Chapter 14 #2
Hawthorne looped it around his neck with a roguish smile.
The man who shared her campfire was different to the one she’d started her journey with.
As the night wore on, and he sharpened his blades on a whetstone, he spoke softly and thoughtfully.
Thea got the sense that he hadn’t done so for some time.
They talked quietly of fortress life, and for someone who had travelled so vastly and for so long, it still sounded as though Thezmarr had Hawthorne’s heart. The Warsword’s voice was a song, one that Thea didn’t want to end.
To her delight, the warrior had offered her a pouch of dried tea leaves from his own saddlebag and she now cupped a steaming tin of peppermint tea between her hands.
‘Peppermint’s my favourite,’ she told him, giving a hum of satisfaction.
‘Is that so?’
‘Mmm hmm…’ She inhaled the rich scent, content. ‘We could have talked like this all the way to Hailford, you know,’ she ventured, looking up at him from across the fire.
Hawthorne was toying with the necklace of flowers resting against his chest. ‘I thought you were a brat then.’
‘No more than you.’
The Warsword shot her a look of disbelief and Thea laughed. Dax huffed at her side as though he were infinitely bored with them.
‘What changed your mind?’ Thea asked.
‘Who said I changed my mind?’ His gaze lingered on her hands as they threaded more flowers together, no – on her scars.
Flushing, she instinctively tucked them in her pockets.
‘No need to hide scars from me, Alchemist. I’m well acquainted with them,’ he told her.
Thea peered at him in the firelight. Sure enough, several scars cut through the grain of his dark stubble, another through his left eyebrow. His hands were littered with them as well.
Thea shifted. ‘Mine are not scars from heroic deeds…’ she ventured. ‘Merely my own stupidity for the most part.’
The Warsword pointed to the scar on his eyebrow. ‘This? I assure you, this wasn’t from slaying a mountain drake,’ he said. ‘I got it walking, or rather, falling, out of Marise’s cellar after too many bottles of a “special” vintage. Sliced it open on the gutter.’
Thea beamed at the thought. ‘You? Drunk?’
‘Annihilated more like.’
‘I can’t imagine it,’ she said, shaking her head, her eyes still on the faint white line that cut through his brow. ‘In fact, I’d pay to see it.’
‘It was a long time ago,’ he murmured, as though he were drifting back to the moment it happened.
‘You don’t have fun anymore?’
He met her eyes across the fire. ‘There are many types of “fun”, Alchemist…’
There was something about the way he said it, with the audacity to wear an arrogant half-grin that made Thea’s toes curl in her boots.
‘And how do the alchemists of Thezmarr have fun then?’ he asked, his scarred brow lifting.
Thea plucked a frond of grass and began to wrap it around her finger. ‘I don’t know really… Many read and talk, some go for walks around the fortress and when they can, tend to the horses. My sister likes to invent things.’
‘You have a sister at Thezmarr?’
‘Yes. She’s the most talented of our cohort. She’ll be the master alchemist when Farissa retires.’
‘She’s that good?’
‘The best,’ Thea said proudly.
Hawthorne’s gaze turned contemplative. ‘It’s good you have each other.’
‘I know.’ Thea hesitated. ‘Were you and your brother together at Thezmarr for long?’
Hawthorne’s expression changed, his fingers touching the flower necklace. ‘Yes and no,’ he said at last. ‘My brother…’
Thea waited, she could tell how hard it was for him to speak of it.
The warrior sighed heavily. ‘Malik is my brother, Alchemist.’
Thea froze, shock rippling through her. ‘Malik? My Malik?’
Hawthorne’s gaze glistened in the firelight, a sad smile on his lips. ‘Yes, that Malik. I’m sure he’d find your claim to him endlessly amusing.’
Thea gaped at the Warsword. ‘How can I not know something like that?’
‘Hardly anyone left at Thezmarr knows. When I was a shieldbearer, I took my mother’s family name. I wanted to make it on my own, without living in the shadow of Malik’s reputation.’
‘It seems you were successful.’
‘All the glory in the world means nothing when you fail to save your brother from a terrible fate.’
Thea’s throat constricted. ‘What happened?’
‘The fall of Naarva…’ The words seemed to tumble from Hawthorne now, as though this was the first time he was speaking them.
‘A swarm of shadow wraiths and their masters attacked, Malik and my mentor were caught in the fray. These creatures were the largest of their kind I’d ever seen. Against them, even Malik looked small.’
Thea stared, unable to imagine her giant friend looking anything other than larger than life.
‘Malik was cornered, thrown around like a child’s toy, slammed into the rock again and again. I was too far away to do anything…’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Thea murmured.
‘I should have been at my brother’s side.’
‘If Malik couldn’t stop them, you had no chance,’ she told him, finding herself reaching for his arm. Her hand closed over the warm skin there. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted you to get hurt.’
‘Malik the Shieldbreaker, they once called him. No one ever made a shield Malik couldn’t break.
He was also known for breaking the shieldbearers in.
’ As though remembering himself, Hawthorne looked at where she touched him.
‘It’s getting late,’ he said. Her hand fell away as he got to his feet and rummaged for his bedroll.
‘We should get some rest before tomorrow.’
Thea tried not to let her disappointment show. ‘Of course.’
But then the Warsword paused. ‘You never said what you did.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘For fun.’
‘Oh…’ Thea struggled for a moment then. Wren had her inventions, Sam had her dalliances, Ida loved helping out in the stables and riding when she could.
But Thea… What did she do for fun? Fun had never been the purpose, had never been the driving force for her actions, but that didn’t mean she didn’t experience joy…
Slowly, Thea met Hawthorne’s gaze once more. ‘I train,’ she said.
‘Just as well.’ Hawthorne nodded. ‘You’re already behind the rest of the shieldbearers.’
‘Like I said, I like a challenge.’
Hawthorne lay down on his bedroll, resting his hands behind his head and looking up to the stars. ‘So I’ve gathered.’
Thea woke with a jolt. The night stared down at her, a black vastness that made her feel small and insignificant. Something nudged her boot and she started, reaching for the dagger she no longer had.
It was only Dax. The embers of the fire were still glowing, enough that she could make out his elongated frame and ragged coat.
A few feet away, movement caught her eye.
Hawthorne. He was thrashing about on his bedroll, murmuring incoherently, a sheen of sweat on his brow.
Thea froze. He wouldn’t want her seeing this, that much she knew. Anguish spilled from his lips in a language she didn’t recognise, his face pained.
Thea understood the force of inner horrors all too well, and she wasn’t about to let them drag him under. She went to him and laced her fingers through his. He was cold as ice.
‘Hawthorne,’ she said, as gently as she could. ‘Hawthorne, wake up…’
His grip tightened around her hand and he quaked. ‘No, don’t!’ The words were both a command and a plea. ‘No…’
‘Hawthorne,’ Thea shook his shoulder with more force. ‘Wake up. It’s a dream, it’s just a dream.’
He jerked beneath her touch and she leaned over him, this time shaking him harder. ‘It’s a dream,’ she said again. ‘You need to —’
With a ragged gasp, his eyes flew open, molten silver and savage.
And then suddenly Thea was on her back, the full weight of him pressed against her as he pinned her to the ground, panting.
‘Hawthorne,’ she said. ‘It’s Thea. It’s me, the Alchemist.’
But his gaze was feral, as though he had no sense of who she was or where they were.
‘Wilder,’ she said his given name softly, but as a command. ‘ Wilder. It’s Thea.’
Slowly, the Warsword blinked. The glaze over his eyes faded. ‘Thea…?’ he breathed.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. He’s never said my name before , she realised, suddenly more keenly aware of his body against hers.
He seemed to realise at the same time and jolted back as if burned.
The cold swept in where he’d touched her.
‘I’m… I’m sorry,’ he murmured, his shoulders sagging. ‘I don’t know what happened.’
‘You were having a nightmare,’ Thea told him, sitting up. ‘It’s my fault, I tried to wake you. Probably not a good idea —’
‘No,’ he cut her off. ‘I needed to… I… Thank you,’ he finished, not looking at her, but staring at the ground as though ashamed, his chest rising and falling as he fought to steady himself.
She waited, knowing there was a pocket of time between nightmare and reality where the two were still blurred, where skin still crawled and hearts refused to slow.
‘I have them too,’ Thea said quietly.
At last, he met her gaze, silver spearing celadon.
‘What about?’ he managed.
‘The past. At least, I think it’s the past,’ she told him.
Nodding, his eyes met hers before trailing over her, assessing. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No.’
His broad shoulders sagged, and he started to nod, but then froze, his attention drawn to her chest. ‘What’s that.’
Taken aback, Thea looked down. One of the buttons of her shirt – his shirt – had come loose and her fate stone had slipped free.
It rested between her breasts; the jade catching the light of the embers.
Her hand went to it, hastily trying to tuck it back beneath the fabric, but Hawthorne was faster.
He closed the gap between them in a second, his fingers curling around the stone, turning it over in his grasp. ‘I haven’t seen one of these in a very long time.’ His breath tickled Thea’s face.
‘Then you do know what it is.’
He traced the number engraved there, the rest of him deathly still.
‘I spent a good deal of my apprenticeship travelling to and from the winter kingdom of Aveum…’ he told her slowly.
‘The royal family, the Duforts, come from a long line of powerful seers. During my time with them I learnt enough about these stones to know the havoc they wreak on people’s lives. ’
Thea was quiet. Besides Wren and the comments Audra had made on their ride, she had never heard anyone talk of fate stones.
‘What does twenty-seven mean?’ Hawthorne asked, still uncomfortably close.
Twenty-seven . The number that had haunted Thea for longer than she could remember.
The number she thought she had made her peace with time and time again, only to have it laugh in her face.
A number that only gave her a single piece of a much larger puzzle – roughly when she would die, but now how, not why.
She fought the urge to snatch the stone from his hands and step back.
The physicality of his presence was nearly overwhelming, the scent of rosewood soap and leather everywhere at once.
‘Althea?’ He said her name, and she realised with a heart-pounding start that she liked the sound of it on his lips. ‘I know no two fate stones are the same, so what does this one mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ she lied, reaching for the stone gently. ‘I don’t know what it means. It belonged to a friend.’
‘You’re telling me this isn’t your fate carved here?’
She shook her head, stomach lurching. ‘No.’
‘Whose is it, then?’
Thea fought to keep the lie steady on her tongue, hoping that it was an answer that dissuaded more questions. ‘Someone long gone.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said earnestly. ‘But thank the gods that thing doesn’t belong to you.’
The hair lifted at the back of Thea’s neck. ‘Why do you say that?’
Hawthorne’s attention was on the fate stone he held in his open palm, where her hand now touched his. ‘Because,’ he replied quietly. ‘Those things are more trouble than they’re worth.’
Thea’s hand lingered, and she found herself leaning into his scent, a current passing through her where their fingers met.
‘But that doesn’t matter, because it’s not yours.’
Thea slowly pulled the fate stone from his grasp, tucking it into the front of her shirt.
‘No,’ she assured him. ‘It’s not mine.’