Page 14 of A Crown of Darkness

Foolish girl. I will fill you until there is nothing left of you. I will remake you as I see fit. We will burn this world until we find our enemy and then…

Enemy? Wren. It meant Wren.

‘No,’ said Elodie and her voice shook the world the Aurum had built around her. The prison in which it was keeping her.

She reached out blindly. In the past, she had always reached for the light, and that was her mantra, her creed. That was what she had always told Wren, time and again, always reach for the light.

But she couldn’t do that now. The light was no longer on her side. It wanted to grind her down until she was no more than a mindless slave. And then it would use her to hunt Wren down and kill her.

No, she thought. There has to be another way. Some other way. Anything!

Something else responded, something deep in the mountain, something swirling through the air. It rippled through the water and it beat in every living heart.

The old magic coursed through her and somewhere, in that royal bedchamber, her body convulsed. She had not been made for magic like this. She was created for the light and it had always welcomed her as she welcomed it. But this…this was something other, alien, something ageless that had been waiting all along.

So be it, she thought wildly. If this is what I must do.

She had felt the old magic in the forest and had reached a kind of détente with it long ago, a bargain. There had been at least two spirits of old magic which had woven their lives around her and Wren, protecting them both. It had always been there, beneath the surface, sometimes aiding her, sometimes ignoring her requests. The light had always responded sooner and faster,so she had thought –fool that she was –she had thought the light was all. But the magic of the wild had not turned on her.

Magic was magic. She could use this. There would be a price but she could use it. Anyone witchkind could, but the destruction it could wreak on them was intense.

Something reached into her very heart, just as she reached deep into the heart of the land itself. Old magic roared around her.

Hedge witch, it said, and just that title alone was an exultant cry of joy.

She heard someone crying out in alarm, shouting for help. It took Elodie a moment to untangle where the cry came from. Was it the old magic? Another vision from the Aurum? But no, the voice was familiar. And real…

It was Lynette. Her friend shouted her name, trying to pin her down and contain her struggling form, and Elodie caught a glimpse of the bedchamber where she lay, just for a moment, a blinked sketch of her body thrashing about in that huge bed, burning with a fever, lost. Lynette of Goalais was watching over her, trying to care for her and help her along with the healers.

At least she had that.

And then she spun away, desperate and afraid. Old magic had her in its teeth and she was flying.

Maryn would know what to do. Where was Maryn?

In the chamber of the Aurum, she found her friend. She stood there talking intently to Lady Hestia Rayden and with Hestia…

That couldn’t be right. He looked like Leander, and sounded like him but…the light in him was wrong, so wrong. The light of the Aurum. In place of his cold grey eyes, so like his uncle Evander’s, she saw the blue of the ocean, its darkest depths. As if he was partly a reflection in a pool and partly a man, and the two were not the same anymore.

Old magic coursed around her, reaching out for her. It burned along her veins like a poison. Not the magic of the Aurum this time. Something else, something older that was stirring. Because the Nox was scattered and the Aurum…

The Aurum was trapped. In her, in her body, pushing her out into the wider world, or the space between worlds. And in that liminal space something else gathered. They fought for her.

Old as the stones, old as the earth, old as the sky. Its sighs were the wind and its heartbeat shook the mountain.

It pulled Elodie deeper, like a child intrigued by a new plaything. It wanted answers. It wanted to know… It wanted everything, beyond reason or consideration for her.

‘No,’ Elodie said again, clinging to the scene before her, to Maryn and Hestia and…

Ylena arrived in a flurry of rage and Elodie could see that force sparking around her, inside her, winding through her body and around her old bones. Ylena didn’t know it was there but Elodie saw it and saw the tendrils that spread out from her. Back to someone…someone else…

Hedge witch.

Old magic was loose in the world.

It would tear Asteroth apart. And not just Asteroth…

If she could reach it though, form some sort of agreement as she had with the powers in the forest long ago then maybe…

---