Page 83 of A Crown of Darkness

Dark flames sped out, encircling her as if lines of oil had been painted on the shining marble floor, filling the hollow which once held the Aurum. Wren heard a cry of dismay, a single voice almost broken with loss, and turned slowly, examining those people present.

Not the king of Ilanthus. Leander looked triumphant, his white-blond hair flowing back from a face so like that of his ancestor she couldn’t tell which one he really was anymore.

But an old woman, dressed in finery but on her knees, wore an expression of anguish which gave Wren pause. She stared at her and then rose from the throne. Shadows coiled around her, whispering their sibilant song of praise as she moved across the space between them. Treacherous shadow kin who had sided with Leander over the Nox…oh, she would make them suffer too. The problem was they would only thank her for it. Flames followed her, dark and terrible, a blue-black light which illuminated the chamber of the Aurum in a new darklight of ancient magic. They licked around her feet and climbed the standing stones, to ripple across the polished marble of the ceiling.

Wren came to a halt in front of the lady regent of Asteroth and looked down on her.

She had been afraid of this woman once. She had loathed her. She had slandered Wren’s father and driven him away.

‘Bow to your queen, Asteroth,’ Leander announced in a smugly triumphant voice. How he loved to make people grovel. ‘Do her homage.’

Half of those present cowered, dropping their faces towards the floor around her. One after the other they bowed. All save Ylena, who, though she was still on her knees, still somehow held herself straight and tall.

‘Great-Aunt Ylena,’ Wren murmured, and reached out her hand. It was an offering of truce, far more than the regent was due now. But instead of taking it the old woman glared at it, repulsed. Slowly she dragged her aged eyes up to Wren’s face.

‘You are not my great-niece. You have no place here. Look what you’re doing to our most holy place.’

Wren looked around her. The Sacrum was alive with shadows and otherlight. It was beautiful, a shifting, ever-moving kaleidoscope of darkness, aglow from within. Couldn’t the old woman see that? The blue flashes of shadow kin eyes lit up the darkest corners, reflecting off polished marble, and lines like lightning shimmered in the air and tunnelled through the stone.

‘Would you have cold and unfeeling light instead?’ Wren asked.

‘What would I have? I would have my queen of the line of Aelyn restored, our lost queen given back to us. I would have Asteroth free.’

‘Instead you’ll have the queen I’ve given you,’ said Leander. ‘More than any of you deserve.’

He pulled Wren away, schooling his features to something like devotion. All a lie, of course. Everything about him was a lie.

‘My love, my goddess, my queen,’ he intoned. ‘Accept me as yours now, your lord and king, and I will rule our lands with iron and with steel. I will be your champion and the strong arm to defend you.’

He sounded so smug. So self-assured.

The Nox and Wren both wanted to roll their eyes and refuse him but the press of metal on her throat and arms tightened, ready to compel her obedience. The crown felt heavy, the old crown of Ilanthus, the crown of the goddess queen.

Who had been lost to them.

Elodie wasn’t the only lost queen, Wren realised. She frowned, struggling with that thought.

‘I was a goddess,’ she said. Or perhaps that was the Nox. ‘And I was a queen. And…’

The rush of rage that flooded her stole her voice but the words carried on, shaking the stones around her. The fragile sanity she had managed to build around the Nox in Sidonia shattered.

And it was taken from me. Freedom was taken from me. The blood of my blood was weaponised against me. I was used, sent as an assassin, made into a monster…

Wren tried to catch her breath but it was too much. It was all too much. Such a being of power in such a fragile form…it wasn’t right, it wasn’t meant to be. She needed something to cling to. Someone, something…she needed…

I will be a monster no more.

She faced Leander and saw that he believed he had won. Even now. He thought that the crown would subdue the Nox, and control her.

But the Nox was no longer alone. Wren was with her, entwined with her. And she was not going to let that happen.

‘I think not,’ she said and the voice was her own. And yet it was more than just that. It throbbed and echoed with the greaterforce of the beyond, of the deepest darkness and the endless night. It was the endless void and the eternity of stars in that voice. ‘You may serve, but you are not the one to command me. You never were.’

She took the Nox into herself and let it fill her. And at the same time, the Nox opened itself to her.

This was what they were meant to be. There was old magic in the stones here, flowing through the ground beneath them and spiralling up to this place of power. The Aurum might have claimed it, but it was not the only being that could reach it and manipulate it.

Once she had been part of that old magic. It had been split and broken, just as she had been split and broken. But now she was made whole. And it could be made whole as well.

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