Page 56 of A Crown of Darkness

But the witchkind of the College were failing. They had never encountered anything like this before. Several had already collapsed, and Tobias was barely holding the ring of witches together around the threat.

‘Our wards failed,’ he yelled at Roland. ‘It was like they were nothing but paper. What is it?’

Nightbreaker glowed with inner light, recognising the power of the Nox as it coalesced before him. Roland ducked through the failing lines of witchkind, and charged at the darkness.

Another blade met his, one black as night, iridescent with those blue shadows of shadow-forged steel. The force of it sent a shudder all the way up his arm and down his spine, but he held it there as a knight in armour of the same metal stepped from the darkness.

Roland took a step back as he recognised Finn. Or rather, didn’t recognise him. His eyes were too dark, just black and endless, and his mouth formed a thin, hard line.

Finn moved like a blur, a piece of shadow himself, and the swords clashed again. Roland found himself on the defensive. Finn was faster than before, stronger, and he fought without any hesitation or regrets. No quarter given.

Perhaps he had always fought like this when faced with an enemy. Roland had never been on the other end of it before. But there was no doubt now that he was seen as an enemy.

‘Stop!’ Wren shouted.

Because of course she was here as well. Where else would she be but spinning night to her will, at the heart of any trouble?

His daughter. No matter whatever else she might be, she was his daughter.

Her voice did it, her command.

Finn stepped back, still eyeing Roland, Olivier and Anselm as if he didn’t know them at all. Wren, dressed in a black Ilanthian gown shot with silver and midnight blue strands, her hair wild and untamed, spread her arms wide and the shadows fell away. She looked so small and slender, frail, and yet the magical power obeyed her in an instant. Not a girl, he realised, not in the slightest. Not anymore.

No, she was still his daughter. That was the end of it.

The witchkind were staring at her with a mixture of wonder and terror. They didn’t know what to do, not when faced with her. Few would.

‘You shouldn’t have been able to do that,’ Vambray said in a far firmer voice than Roland would have expected.

‘I’m sorry,’ Wren replied, her voice shaking. ‘It was…it was an emergency.’ She glanced down at the boy huddled at her feet, his body splattered in blood, clutching something in his hands. He bent over it, frozen in shock and horror. No danger there, Roland decided. But Finn…

The danger came from Finn.

He didn’t look like the boy Roland had taken in and raised. He didn’t even look like a Knight of the Aurum anymore. A knight of something quite the opposite, in fact. A figure from old stories, from nightmares, forsaken and forgotten…

Long ago, stories said that the Nox had also had a champion.

What had happened to him?

‘Wren?’ Roland asked, in calm, measured tones. ‘What have you done?’

And to his absolute shock, she burst into tears and threw herself into his arms.

CHAPTER 32

WREN

For a moment everything had been darkness and chaos, flashes of blue otherlight like lightning in the storm of shadow kin which carried them away. Wren heard screams and wondered where they were coming from. Not from her, and not from Laurence, though she wouldn’t blame him.

And definitely not from Finn. He didn’t make a single sound, just gazed through the shadows with eyes that reflected the darkness and those blue flashes of otherlight. It almost made his eyes blue again, for brief agonising moments. But not the dark blue she knew and loved. This was alien and dangerous.

Just wrong.

She stumbled as the shadows released them and then felt the surge of magic, neither light nor dark, Aurum nor Nox, rising around them. Old magic again, the same thing the sisterhood had tried to bind her with. Panic made her lash out and, worse, made Finn come to her defence.

Beyond the magical force which fell beneath her, she saw Roland.

Thank the light that Finn obeyed her cry to stop, standing there like a statue now as she fell into her father’s arms.

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