I felt something strange then, watching the pegasis and rider. The connection between them was clearly unnatural, but there was a fragile beauty in it. Darkness unfurled from the heart of this boy, and it was the most intriguing thing I’d ever come across. I wanted to know him. Wanted to know what had made him like that, and what he was capable of because of it.
The two circled gracefully as the boy leant low over his mount’s back, whispering in its ear, stroking its mane. I was so mesmerised by the intimacy of it that it came to me as a jolt in my guts what I was actually looking at. The boy was Kayan – that much was obvious. Which left me only one path to tread.
Slowly, I drew my long bow from around my chest and nocked an arrow to it. Lining the boy up in my sights, I stretched the bow taut. Years of training had made my arms strong enough to use my enormous weapon. I didn’t want to hit the horse – it was too beautiful – although if I killed its rider it would undoubtedly die anyway.
I waited until the boy circled towards me, opening up his chest, and, without thinking enough to hesitate, let loose my arrow.
In that moment I realised how well trained the Kayan was. He heard the hiss of the arrow as it sailed through the air, and jerked sideways so that my shot whizzed straight past his neck, landing heavily in the pegasis’ wing. The flying horse let out a scream of pain and instantly began to struggle, flapping furiously.
I’d already nocked another arrow to my bow and let it loose. This time, because of the flailing creature he rode, the boy wasn’t able to dodge it completely – the arrow grazed his right arm, causing him to flinch. Using his knees, he turned his mount towards me and approached quickly. The pegasis wouldn’t be able to stay airborne for long – it was already angling down towards the canopy of trees. I didn’t have time to let off another shot before they were on top of me, the boy swinging his mighty sword at my head. I ducked and watched him come around again. This time, instead of moving out of the way I leapt at the boy, tackling him headlong off his horse and sending the two of us into the tree branches.
I gripped onto the Kayan as tightly as I could and we fell, hitting boughs and leaves and grazing ourselves against trunks, our descent slowed by the density of the branches. Finally, we slammed into the ground and I felt all the air flee my chest. My vision went black. When I dragged my eyes open again I was blindingly dizzy and my whole body throbbed. Heaving myself up, I saw that the boy was unconscious. I looked down at him, dazed in the sudden stillness of the forest. His face was odd – too fine, too … pretty. If he’d been born in Pirenti, he’d have been beaten every damn day of his life. His skin was a golden bronze colour, his hair underneath the cap a bright shade of blond. There was a smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. Belatedly, I realised I was staring, and felt for a pulse. Blood throbbed beneath his skin, strong and steady.
Wincing at the pain in my head, I stood and looked for the pegasis. It had landed close by, drawn to its rider, and was staring at me. The red of its wings made it hard for me to see how much blood I had spilt. I removed my leather belt and used it to tie the boy’s hands behind his back, then lifted him over my shoulder to start the walk back to the fortress.
In my arms was a boy so damaged he felt no fear – a freak of nature, and the first thing to spark my interest in what felt like years. There was a shift in the air, in my heart. The world had changed at the sight of this boy. But I didn’t understand it – could not contemplate what it might mean. Instead I marched blindly on.
Ava
It was lonely being the first of your kind – the first to survive when you shouldn’t. But I knew a thing with certainty: if you could not endure loneliness, then you wouldn’t survive long in this world.
I’d woken up with headaches before, but this was a whole new world of pain. As soon as my mind moved towards consciousness, my entire body seemed to ignite. The pain shot up my spine through my neck, culminating in my head. It throbbed and ached so badly that all I could do was lean over and retch onto the cold stone floor beneath me. I wondered, vaguely, if this was what it felt like to have broken your spine.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the blinding pain lessened and I opened my eyes. I was in a small stone cell that smelt of rot and human waste. The stench didn’t help my nausea. Groaning, I tried to sit up, struggling as I discovered my hands were tied behind my back.
‘Alive, pretty boy?’ a deep voice spoke from behind me. Moving slowly, I turned to face the bars of my cell. Standing on the other side easily resting his forehead against the iron was a young man. He was very clearly Pirenti – tall, broad and well muscled where Kayan men were small and fine. His skin was paler than a Kayan’s bronze, and his hair was dark, shaved close to his head in the way of warriors here. His eyes, when I met them, made me feel cold inside – they were an incredibly pale blue, so pale they looked almost white, and they seemed to glow under his heavy, dark brow. A long scar ran through his eye, evidence of the violence in his life. In another lifetime I might have been able to appreciate his beauty, but I was ruined now, utterly unable to see such things. His lazy grin was the most antagonising thing I’d ever seen, and I instantly loathed him.
‘Where am I?’ I asked, making sure to keep my voice as low as I could without it sounding false. Back in Kaya it had been easy enough to fool everyone into thinking I was a small, slender man. Here, however, the men prided themselves on their strength and size. I’d padded my clothes to give my body more bulk and tucked my long hair under a cap, but I was still laughably small. My engagement ring was hidden deep within the bandages around my chest, because it would mark me clearly as a bonded woman.
The brute was staring at me too closely for comfort – I couldn’t tell if he’d noticed anything was amiss.
‘You’re in a dungeon cell at the bottom of the palace you attempted to enter uninvited,’ he informed me mildly.
‘I didn’t attempt to enter anywhere!’ I spat. ‘I was just flying my— Where’s Migliori? Where’s my pegasis?’ My heartbeat ratcheted up against my chest and I scrambled unsteadily to my feet.
‘He’s fine. I had our animal physician tend to his wing and set him free.’
I blinked. Then this was the man who’d tackled me from the sky like a lunatic. I felt my anger rise. ‘You can’t set him free. He’s tied to me until the day one of us dies. He’ll sense me in here, and he won’t stop searching until he reaches me.’
‘A fitting fate for such a creature, don’t you think? To spend its life tied to the unnatural emotions of a human, waiting for him instead of flying free?’
I stared at him, my anger slipping away to be replaced with a hollow quiet. He was a pig who couldn’t understand the intricacy of the bond, or any real connection. I was not about to try to explain it to him. ‘Only those who’ve experienced it could understand,’ I murmured.
He seemed to consider that for a moment, but didn’t say anything except, ‘What’s your name, kid?’
I’d known all along – all the years I’d been planning – that I’d be asked this question. And I’d known that if my disguise had any hope of working, I’d have to lie. But as I opened my mouth and uttered the name that wasn’t mine, it still tore through me, inside my broken, ruined heart with both a fierce pride and an interminable sorrow.
‘Avery,’ I told him. ‘My name is Avery.’
‘Ambrose.’
I stared at him blankly. He was looking at me like … like he could see me, like I was a real, solid person with hopes and desires, and not the ghost I’d become. He was looking at me as though I deserved to be noticed.
‘So what? You want us to be pals now?’ I snapped, stunned and unsettled by his gaze. Nobody saw me like that anymore, let alone Pirenti pigs. ‘What do you want? What will you do with me?’
He smiled, moving slowly to pace back and forwards. ‘You’re a naughty boy, Avery of Kaya. Here, guts and audacity only get you rewarded if you’re Pirenti. You’ll be punished.’
‘For doing what, exactly?’
‘For trespassing into our country and attacking a Pirenti man.’
‘You attacked me!’
‘Do you really think the Queen will believe that?’ He grinned lazily, pale eyes flashing, and my heart lurched. ‘More to the point,’ he added, ‘Do you think she’ll care?’
The Pirenti murdered Kayans simply because of our race – a result of the blood feud between our two nations that ran as deep as any river and existed as far back as any history book bothered to record. Nobody knew what the fighting was about anymore – it was just a fact, something we were all born into. Mortal enemies until the day we died. I hated the Pirenti as much as anyone – more, in fact. And I had no doubt that, despite Ambrose’s cool manner, he hated me just as much. There was no way out of this for me except—
‘Execution, probably,’ he murmured. He didn’t seem amused anymore. But I couldn’t read his eyes, steady as they were. ‘If you’re very lucky, and very nice to me, you might get away with life in prison.’
Women in Pirenti were raped and abused and made to be slaves. And a Kayan woman who had trespassed and attacked a man … I shuddered to think what they’d do to me if they knew the truth.
I walked to the bars and spat in the soldier’s face. ‘Nice enough?’
He stared at me without flinching, then calmly wiped his cheek clean, never looking away from my violet eyes. They shone a bright purple when I was angry and they went red when I was furious. I wasn’t sure what he would think of that – Kayans were the only people whose eyes changed colour to suit their moods.
Moving slowly, he drew a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the bars, then stepped into the cell with me. I was tall for a Kayan woman, but my head barely reached his shoulders. It occurred to me that I was about to be in a lot more pain.
He struck me hard, a backhand to my cheek. I thought he’d snapped my neck, it made such a noise. The room spun and I fell to my knees.
‘That was a kindness,’ I heard him say softly, as if from far away. ‘I could have killed you. I should have. Get up.’
I didn’t move. A tiny, insignificant act of defiance, but all that I was capable of. Ambrose took my arm and jerked me to my feet. My cheek throbbed as I looked at him.
‘How old are you?’ he asked me.
‘Seventeen.’ I was twenty, but as a boy I didn’t look it.
‘Do you understand that you’re about to die?’
‘Of course.’
‘But you aren’t frightened.’
I lifted my chin in response.
‘Why?’
‘Death,’ I said slowly, ‘is easy.’
‘And how, my pretty boy, could you possibly know that?’
My jaw clenched and I made no answer.
His frown deepened. Holding me by the arm, he led me from the cell. My mind started whirling, trying to pull together the pieces of my training, but I felt useless and weak beside his outlandish strength.
Ambrose led me upwards, and I realised with a jolt that we were following the exact path that Avery and I had used two years ago. Nausea clutched at my insides. Even though I’d devoted the rest of my empty, half-life towards punishing the woman who’d murdered my mate, I suddenly didn’t care that I hadn’t achieved it because the sense of loss was so exhausting that I just wanted it all to end. I simply wanted to die.
‘Where are we going?’ I muttered.
‘To your sentencing.’
We came to the room, the very same room. I peered at the floor where the blood had been, wondering if there would be a stain, or some sort of proof, but there wasn’t. Of course there wasn’t – people were killed here all the time. The room was empty but for a woman seated on her throne. She looked like she spent all her time here luxuriating in the residue of death. The Barbarian Queen. The woman I’d watched as she stabbed Avery over and over again, as though she couldn’t tell that he was already gone.
Forget dying. I suddenly wanted to inflict pain. My anger was like a living, breathing thing, controlling my body, making me shake. It was funny what a person with only half a soul could feel: no joy, no pleasure, no amusement, no longing or desire or fear – but they could feel anger, more keenly than if they were whole. Sharper than they ever had before they were destroyed – anger like it kept you alive, anger like air. I’d thought, many times, that it might have been only this anger that allowed me to survive at all.
Ambrose seemed to sense the change in me, for he looked sideways, eyes sharp. He posed a problem; he alone was going to make it hard for me to get this done.
‘Well,’ the Queen said as we approached. ‘It’s the brave little beast, come to be a hero.’
Beast. I would have smiled if I could.
This woman had been in power in Pirenti for thirty-two years, and she looked like she’d aged a lot in the last two – her face was even more wrinkled than I remembered. Her hair was completely white, and her eyes were the same icy colour as the eyes of the guard who held me. She had four bodyguards flanking her, making it impossible for me to see a way to get to her. I dreamed about this woman every night – of her cold, hard sharpness, of her brutality. I dreamed of her beastliness. It revolted me. They all did. I decided to tell her so and the room stilled.
‘What did you say?’ the Barbarian Queen asked me.
‘You make me sick,’ I repeated carefully. ‘You are everything that’s rotten in this world.’
She stared at me, and her fury empowered me. My hands were working behind my back, quickly and subtly.
‘This from the boy who has come here to what? Assassinate a poor, old woman?’
I stared at her. If I’d been physically able to, I might have laughed. ‘Poor old woman,’ I repeated softly, buying time. ‘Tell me. When did you turn from an evil, murderous tyrant into a poor, old woman? It might be something I’ll need to alert my friends about.’
She smiled. ‘Your friends.’
‘I have plenty and they are coming for you, one after the other until you are dead – of that you can be certain.’
The rope around my hands frayed against the file I’d sewn into the back of my breeches. I kept my shoulders very still as I worked – this was a trick I’d practised almost every day over the last two years. A second of silence, and then my hands were free. I didn’t move them, not yet. Instead, I allowed my fingers to stretch out and slide my knife from my waistband.
‘What have you got planned for me?’ I asked. ‘Will you slaughter me on this floor? It doesn’t seem as dramatic with no one here to watch.’
‘But there is someone here to watch,’ the Queen disagreed softly, her eyes flashing to the soldier gripping my arm. It piqued my curiosity. ‘Ambrose would probably quite like to see a young Kayan like you scattered over the marble. Wouldn’t you, soldier?’
Ambrose said nothing. I snuck a look at him – he was still as a statue. His expression was unreadable, but much harder than it had been alone with me in the dungeon.
‘You’ve yet to be punished for this morning,’ she told him. ‘Perhaps I’ll allow you to torture your captive while I think of an appropriate penance for you.’
The blade now firmly in my hand and hidden beneath the fold of my tunic, I was making plans. With my right arm caught in the soldier’s clutches, I would have to use my left. If I ducked low and aimed for the woman’s throat, I could possibly get my knife into her jugular before any of the bodyguards had time to block her, but I’d have to be very, very quick.
‘You may begin,’ the Queen told the soldier.
I took a breath—
‘I don’t think so.’
I paused, whipping around to look at the strange man holding me, speaking out against his Queen. He was staring at her.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she asked him, a dangerous edge to her voice.
‘This boy is unnatural. I’d like him sent to the isle where his mount can never reach him – it will send the two of them mad.’
A shiver of cool horror made its way down m
y spine. My heart hurt. He couldn’t possibly mean it.
The Queen’s face filled with a demonic grin. ‘Well, well. Aren’t you in a surprisingly macabre mood.’
‘He’s my catch. I’ve rights to decide his fate,’ Ambrose said simply.
He’s a monster, I thought with a dizzy rush of fury. I had to do this now.
Switching hands, I moved the knife into attack position and ducked— a jerk brought me out of my movement. All of a sudden, without me even realising how it had happened, Ambrose, the pig beside me, was holding my knife in his hand, and sheathing it in his own belt – so fast it was virtually invisible.
‘What was that?’ the Queen snapped.
I held my breath, knowing that what had just happened was going to make things very, very bad for me.
And then I heard Ambrose respond with, ‘Nothing. The boy stumbled.’
There was a fist around my heart. Hatred unlike any I’d ever known. How dare he? How dare he take my fate in his own hands, propose to send me to a waking nightmare of a prison and then lie for me? It made no sense and the confusion was a savage thing inside me.
I started struggling, wanting his hands away from my skin, wanting this beast gone from my life forever, but he only tightened his hold into an iron grip and I couldn’t get away.
The Queen watched me through hawk eyes. Finally she smiled, even more widely. Her teeth glittered. ‘Very well, Ambrose. Since you have yet to be punished, and you’ve taken such a personal interest in this case, you shall accompany the boy to the isle.’
‘What?’ he roared. ‘I’ll not go there! You expect me to waste weeks on a miserable journey into the forsaken lands?’
Avery (Random Romance) Page 2