Broken (30 page)

Curiosity aroused, I watch the Prodigy on the higher peak lift his arms out wide and turn his face up to the sky, where ice-green clouds move fast and in two opposing directions.

While I watch, I untangle the
lamorak
and start folding it. ‘What’s
he
doing?’

‘Gamorn? He’s taking a weather report.’

‘Really? I didn’t think angels bothered with that sort of thing.’

Zavier says, ‘Normally we don’t, but we’re taking the long route to Skade today.’

I look at him. ‘Why is that?’ But then it comes to me. ‘Because we entered the Crossing at the opposite end of the world to where dark angels usually enter; so now we have a longer journey and have to worry about things like weather.’

He stares and I ask, ‘What?’

‘Your mother had a quick mind. You must get it from her.’

‘Don’t, Zavier.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Mention the mother I will never know because of you.’

Gamorn returns, flying low over the peaks, his massive charcoal wings beating fast and blowing up a storm of green snow where he passes. He heads straight to Prince Luca, standing alone on the next peak over, while the Prodigies, mostly sitting on this wider peak with us, turn to listen.

It’s then, when everyone is still, I notice the silence again. Other than Gamorn’s foreign words, and winds whistling through valleys, it’s completely and utterly empty.

Nothing lives here.

When Gamorn completes his report, some Prodigies groan in low voices. One soldier makes an obscene hand gesture at the sky. Prince Luca turns his head and stares at me with a frown.

‘Zavier, Prince Luca looks worried. What’s wrong with Gamorn’s forecast?’

He massages his left shoulder. ‘Er, we’re heading for some rough weather, that’s all.’

‘Either Prince Luca and his soldiers are overreacting or you’re seriously underplaying. Which is it?’

He sighs. ‘There’s a three-system low pressure event up ahead.’ He glances at my confused expression. ‘In other words, a hurricane. We’re heading straight into it.’

‘So what do we do now? Go back?’

‘We go through it.’ He shakes out the
lamorak
I just folded. ‘You will have to keep this on for the duration.’

‘But I want to see what’s happening.’

‘My lady, it’s not safe for you to be exposed to those elements.’

‘You don’t understand how I . . .’ Just in time, I stop myself from revealing how frightened I am of storms at night. With the
lamorak
on, it feels like night all the time.

OK, so I have to grow up fast now. I can’t avoid what scares me any more. That doesn’t mean I should simply do everything I’m told. ‘An angel should not be hidden away in a bag.’

‘About the
lamorak
.’ He holds it up. ‘You have to trust me. You need to understand that the dangers in this netherworld are real. You’ve seen the clouds move in two directions?’

I nod.

‘Well, in this place,
everything
moves in different directions. If a cyclonic gust should snatch you from my arms, it could conceivably carry you across mountains and oceans before it weakened enough to release you. Ebony, there’s a reason no one lives in this world. To be lost here means to be lost for ever. And when you are immortal . . .’

We become aware of Prodigies falling silent, their eyes shifting to us as they tune in to our discussion.

‘I won’t let anything happen to you,’ Zavier whispers.

The staring soldiers remind me that I’m their prisoner, and I spit out the word, ‘
Pity!
’

The muscles around Zavier’s mouth and eyes tighten. Lines appear where there were none before. ‘What would you prefer,’ he shouts, unable to contain his temper any more, ‘to be burned to ash by the strike of a lightning bolt? To be swept up by violent winds and never seen again? To live in perpetual hunger, scavenging on what little seeds you are able to dig up out of frozen soil or dry baked mud? Waking each morning to a different landscape than the previous night?’

I don’t respond, except to release a weary breath. He softens his tone. ‘The storms that circulate the Crossing are nothing like you’ve experienced on Earth.’

Through clenched teeth, I mutter, ‘But I can’t breathe inside that thing.’

‘Ebony, you’re stronger than that.’

‘Have you been locked in one before?’

His eyes soften. ‘No.’

‘Then you have no right to lecture me.’

Prince Luca appears in front of me. He glares at Zavier, dismissing him, then it’s just the prince and me, and an audience of Prodigies looking for entertainment.

‘You will wear the
lamorak
,’ he says in his velvety voice, and with the speed and stealth of a snake Prince Luca grabs the back of my neck. Heat sears into my flesh but I try not to react. Then, at a much slower pace, he runs the fingertips of his other hand lightly down the length of my hair.

‘Step back from me, Prince,’ I say evenly.

No one speaks, though the Prodigies’ expectations fuel the air like a dozen rockets lined up for take-off. They’re waiting for something.

Prince Luca tilts my chin up with the long nail of his thumb. Our eyes connect and a bridge forms from his mind to mine. I’m not expecting this and the suddenness and openness of it shocks me.

I see that he wants me in a way that he’s never wanted any other being before – to possess me completely, from my physical body to the innermost thoughts of my mind. And though he knows he should wait until I’m eighteen, he’s acknowledging that to do so would be virtually impossible. He wants me now.

The invasion is too personal. Intimidating and violating. I try to push him out of my head, but he doesn’t move so I’m either not doing it right or he’s too strong for me. I remind myself how I’m still learning. Inside, my blood throbs through my veins. I notice the red haze at the edge of my vision and I reach for the energy that always seems to accompany it. ‘Get out of my head, Prince Luca.’

His eyebrows rise.
I will leave when I’m ready, Princess.

I focus on his words, holding on to them even though they feel heavy like bricks. I draw on my anger, then shove his words back at him, imagining I’m hurling hot rocks off a bridge.

He cries out, stepping backwards and shaking his head. A chorus of gasps erupts from the Prodigies.

I’ve hurt the Dark Prince and now I don’t know what to expect. Will he strangle me in retaliation? Beat me to a pulp?

He stares at me, his eyes flashing the colour of autumn leaves.
You have hidden talents, Princess. I look forward to exploring them in a more intimate environment
, he links.

Sniffing my hair, he runs his fingertips down the length of it again.

‘When Nathaneal learns you’ve kidnapped me, he’ll bring war down on you. Is that what you want? Another war? You’ve shown me your cities through my dreams; I’ve seen your people. Do they deserve to have their homes and lifestyles destroyed?’

‘You
care
about my people?’

I shrug. ‘I don’t know them, but it seems to me they’re innocent bystanders. Do you want them to end up as collateral damage?’

‘Are you suggesting I release you?’

‘Well . . . yes.’

He chuckles as if I’ve cracked a funny joke. He glances at his Prodigies, still laughing, and they laugh with him.

‘Don’t laugh at me!’ I spit.

‘Ebony, I will not release you, so you should dismiss that thought from your head. If war is waged because of my actions –’ he lifts his hands – ‘then so be it.’

He strokes my hair again. The watching soldiers seem to all breathe in at once. ‘Your hair and the setting sun are the same colour,’ he says, with a degree of gentleness that surprises me. ‘Once you are queen, no one but your maidservant and I will touch your hair again.’

Oh, Nathaneal, where are you? When
you
touch my hair, the strands curl around your fingers of their own volition.
But now, here, with Prince Luca, they lie flat and pretend they are dead, just like my heart is without you.

My hair draws away from Luca’s touch, strand by strand. His left eyebrow lifts and he makes a growling sound deep in his throat. His green eyes blaze with those gold flecks again, but this time they turn glossy black almost instantly, and a sudden pounding ache throbs inside my head.
You will not always yearn for him!

I
dig my heels in, determined not to break eye contact first.

Then Luca amps up the power, making my head feel heavy, compressed.

Damn it!
I won’t be able to take much more. He’ll turn my brain to mush. ‘OK, stop. Stop! You’ve made your point – you’re stronger than me!’

Amazingly he does stop, but I can’t let him walk all over me. ‘You might be physically stronger, at least today, but you will
never
own what’s on the inside.’

It’s the wrong thing to say. A Prodigy, the young one with black shaggy curls, called Sarakiel, gasps and moves as if he wants to intervene. Lieutenant Saul slaps an open palm on his chest, stopping him.

I brace myself for Prince Luca’s retaliation. But all he does is lean down so that his mouth is equal with my cheek, his heat scalding my ice-cold face. ‘On the day you turn eighteen you will become my queen. Skade is where you belong. It is written in stone with the blood of dead warrior angels,’ he says. ‘One day you will understand, and that is when I will own your body, your soul, and your mind.’

He lifts his head and motions to Zavier with a sharp nod. ‘We take off soon. Make sure she’s wearing the
lamorak
.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Zavier says, and, lifting me into his arms, flies us to an unoccupied peak where he sets me down and begins lecturing me. ‘Are you insane?’

My head still hurts and I mumble, ‘I’m sorry, what?’

‘Now is neither the time nor place to prove your strength, Ebony, or reveal the force of your inner will.’

I give myself a mental shake. I can’t let Prince Luca’s creepy words affect me.

‘Ebony?’

‘What?’

He peers down at me. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah, I’m brilliant. Fantastic! Never felt better!’ I look him straight in the eyes. ‘I know I sound like a child right now, but for what you have done to me I could kill you. The fact that you deceived your own family disgusts me, and I feel stronger hatred than I think an angel is supposed to feel.’

He stares down at me, his brown eyes wide and unblinking, his big chest expanding as he draws in a deep breath. Then he nods in a kind of weird slow motion and says in an exquisitely gentle voice I’ve not heard him use before, ‘As you should, my lady. Precisely, as you should.’

39

Ebony

We take to the air again with Zavier carrying me in his arms and the black
lamorak
confining me to darkness and oblivion. The storm is too wide for us to skirt around it, so we fly directly into its path.

Hours later prevailing winds continue to pound us, bringing pelting rains with them. And with lightning tearing the sky in vertical and horizontal patterns, we gain ground with painful slowness.

‘How long will this last?’ I ask in a rare moment of calm.

‘It stops when it stops,’ Zavier snaps. I don’t ask again because, even though I can’t see his face, I can tell by his brutal hold that he’s maintaining fierce concentration to keep the gales from snatching me from his arms.

Then, abruptly, everything stops. Even the winds are silent. The sudden stillness makes my skin itch. This strange calm in the midst of a violent storm would never happen on Earth unless we were in the eye.

‘Zavier, are we in the –’

He cuts me off. ‘Don’t say it, Ebony.’

I can hear his heart beating. ‘Zavier, are you afraid?’

‘Yes, my lady.’

His admission surprises me and makes my own heart beat faster. ‘Of what?’

He takes too long to answer and I have to prompt him, ‘Zavier?’

‘Dropping you.’

‘Oh.
Really?
’

‘You don’t have to sound so surprised. You are my niece.’

‘Who you sold to the King of Skade.’

‘Point made.’

‘Is there a soldier who can give you a break?’

His answer is decisive. ‘No.’

The moment we fly back into the storm, Zavier takes a deep breath, tightens his arms round me more intensely than before, and hisses near my ear, ‘Hold tight, niece. With luck, we shall be through the worst quickly.’

It’s as if the sky opens up and throws everything it has at us. Every lightning strike generates an explosion of energy that scatters the Prodigies in different directions. More than once, a lightning bolt strikes so close, the hairs on my head stand on end and I scream from the depths of my lungs.