ‘His head,’ I told them. ‘He’s hurt his head.’

  ‘Shh,’ one of the women soothed me. ‘You’re safe now.’

  So I allowed myself to drift to sleep in the arms of the brutal northern pigs, the first people who’d ever offered to take care of me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ava

  Migliori was tiring badly by the time we reached Vjort. He and I had spent many long days flying to my fortress in Pirenti, only to be told upon arrival that Ambrose, Rose and Thorne had taken my daughters north for the solstice. They were expected to be in Norvjisk already, so I set off without resting a moment. By the time we reached the city my family were nowhere to be found. Fear turned me very cold as I angled north-west. I sent energy to Migliori and begged him to last a little longer, praying with everything I had that we would find them at our next stop, though if Ambrose, Ella and Sadie were in Vjort it boded badly for their safety.

  I couldn’t banish my husband’s pain from my body. It lingered still, even though I was too far from him to truly feel much through the bond. I only knew that he had not yet died. I would certainly feel that, I would feel it every day for the rest of my life.

  Night fell. The cold deepened. I would never grow used to it, no matter how many times I travelled north. Exhausted to my bones, I circled low over Vjort and kept my eyes peeled for archers happy to forget our peace with Kayans long enough to shoot one out of the sky. But there were no guards on the wall. Instead I saw movement through the streets, in and out of buildings, a whole lot of hurried bodies and distant shouts. What was going on?

  I aimed for the castle and angled Migliori into the grounds. No guards here either – something was wrong. ‘Wait here,’ I told him, then strode up the steps of the front entrance.

  The door was wide open.

  I moved warily inside, feeling the weight of my sword sheathed over my back. I had a dagger at my left hip and a whip at my right. All three weapons had been forged for me, designed and commissioned by Ambrose as a gift for our wedding anniversary a decade ago. I did not think, given his recent change in attitude, that he would give me the same gifts now. Regardless, I loved all three, loved the weight and feel of them in my hands and loved too that they were engraved with our initials entwined together. I drew the sword now with a heavy awareness of danger heightening my senses.

  I could hear the noise of people and the moment I entered the hall I saw dozens of servants in a frenzy of activity. Not one of them glanced in my direction as they rushed sacks and trays towards the kitchens. I cleared my throat. Loudly.

  One or two looked my way and a young girl dropped her armful of firewood with a gasp. She tripped to her knees and lowered her head to the stone floor. ‘Your Majesty.’

  The other servants in view noticed her, spotted me and then hurriedly did the same.

  ‘Rise,’ I bid, moving to impatiently gather the fallen wood for her. ‘Are my family here?’

  The girl rose, a look of fear in her face. And pity. There was pity there.

  My stomach bottomed out.

  ‘Whose orders are you following?’ I demanded. Dread made me short and rude; the frost had worked its way up through my throat and into my tongue, and now coated each one of my words.

  ‘His Majesty the King’s,’ the girl replied.

  I let out a breath of relief; my hands trembled with it. I placed the firewood in another servant’s grasp and told the girl to fetch him.

  ‘He’s –’

  ‘Now.’

  She dashed off to do so. I waited, sheathing my sword and folding my arms. ‘What’s all this about?’ I asked the remaining servants, gesturing to the flurry of people in and out of the kitchens.

  ‘Supplies, Majesty,’ a man replied. ‘For the searchers.’

  I frowned, not liking the sound of that and sensing that whatever needed to be explained would be best coming from my husband. ‘You may resume.’

  They launched back into their duties. It was taking all of my restraint not to tear through this castle and find my husband and daughters myself. Jarl Sigurd was regent here though, and storming through his home before he’d greeted me could be seen as an affront. Respect those who serve you, my husband often counseled, and they will respect you in return.

  It was not Ambrose or Jarl Sigurd who flew down the steps, but Thorne. We were across the space in less than a second, clutching tightly at each other. In his enormous arms I was lifted off my feet. ‘Ava.’

  ‘Thank gods you’re alright.’

  He released me and I stepped back to get a look at my nephew. He looked ghostly, with bruised hollows under his eyes and a sickly pallor to his skin. I wondered when he’d last slept. He smelled like he hadn’t washed in weeks.

  ‘Where are they?’ I asked. ‘Where’s Ambrose?’

  Something left him. A sound that liquefied my insides, it was so stricken. ‘You felt it,’ Thorne said roughly. ‘That’s why you’re here.’

  ‘Felt what?’

  ‘It’s all gone to shit, Ava.’ He laughed, and it sounded like a sob. ‘It’s all gone.’

  ‘What, Thorne?’

  ‘He’s been killed. Ambrose has been killed.’

  My whole body went numb. I shook my head. No. ‘Where are my daughters?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t find them. I’ve had everyone in this whole damned city searching for days and nights without rest, tearing the place apart, but …’ There were unshed tears in his eyes as he spread his hands. His voice broke. ‘I can’t find any of them.’

  Ambrose

  I couldn’t be certain, but I had come to believe there was someone else in my tomb with me. Buried alive, as I was.

  I could hear breathing. It had taken me a long time to distinguish it from my own. It now took me a long time to work up the strength to use my swollen, dry mouth.

  ‘Hello?’ I rasped. It was more a scrape than a word.

  ‘Good gods,’ burst a woman’s voice. ‘I’m here – I’m here! Don’t go back to sleep!’

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked. I couldn’t see anything, couldn’t open my eyes.

  ‘I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead.’ She was weeping.

  ‘It’s alright,’ I grunted, wanting to comfort her. ‘Who?’

  ‘I … you captured me. I’m the warder. Maisy.’

  I didn’t understand. Didn’t know anyone called Maisy. Had no memory of capturing anyone. Was too confused. I swallowed and tasted blood. Pain was a sixth sense, a fifth element. I’d lost track of all the things done to me – I was only nerve endings searching around for mercy.

  ‘You’ve been unconscious a very long time.’ The girl’s voice found me in the darkness. ‘I thought I was alone.’

  ‘No,’ I said. Because that was a thing I knew. I was here. I was.

  ‘They tortured you,’ she said. ‘It was … they were so brutal.’

  ‘Where?’ I rasped.

  ‘We’re in the tombs under the city. Under the castle, I think. But it’s been sealed. We can’t get out.’ She was panicking. True terror filled the tomb – I could almost smell it, like my brother used to be able to. My brother. I wanted my brother so desperately, so urgently that for a moment the longing eclipsed the pain. He would fix this. He would fix everything as he always, always did. Where are you, Thorne? You’re supposed to be here.


  ‘There’s no way out,’ the girl kept saying.

  ‘Your magic?’

  ‘I’ve been trying,’ she wept. ‘I can’t … My mind is too … and my hands are bound, and I can’t …’

  ‘Shh,’ I murmured. ‘It’s alright.’ My voice was coming back a little. My clarity. ‘Rest. You’re safe. I won’t let any harm come to you.’

  A gasp left her. ‘You were dead! I have no idea how you’re still – you were dead, Majesty.’

  ‘I’m still here,’ I whispered. ‘I’m still here.’ Like a mantra, or a prayer, or a vow.

  But threads were unravelling again, too quick to catch in my clumsy, loathsome hands, all the pieces of me being wrenched upon and unspooled into a mighty, infinite tangle.

  ‘Majesty? Wait, no, please don’t leave me …’

  Maisy’s voice faded.

  My body faded.

  Even the darkness somehow faded.

  I was lost and there was screaming all around.

  And a man, standing in the middle of nothing and everything. It wasn’t my father or my brother. It wasn’t any of the people I expected it to be. He was a small thing, slight and skinny. He had long, straight black hair. Dimples in his cheeks when he smiled at me and crooked front teeth, and warmth in his pretty brown eyes, my gods so much warmth.

  I took a trembling breath. It felt like I had been walking towards him all my life.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked, even though I knew.

  His smile widened. ‘My name’s Avery.’

  I sank to my knees in the void. ‘Is this real?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Does it feel real?’

  ‘It feels like everything.’

  He moved to my side and knelt with me, reaching for my head as the tears fell from my eyes. ‘You can’t stay here,’ he told me gently.

  ‘Why not?’ I wanted to, very badly. The blaze of his smile was warming me all the way through.

  ‘You have so much more yet to do, King of Pirenti.’

  ‘I’d burn the name if I could,’ I whispered. ‘Scour it from me.’

  Avery shook his head, leaning so his lips were near my ear. ‘Don’t burn it. Remake it.’

  ‘I’m not strong enough. Not for the magnitude of what it will take. Have I not proven that already?’

  ‘If you are not strong enough, then make of yourself something stronger,’ he replied. ‘To help you, you have the soul of a woman strong enough to bond twice. Who else in this world can say that?’

  I smiled.

  ‘Can you feel her now?’ Avery whispered, his lips against the skin of my cheek. It was incomparable sweetness to experience his touch. ‘And those girls of yours. My gods, what girls they are, what women they will be.’

  I could feel them, my daughters, and I could feel the echoes of her, of his other half, of my other half.

  ‘Go back,’ Avery bid me. ‘Go back, Ambrose.’

  The threads were reweaving themselves. I could feel pressure and a great pain I couldn’t bear to return to.

  ‘Avery −’ I cried desperately, scrabbling to hold onto him but it was no use. I was gone from him.

  Ava

  Fury was a second skin. My teeth chattered with it. My hands were iron steady with it. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t.

  I could feel him, but I didn’t know where. Somewhere close, somewhere maddeningly close but where where where. The streets were chaos; nearly every citizen of Vjort was out, either searching through houses or fighting the searchers. Fires had broken out and buildings burned, their owners working desperately to douse the flames. A riot was in the air, I could feel the danger approaching. Brawls were already taking up entire streets.

  I didn’t care about any of it. If that’s what it took to find my husband and my children, then let them kill each other, let it all burn. Let them tear down this vile city and be done with it.

  I came to a press of people fighting wildly, all men who towered over me.

  Instead of drawing my blades, I uncurled my whip: I had no patience for anything in my way. With a swing and a snap of my wrist, the leather snaked out and made a mighty crack, slashing at those before me, carving a path through which I strode, ignoring all but the feel of him, the whisper of him, that tingling, pulling, tugging ache of the heart.

  Blades swung at me; I cracked my whip through the hands that wielded them.

  Hands came at me; I cracked my whip through the spines that controlled them.

  At the end of the street I heard a distant whinny. Peering into the night, I spotted Migliori sweeping the city, searching as I was. I whistled to him and he angled down, spreading his wings wide that he might glide to a thunderous landing.

  ‘Where?’

  He tossed his head, stamped his foot. I swung up onto him and he flattened his wings, instead plunging into a gallop along the cobblestones. He was carrying me back towards the castle and as he did so I realised that he was right. My feet and my panic had carried me too far. It was here, back here where I began, that I could feel the tug grow stronger. Thorne had gone out to continue the search. The housekeeper had informed me he hadn’t slept in four days and had been spotted talking to himself. I didn’t have time to worry about him now; I would deal with my nephew when I found my husband and daughters. I didn’t have time for anything, having wasted so much of it.

  ‘Gods curse it,’ I snarled as my mount careened up the steps and I dismounted in the damned entrance hall once more.

  Ambrose was here. I could feel him, like a limb that had lost sensation, a prickling tingle, not exactly pleasurable and not exactly painful. He was near, but where? As I ran up stairs and through halls and searched through each of the four towers, I felt the bond between us flicker on the edge of being doused. The pinpricks grew severe. I was about to be too late.

  So I stopped. I closed my eyes, and I concentrated. Allowed the tug to guide my feet.

  Down it led me.

  Down further than I even knew was possible. A tunnel at the base of a set of steps I hadn’t known existed. I followed this tunnel at a sprint, at the end of which was a small antechamber, inside of which was a stone table, around which sat three men.

  I halted abruptly and took them in, just as they whirled to do the same. They wore military garb and were heavily armed. On their table were strewn the remnants of several meals, bottles of wine, playing dice and a pile of coins. They’d clearly been down here a long time, from the smell.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘Waiting for you,’ one replied.

  All three rose to their feet, hands moving to axes. There was a door behind them. Slow, flickering heat filled my limbs, my guts, my mouth. My teeth chattered with it. ‘Move.’

  ‘We’re not to move,’ a second man said, ‘until the sounds stop coming from within. So you’d best take your sweet little ass back up those steps. Majesty.’

  I drew a slow breath, trying and failing to calm myself. The heat was an inferno.

  I took two huge booted steps, one onto the empty chair, the second up onto the stone table. As I moved I uncurled my whip and with a flick of my wrist I cracked the end of it straight through the soldier’s throat.

  Flesh tore and blood spilled; he clawed at his neck, trying to keep it together. The others moved to attack, but I did the same to the second guard, curling my whip once around my head and then straight through his jaw.

  Now I paused, gazing down at the third and last, who’d halted in shock. ‘Do you think you can keep me from my husband?’ Unbridled fury made my voice tremble. Only a foolish man would mistake that tremble for weakness.

  The guard glanced at his comrades, both bleeding out on the ground.

  ‘Open it,’ I ordered. A beast like Thorne’s had taken control of my body – it would get inside that room, there was no question of that.

  The soldier decided to take his chances against my whip. And died.

  I jumped heavily to the ground. After searching through the belts of the three
dead men, I found the keys to the padlock and unlocked the door. It wasn’t the only deterrent – the door was made of heavy stone and took all my strength to drag open. By the time I’d hauled it far enough to squeeze through, my hands were blistered and bleeding, my head dizzy with exertion.

  I stumbled inside to find myself in the pitch-black of a windowless room. It was very cold, the air stale. I heard the sound of a girl weeping as my eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness. I made out a shape. Rectangular, like a tomb. Something lumpier atop it.

  I drew closer, reaching to touch it. Someone yelped, moved, the weeping cut off. ‘Help! Help, please −’

  ‘Shh, I’m here,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s alright.’

  The girl was tied to a slab but I couldn’t see well enough to work out how to free her. She was struggling wildly, bucking against the restraints.

  ‘Hold,’ I tried, ‘Let me −’

  ‘He stopped talking,’ she sobbed hysterically. ‘He went quiet and left me alone …’

  I whirled, searching in the dark for another slab, another body. Reaching out, I felt until my hands connected with … Something cold. Too cold to be a living thing.

  Nausea struck but I swallowed it and felt around until I found his face. ‘Ambrose. Ambrose.’ I shook him but he wasn’t moving and I couldn’t hear him breathing, couldn’t feel it against my face.

  Footsteps echoed in the tunnel beyond the door, and I heard the stone slab being dragged wider. And as it moved, the light from the antechamber moved across the floor, closer and closer, casting light first over the poor girl tied to the rock, and then over me, over my face, and when I turned my back on it so that I might look at my husband I saw, at last, what had been done to him.

  He was beaten black and blue. No inch of skin remained its colour. Parts of him were swollen and disfigured. Bones were pointing the wrong way.

  But worse, so much worse, were the two severed hands lying inches from where they should have been attached to his wrists.

  My eyelids slammed shut and the world spun around me.

  No.

  This couldn’t be. It would see him dead. If by some impossibility Ambrose survived this tomb, those lost hands would be the end of him. They would make him the weakest man in a country he could only survive in as the strongest.