Page 35 of A Crown of Darkness

No. She was nothing. She was just a shell waiting for the Nox to fill her. She had no power of her own, no purpose of her own, nothing. She had come here as she’d always been fated to come here and she should just fall to the ground and let it take her. She should just give up and…

Wren sucked in a breath, painful and wretched. Blood trickled from her nose in a hot wet line. Her blood. Real blood. She could taste its coppery tang on her lips.

‘I’m…I’m not your thing,’ she said and her voice rasped against her tight throat as she forced out the words. ‘I’m real. I’m my own person.’

Laughter rang around her this time, bouncing off the walls and ceiling of the cavern, and the emptiness shook with its mirth.

This was worse than she had imagined. The Nox had always been a distant thing, trapped in a far-off realm beyond her world. But now…now, here, it was real and dangerous. It could win this. She realised now that she was not necessarily going to walk out of this as she was.

They had known, Oriole and Hestia. They had warned her…

Tears stung Wren’s eyes. The sisterhood had sent her in here knowing she would fail. Of course they had. For all their pretty words, they wanted the Nox back as much as any other Ilanthian.

‘Oh Elodie,’ she whispered. ‘What am I going to do?’

Her voice echoed back to her, twisted into something pathetic and plaintive, cut with sobs.

She was helpless, worthless, nothing. She had been created rather than born. She had been made for a purpose which had nothing to do with her desires and needs.

Another voice came to mind. She didn’t know how but it was Roland, the soft baritone of his voice which rippled over her senses.

Elodie said that the Nox formed you based on her dreams, her wishes, on what the two of us once had. It reached into her heart and took what it found there. So I am your father in every way that counts. Just as she is your mother. Always remember that.

Those words…those precious words he had said to her in the chamber of the Aurum when she had almost lost hope. That acceptance. That love…

My little bird, Elodie had called her, and never in the mocking way Leander had used those words after he had plucked them from her mind and manipulated them to taunt her. No, Elodie said them with love. And she always had done.

The emptiness pushed in on Wren again, trying to force her submission. It would hollow her out and make her ready for the Nox. That was what it was trying to do, but she couldn’t let it succeed. She wouldn’t. There was more to her than a shell, a vessel. She was the woman Elodie had made, the woman Roland saw, and that was who she wanted to be.

The woman Finn loved. Who loved him in return.

She drew in a breath and power filled her. Not a power from beyond, or scraped from the remains of the shadows. Her own power. Bright and terrible.

She threw back her head and screamed defiance.

The magic of the emptiness recoiled and the cave system shook as if an earthquake tore through it. Wren forced herself back onto her feet and staggered onwards. It hurt. Everything hurt, but she had to do it.

The next cave loomed over her. It wasn’t as large as the last two, but the moment she entered, she felt its touch. And with it came a new kind of need. What was empty was replaced with a hunger, a terrible, desperate want. It almost brought her to her knees again.

In the soft firelight glow ahead, she saw a figure, a man. Just standing there, waiting for her.

Finn.

CHAPTER 20

WREN

Finn didn’t look like the prince Wren had grown used to in Sidonia. He didn’t wear fine clothes or have that arrogant cast to his eyes. Instead, he wore the simple leathers and travelling cloak in which she had first seen him. His hair even looked like it still had briars tangled in it. He smiled, that half-hopeful, half-defeated expression, all confusion and self-deprecation, which made her pause.

The Finn she loved stood before her. The knight who had tried to save her in Thirbridge and got himself hopelessly entangled in the darkwood. Her Finn. The one she had longed for ever since they had fled Pelias.

No, before that. Ever since they had arrived in Pelias.

‘Finn?’ she whispered, hardly daring to believe it. She had found him. ‘Finn, is it really you?’

Her voice shook but she didn’t care if he heard that. Not him.

His smile widened and he opened his arms to her. His blue eyes softened with relief and in them she saw the flame of his desire for her.

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