Page 42 of A Crown of Darkness

Roland was used to drawing attention wherever he went. This was different.

He wasn’t the only one to notice. Anselm and Olivier took up position as close to him as possible, perfect bodyguards should he need them. ‘Grandmaster, I believe we have a problem,’ Anselm said in a low voice.

‘Agreed.’ Roland was loath to admit it but there was no doubt. ‘Your assessment?’

‘I’m not sure. Not yet. But we can’t trust them. Olivier?’

‘This entire place…’ was all the other knight would say. ‘Something is wrong. The children wouldn’t even consider coming inside the walls.’

‘And yet they brought us here,’ Roland replied. ‘There must have been a reason.’

‘They weren’t just children, were they?’ Anselm asked.

‘Theywerechildren,’ Olivier said. ‘Maybe they’ve been children for a very long time. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. They have more sense than we do, I think.’

That wasn’t exactly helpful, but Roland couldn’t find the words to express it himself. And Olivier was not mistaken.

‘Stay alert,’ Roland told them. ‘All is not as it appears here.’

They were witchkind and he was certain that the rebel witchkind of Garios they had heard so much about were ultimately centred here. He’d never be able to prove it, but somehow, he knew it.

Roland felt an undercurrent of fear running through this place. It didn’t help that there was magic everywhere, spilling up through the ground. It wasn’t the thrumming of the Aurum as it ran through the Sanctum. He felt that like his own heartbeat but this…it felt wild.

He watched the way Tobias moved through the College, the way his people looked to him. Some of them anyway, far more than Roland would have expected given he was no longer their leader. How had he lost power as chancellor? What had happened?

Tobias might be offering to help and might have saved him from the shadow kin attack but Roland still felt there were many things the witchkind were not eager to share with him. Nor did he blame them. Not really. Tobias had that furtive, almost feral edge to him. Perhaps they all did, each and every one. This was their place, their haven. They had been hunted, and coerced all their lives.

Usually by people like him.

And now he was intruding here as well.

It was the way of the Aurum, to draw people to that light, to demand service. He knew that better than anyone. It had called him and he had knelt and swore his vows gladly. But now he wondered what might have happened had he not been so willing.

No true knight would turn away from the Aurum. They were called and some men did not have the calling at all. Others felt it but had other priorities and duties, and some born with magic couldn’t bear to give it up, to surrender that part of themselves. Maidens were trained from a very young age to serve and Rolandhad never questioned that. But other women were not powerful enough, or preferred exile.

Some went to the College of Winter and that was that. And others…

He was suddenly ashamed to realise he had never questioned what happened to the others. Or how much choice was really presented to the children brought before those flames. They were young, very young. Did they even have the capacity to make an informed choice?

It felt like the edges of his world were slowly being chipped away and he did not like it one bit. He thought of the way the twins had watched him, the things they had said, and felt a savage surge of shame and remorse.

The people of Pelias spoke of rebel witchkind as a great threat, but there’d never been many who caused trouble. They were easily dealt with, the dangerous ones, and others of their own kind often turned them in. A threat was always a threat when it came to magic running wild. Now Roland wondered if they really were no more than hedge witches and wanderers, exiles, the lost.

And he had been complicit in driving them into the wilds. As much as the families who abandoned them, or the good people of their towns and villages who drove them away. He hoped enough of them made it here, to the small safety this place offered. Where else was there?

If he ever made it home, if Asteroth was ever safe again, it would have to change. He would see it change.

‘We had word of the attack upon your queen,’ said Tobias. ‘We feared retribution. We have heard what happened to the Earl of Sassone as well. How he kidnapped and tried to execute the queen? And how there was another assassination attempt, a maid used as a puppet in the attack? News like that spreads fast, and Carlotta was witchkind.’

Carlotta, Roland thought. He knew her name and used it with familiarity.

‘You sent her? As what, a spy?’ He didn’t say assassin. One step at a time.

Tobias grinned, such an innocent expression, and Roland didn’t like it. ‘No. Not to spy. Those of our kind who live and work in Pelias send us news from time to time, tales of their lives, their days, those they meet. Nothing more sinister than that. That’s the way of families, isn’t it?’

Roland had absolutely no idea. His family had dumped him with the knights as a boy and never actually bothered to get in touch again. ‘You have a calling,’ they had said. And that was that. He had never questioned it. There was so much he had never questioned. He felt like a fool.

‘She was just a girl. She befriended my daughter.’

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