Isadora

by Charlotte McConaghy

  Thorne

  Dawn came and the gaping dark receded from beneath me. I understood that by tying me to this tree my father had saved my life, in more ways than one. Even my beast understood. I had no more anger left, only a tired kind of peace with my role in this. And worry. A gnawing worry for my family out there.

  At least I had Ma and my cousins safely here with me. They sat gathered around, keeping me company while we waited. Howl had his muzzle resting in my lap, and hadn’t moved all night. Sadie was chatty as usual and Ella was preoccupied with whatever Da had told her. Ma treated my wound as best she could and I felt less feverish as the morning wore on. Erik returned from the ridge to say that the battle was over, and by the looks of it we had won. I asked desperately after Finn but he hadn’t been able to make out individual faces. When Ma was satisfied I could walk they untied me and we started the journey to the city.

  Struggling to keep up, I told Erik to take the girls ahead to find their parents. Ma hung back with me, dawdling slowly through the sun. I could only take very slow, unsteady steps. We skirted the battle remnants, of course, not wanting Ella and Sadie to see the macabre remains. But I squinted at them, sick curiosity filling me.

  Erik and the girls were already inside when someone on horseback burst out of the gate and galloped towards us. I pushed Ma behind me, but saw that it was Falco. Riding to a panting halt, he swung out of the saddle. ‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘The veil’s pulling them back through.’

  It took me less than a moment to understand. ‘Take Ma,’ I said.

  ‘You take her.’

  ‘The horse won’t carry my weight and hers,’ I snapped. ‘Take her and hurry.’

  ‘Thorne,’ my mother said to me then, in a voice unlike any I had heard her use. ‘Get on that horse and say goodbye to your father.’

  ‘Oh, Ma,’ I breathed, my eyes growing hot.

  ‘Go. I’ll be behind you.’ Roselyn’s eyes were dry, her expression resolute.

  Hating myself, I mounted Falco’s horse and kicked it for the gate. It was chaos inside the city. Wounded and dead were being carried on stretchers. The streets were crowded. I navigated my way through it all, heading for the palace.

  He was coming down the front steps as I reached the bottom and started up them. ‘Falco said –’

  He barrelled into me, wrapping me in his embrace. He smelled of blood and death, but also of love. ‘I’m so proud of you, my boy.’ His voice trembled and he had to clear his throat. ‘I’m proud to be your da.’

  I swallowed, meeting his eyes and nodding. I’m proud to be your son, were the words in my heart, but what came out instead was, ‘Ma’s coming.’

  Da kissed me on both cheeks and grinned, giving a little shake of his head as though he couldn’t quite believe the sight of me. ‘You’re nothing like me, are you, kid?’ he laughed. Then he was off down the steps, racing through the crowded streets to his wife.

  Roselyn

  I wished for quicker feet, but I was so slow. I wished for more time, but I could feel it running out. I wished for the streets to clear, for the people to move, for magic of my own, and none of that happened.

  But when I wished for you, there you were.

  Sometimes precious wishes came true.

  You were taller than everyone else, so I saw you from far away. ‘Rose!’ you shouted, searching for me.

  I pushed and shoved, trying to get through the crowd, and Falco was yelling at everyone to move, and pulling me over and around things, catching me when I tripped, but it was so busy and you were so far, my darling.

  I wished to reach you, to touch you one last time, and so I did. You saw me, and you came so fast and you were smiling, and reaching for me, and I for you, and our fingers touched, just the tips, and then you were gone.

  I stood still in the busy street, jostled and brushed by everyone who moved around me. Falco spoke but I didn’t hear him. I lowered my face and closed my eyes, and as I held my fingertips to my lips, kissing you one last time, I smiled.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Ava

  He was very, very real. So real I could feel his heart pounding through his shirt and mine. He was warm, and the softness of his long hair kept brushing against my neck and my jaw and my cheeks. He angled down into Sancia, finding a square not so crowded to land his pegasis, and I stumbled off and as far from him as I could get.

  ‘Ava.’

  His voice. I felt utterly mad. Couldn’t stop shaking, was dizzy enough to vomit. He touched me and I wrenched away, spinning so I could shove him from me. ‘Don’t.’

  He raised his hands in surrender and simply stood there, gazing at me. I couldn’t even look at him. Something was ripping inside me.

  ‘Come on, petal,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to bite.’

  I shook my head, moving further away, turning my back to him. How could this …? Rationally I knew it must be real, knew he must be real – Finn had opened the veil, after all – but I couldn’t grasp onto it, couldn’t make it fit within the person I had become, the woman I was. The loss of him made up such a part of me, of my life. Sometimes I felt like it was me, all anyone saw when they looked at me. The half-walker.

  In the middle of the square was a stone fountain without any water. I sank onto the edge of it, my legs wobbly, and rested my head in my hands. I felt him sit beside me, leaving a good distance between us. And then he started talking to me, his words and his voice just as I remembered.

  ‘I enjoyed your wedding day, but I thought Ambrose was a bit plain in his white tunic. Blue would have been handsome with his eyes. If it had been our wedding day I would have gone for something more flamboyant. I liked your coronation too – who knew you’d been born to be a queen?’ He laughed a little. I’d forgotten how obsessed with clothing he was. I’d forgotten a lot, I realised with horror. ‘I like breakfasts in the morning, with the four of you, and I like the stories that are told at night. But my favourite,’ he went on softly, ‘was when the girls were born. That’s always my favourite. I go back to it again and again so I can look at the happiness in your eyes, my girl.’

  ‘Stop,’ I whispered. ‘Please stop.’

  He did stop, and we sat quietly.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said eventually, face still in my palms. I couldn’t look at him. ‘Is this some kind of cruel trick?’

  ‘It’s just … a glimpse, I suppose. A chance.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For … some words. Some looks. A touch, maybe. Or just this. Being close. I’ve imagined it for twenty-three years, so I’m happy with anything, really.’

  I couldn’t do it. I walked to the alley that opened off the square and slipped down it, pressing my back to the warm stone of the building. Closing my eyes, I willed myself to wake.

  And then I heard it. ‘Ma?’

  ‘Ma!’

  ‘Hang on, she’s here somewhere.’

  The voices broke off and I tilted my head to watch, feeling so far away that I could have been watching from another world. Migliori led Ambrose and Ella and Sadie into the square, where they stopped in surprise to see not me, but a young man sitting on the edge of a fountain. He looked so beautiful and so young, sitting there in the sun.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Sadie asked loudly.

  I watched him stand and smile this smile, gods, such a joyful smile. Such a loving smile. And then I was watching Ambrose cross to him and take him in his arms, wrapping those stumps around him and lifting him off the ground with a wild rumble of laughter. The smaller man laughed too, returning the embrace and then wriggling out of it to lunge at the girls and kiss them frantically, making them hysterical with giggles.

  ‘This is Avery,’ I heard my husband say, and the squeals they let out then were so ecstatic that I started to cry.

  Sinking to a crouch against the wall, I buried my face once more and wept. I wept for all the time lost, for all the memories he’d seen without being able to share, and for this. For the love that somehow existed in
two children and a man who’d never met him. It felt bigger than me, bigger than this, than everything.

  And then I heard Ella say with sudden, panicked understanding, ‘Fal said the veil was closing, Da.’

  Footsteps came to me. I heard him crouch, felt his handless wrists reach to brush against my back and hair. They were awkward, his touch blunt and clumsy, and I wept for this, too, unable to look at him either.

  ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘time’s running out.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘How am I meant to …? I can’t. It will kill me.’

  ‘It won’t.’

  ‘Oh, stop. You don’t know. You can’t possibly. He’s not real and the woman I was when I loved him isn’t real. Not anymore. I can’t afford for her to be.’

  There was a silence, and then he said, ‘Stand up.’

  ‘Ambro–’

  ‘Stand up and spend a moment with your mate, because this is a miracle. People don’t get this. Nobody gets this.’

  I looked at him angrily. Ambrose straightened and gazed down at me. ‘I married no coward.’

  As he gathered the girls to one side I remained frozen. Because if I … if I felt this, and he left again, then what … what would that do to the way I got through the days? How could I recover twice?

  He appeared in the mouth of the alley, and I made myself look at him. I looked at him, and I saw him, really saw him. The boy I first glimpsed in a boat out at sea, the one who turned me into a fighter, made me see what mattered in life. The boy who kissed me first, made love to me first, proposed to me first, planned to spend the rest of his life with me first. I had all my firsts with this man, this young, charming, flippant creature, this smiling creature, this laughing joking sarcastic impatient obnoxious generous creature. This was a man who died for his people, who was killed doing something foolish and brave and whose eyes had turned gold for me as he died.

  ‘Avery,’ I said, reaching for him, everything collapsing within. No walls remained, not even the skeletons of walls.

  He was here with me, in my arms, his lips finding mine at last and I was wide open, my heart his. ‘I never kissed you enough,’ I whispered. ‘I never had enough of your laughs. I never got the life we planned, but I got a different life, one without you, and you got no life, you just got to watch mine. And that’s not fair.’ Here it was, flooding from me in a wave of guilt. I had a perfect, wonderful life, and he had nothing. He had the eternal loneliness of watching that life and not being able to share it. He deserved so much more. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I love you,’ Avery said urgently, holding my face and hair and cheeks. ‘I love you and I love your husband and your children. I love every moment of your life, I love it like it’s mine. You don’t understand how empty it would be there without your happiness. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t stop – you keep me there by the veil. Your love, petal, and Ambrose’s, too, it holds me close always.’

  My hands trembled from clutching him so tightly. I exhaled in a rush. ‘I’m not a petal anymore. I’m nothing like one.’

  ‘You’re better,’ Avery said, kissing me again.

  He was so real in my hands, against my mouth. He felt warm and alive and he tasted like my childhood, like my adolescence and my memories of first becoming a woman. He tasted like the fish we caught and tasted off each other’s bodies, and he tasted of the salt in our tears.

  And then he tasted of nothing, no longer warm and alive because he was gone again, leaving nothing but the echo in my ears of his last word, my name on his lips.

  I stood a long moment, gathering my courage and letting grief trickle away. And then I walked out into the sunlight to sit beside my family. They gathered me between them, all three managing to hold me. Ella’s lips were on my cheek, Sadie’s hands were squeezing mine, and as I turned my face to Ambrose he rested his forehead gently on mine.

  ‘Don’t cry, Mama,’ Sadie urged.

  ‘It’s alright,’ I whispered, feeling my husband’s breath tickle my lips. ‘I’m only crying because I’m so lucky. One person oughtn’t get to be so lucky.’

  Thorne

  I ran through the hallways of the palace, through the enormous main hall with its high ceilings and marble floors. I ran up flights of stairs, through pungently smelling kitchens and dusty libraries. I checked the roof, I checked the dungeons. I looked and looked because her brothers were both dead and I couldn’t find her and it was striking fear in my chest. Something felt intrinsically wrong inside me, a pounding dread, and my eyes were burning gold and wouldn’t shift.

  ‘She was here,’ Falco said. ‘Not long past. She sent me for you.’

  ‘Then where?’ I demanded. ‘I have looked.’

  ‘Calm down, brother,’ he told me. ‘We’ll find her.’ He said nothing of Isadora, who had also disappeared, but I got the sense that he knew his Sparrow didn’t want to be found.

  I took off, heading for the grounds, but this time I took the balcony and so it was that I spotted her. Finn was sitting on the railing, her legs dangling over, light wind picking up her yellow hair. I gave a huge sigh of relief. The dread eased a little, but lingered. Something still felt wrong. ‘There you are.’

  She looked over her shoulder and smiled at me, a glorious smile. Her eyes were as gold as mine. ‘Hello, beasty-boy.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ I crossed to stand beside her. The ocean crashed below, glittering in the sunlight. She was sitting perilously close to the edge, but I wouldn’t chide her. Finn of Limontae, she’d say, does not fall.

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  I swallowed; my heart was enormously heavy. ‘I’m so –’ I cleared my throat. ‘I’m so sorry, darling. For Jonah and for Penn. It is … unbearable.’

  She didn’t say anything, just watched the water. I had never known her not to speak, so I waited.

  ‘How long will you love me?’ Finn asked finally.

  ‘Always.’

  ‘And how long will you live after I’m gone?’

  ‘Finn –’

  ‘How long?’

  I took a breath. ‘As long as I’m able.’

  She smiled again. ‘Did you see him? And say goodbye?’

  I nodded.

  ‘It’s been worth it, then. Just to have him here once more. And Avery, I think. I think the last was Avery.’

  ‘What’s been worth it?’

  ‘And if he hadn’t been here to tie you to the tree you wouldn’t have made it through. I know that much.’

  ‘What’s been worth it?’

  Finn turned to look at me properly, and she was smiling still but there were tears in her eyes and they were scaring me cold. ‘I keep going and getting myself killed. One of these times it was bound to stick.’

  And it occurred to me in a rush that I hadn’t touched her.

  That dread in my guts – it had known. My golden eyes had known. As I reached for her face my fingers went straight through her. A sound left me, a low groan, and I had to catch myself on the balcony. ‘Come back,’ I gasped. ‘Come back.’

  Finn shook her head gently. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to bring anyone through. We live and we die, and that’s as it should be. I’ve had three births already – I need no fourth.’

  ‘I need you,’ I said. ‘Either you come back or I follow you. That’s as it should be.’

  ‘Thorne. If you love me –’

  ‘If?’

  ‘Because you love me, you will live. You will live, and it will be such a life. Precious and rare and full.’

  But that wasn’t my life. Not anymore. Life was abruptly too long. Impossibly long. It stretched out unendurably before me, filled only with loneliness.

  ‘No,’ she murmured, ‘life is a blink. Less than. I can see it now.’ Her legs swung back and forth. ‘Don’t tell anyone yet. Leave it a while. Let them … be.’

  Grief made a shell of me, a husk. I didn’t care about anyone else. My beast was howling and howling and
howling within. He would never stop.

  Then my wife turned to me and smiled again, and I could see the freckles on her nose as she whispered, ‘It’s beautiful here, Thorne. It’s filled with the most beautiful music. Shh … if you close your eyes and listen, I’ll show it to you.’

  And so I did, and she did. Through the deep binding between our souls, the one that would never break, not even in death, I heard the soft humming voices of the dead, and it was. It was extraordinary. It was the meaning of it all. It was love.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Falco

  ‘They’re all dead,’ I said. ‘Every single warder who tried to take this country from me. All but one.’

  Gwendolyn the Viper was sitting inside the dungeon cell as I addressed her through the bars. She looked tired and sad. She didn’t much look like a warder.

  ‘Why should you live, Viper?’

  ‘I shouldn’t.’

  I considered her. ‘You saved us, in the cages. And again, freeing Penn.’

  ‘Not enough,’ she murmured. ‘It wasn’t enough.’

  ‘We never feel as though it’s enough, but sometimes it is. For helping us at great risk to yourself, you’re free, Gwendolyn. Penn would have wanted that.’

  She looked shocked. ‘No, Majesty. I don’t trust myself.’

  ‘Then I shall trust you, and that will be enough.’

  ‘She means her magic,’ Osric told me from the base of the stairs. He’d been following me everywhere since the battle, intent on protecting me.

  ‘I know what she means.’

  ‘You should ban it,’ Gwendolyn said. ‘Ban all of it.’

  I frowned, glancing between them. ‘I’ll not ban something that is born into people. That would be a crime. Instead I will trust in the strength of their spirits, and I will help guide them to kindness.’