Read Online Thorne (Random Romance) by Charlotte McConaghy - Free Book Online Page A

all been planned. I’d been brought here into the lion’s den to be interrogated by this strange little family. Irrational anger bloomed in my chest, mostly directed at myself. Of course the girl didn’t have any other motivation to invite me here. She simply wanted to poke at the bear through the bars of his cage.
    ‘What do you think a berserker would want with a Kayan’s secret?’
    No response.
    ‘I haven’t come to spy, or to hurt any of you.’
    ‘Then why?’ It was Finn this time, and there was something hard in her voice. ‘Why come here?’
    The strangest words bloomed in my mind and mouth just then, but I bit them back, utterly bewildered by them.
    Instead I said nothing. I would not repeat myself. If anyone in Pirenti treated a man this way they would probably wind up dead or brutalised. Obviously, Kayans didn’t understand when they were offending a person’s honour.
    ‘He can’t bring himself to lie,’ Jonah declared.
    ‘I must excuse myself,’ I said, rising. ‘I thank you for the meal.’
    They watched me walk to the door in silence, and then she called, ‘Wait.’
    I wanted to leave without doing as she’d asked. I wanted never to see her again. But I turned and met her eyes across the room, bound by some strange power she’d cast over me.
    ‘Forgive us. We don’t mean to frighten you away.’
    A part of me hated her, which was strange because I had never hated anyone in my entire life. Well, except for my da. But this girl seemed to effortlessly bring out all the worst parts of me.
    ‘We’ll see you at daybreak.’
    I frowned. ‘Why?’
    ‘Because you’ll be travelling with us to Sancia.’
    My mouth opened but nothing came out.
    Finn of Limontae stood and moved a few paces closer to me. In the candlelight she looked dangerous, her eyes glistening with something reckless.
    ‘It’s why you’re really here, Thorne of Araan. To break the curse of the bond. I want the same end. We might as well travel together.’
    And I realised that what I’d thought in the cave was right – she simply wanted danger in her life, wanted adventure and strife and excitement. Which was why the words I had nearly replied were so ludicrous.
    She’d asked me why I’d come here, and I’d very nearly replied, for you .
    Finn
    When I was five and my eyes changed for the first time to black, I asked Ma what it meant.
    ‘It means you have a soul, my love,’ she had answered.
    I hadn’t understood at the time, only when I got older. She’d always tried to teach me that it was as important for our eyes to turn black as it was for them to turn yellow and blue and red and green.
    But she hadn’t understood what that meant, not truly. She didn’t understand that the colour of loss, the colour of death, was unbearable, because she’d never had any cause to understand. When she was gone, I made up my own mind about a soul. About what it needed. I wanted no shame in my eyes. No fear or pain or hatred. And I certainly didn’t want loss.
    But that didn’t stop my eyes from turning black more than any set I knew, for what Ma had neglected to tell me was that black was also the colour of wanting. And when a soul was too big for its body, that soul sustained itself by yearning for things.
    And so it became almost impossible for me to look at myself in the mirror.
     
    After dinner Da retired to bed, exhaustion ravaging his body. Jonah hadn’t spoken since Thorne left, and for once I couldn’t interpret his silence. It was an odd awareness – that he was thinking things I couldn’t read.
    Penn was still obsessively running his fingers over the carvings at the edge of the table. They showed the ocean dropping away at the end of the world, and I’d imagined falling off that drop so many times that I’d almost convinced myself it was how I was going to die one day.
    I walked into Da’s room, sinking onto his bed. Placing a cool cloth on his forehead, I watched him toss and turn in the grips of fever. It