Page 77 of A Crown of Darkness

‘I don’t want to trap it. I want to destroy it.’

‘In service to the Nox?’

‘The Nox? No. I want them both broken. They have enslaved us all for too long. I’m letting the old magic free again, Elodie. My sisters may be dead, but I will finish our work. I promised. We all did.’

‘You’re witchkind?’ Elodie had never known that. She suspected no one did until it was far too late.

‘Yes, I’m witchkind.’

Several things slotted into place now. Who else would have had unfettered access to Wren’s poor maid, Carlotta, to weave that puppeting spell around her?

‘And…Carlotta? Did you do that to her? Lynette?’

‘I had to. You don’t understand. You’re so entrenched in the duality of Aurum and Nox, Elodie.’

‘You tried to kill Leander and now you’re siding with him?’

Lynette threw her head back and gave a guttural cry of frustration. ‘This isn’t about him. Great powers of old, he’s loathsome. He’s a spoilt child who thinks everything is his due. But he’s a means to an end.’

‘I don’t understand.’ She had to keep the woman talking. She had to work out what was happening and find some way to reach her. But Elodie could already sense the fragile threads of control on Lynette’s sanity slipping. She was drenched in old magic and it had a way of unravelling the minds of those who suppressed it for too long.

‘Of course you don’t. You don’t understand any of it. I thought you might. You were a hedge witch. You lived in Cellandre and I hoped, when you came back here, you and Wren…I hoped…you could set us free.’

Elodie shook her head. ‘Set…set who free?’

‘Witchkind. All of us. But no. You just settled back into being queen and Chosen, letting the Aurum consume you. I had to act. My sisters failed but I will not.’ Lynette drew herself up to her full height, a wild and dangerous light in her eyes. ‘I will break both Nox and Aurum, and restore the old magic, and witchkind will be free again. The College of Winter will be ours and the Maidens of the Aurum and the Sisterhood of the Nox will bend their knees. Without the magic they have syphoned away from our world, the wild and natural power innate in witchkind twisted to serve them, they’ll have no choice. This is how it was always meant to be. But you and your line seized magic and made it the preserve of a few. You sought to control it through channels of light and dark alone. But there is so much more.’

‘What more? What are you talking about?’ Oh but Elodie feared that she knew.

‘Old magic! The oldest! Promised to us all!’ She screamed the words, and a wild light of madness entered her eyes. The demure and polished woman was hardly discernible any more. How long had Lynette been hiding, waiting, manoeuvring herself into the right position? Not to mention the effects of old magic on those who used it unwisely and without guidance from its guardians…

A broad figure filled the doorway behind her. Yvain. ‘Lynette?’ he said. ‘My love? I heard raised voices.’

Lynette flinched and Elodie could see the shame, the regret, the guilt.

‘Oh Lynette,’ Elodie gasped, realising the full horror of it. ‘Lynette, what have you done to him?’

The knight had a blank look to his face, and a grim cast about him. Another spell was tangled around him. Elodie could almost see it now, like threads cutting into his skin. Not just one spell. Layers and layers of them, a lifetime of enchantments. Dear light, what had she done?

‘All is well, my love. Wait outside. I’ll be with you in moments.’ Lynette’s voice shook far too much for that to be convincing but Yvain didn’t seem concerned.

‘Of course,’ he murmured as if lost in a dream. ‘But the king sent word. He has need of the princess. The Ilanthian guards are here to take her to the Sacrum.’

Wren. Leander had Wren or soon would.

‘Just a moment, love,’ Lynette said, her eyes fixed on Elodie, reading the horror there. ‘I will deal with him. First, I need to help the queen go back to sleep. She needs her rest.’

She raised her hand, magic swirling around it like an oil slick. Not the crisp feeling of the light of the Aurum or the dark embrace of the Nox’s shadows. This was almost as out of control as the woman wielding it. Old magic, Elodie realised, wrenched from the air itself and twisted into something sickening, reflecting the mind that tried to control it. Elodie had woven old magic in the forest and since, in fragments. It had been fresh and clear and made her think of misty mornings or a sea breeze. It had never felt like this to her.

Old magic was all around them, as it had been in Cellandre, in the air and in the stones, in the water, in each of them. Where once it had slept, now it was awake but in Lynette’s hands it was twisted with hatred.

‘Don’t do this, Lynette,’ she warned. Although what she could do to stop her, Elodie had no idea. But there had to be something. Anything. She couldn’t match Lynette force for force.

‘Why not, your majesty? You don’t have access to the Aurum anymore, neither of you. And that’s all you’ve ever?—’

Except it wasn’t. She was more than just the Chosen of the Aurum. And as Lynette said, she had been a hedge witch. Perhaps she still was.

Elodie worked her fingers in the dance of an old hedge witch charm of protection, her muscles remembering the movements better than her mind. She wrapped it in othertongue and released it like a stone from a sling.

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