Page 65 of A Crown of Darkness

He was already here. He was waiting for her. He must have known, used magic to track her or had someone else trailing them. Could word have been sent from the College of Winter the moment they arrived?

She would put nothing past Leander. The new king of Ilanthus wanted her back and he was not going to take no for an answer.

‘Wren! Ride!’ It was Anselm. He wheeled his horse around in front of her and the soldiers swarming towards them. The road ahead was blocked as well. ‘Make for the trees!’

The trees? They were at the very edge of Cellandre. She’d be safe there. She had to be.

Cellandre had always been home. She knew it. Knew parts of it anyway.

It listened to her.

She didn’t quite know how she did it. Seizing the reins again she turned the horse’s head for the treeline and plunged into the forest.

The darkness rose like a wave before her. Fixing her attention on that, she focused her will and commanded it to part. For a moment it resisted, or rather something held the shadows firm. Someone.

Leander. It had to be. It had that familiar feeling of the last time she had fled through Cellandre, the way he manipulated her and tried to coerce her.

But she knew him now. She knew him far too well.

The shadows weren’t responding but she could still reach for the light.

Always reach for the light, Elodie had said.

When she did, however, there was nothing there, her will sliding away from it as if it was oil.

No, this could not be happening.

The horse screamed and reared up. She grabbed hold of its mane, clung to it and tried to calm the creature, trying to reassure it even though she was very lacking in reassurance herself. The horse staggered forward and suddenly the air stilled.

She felt the surge of triumph surround her, something not her own. Stones, she realised. She was in a circle of stones, a thin place, hidden among the trees and the undergrowth. She didn’t need to see the ring. She could feel it in the earth and in the air.

The Nox knew it. Leander knew it.

It was yet another trap.

The horse bucked and screamed as the magic of the shadows closed in on them, and she finally lost control of it completely. Wren tried to hold on, but she couldn’t.

The next thing she knew, she was falling and the shadows rushed in to catch her and swallow her up.

And all she could hear was Leander’s voice ringing through her ears.

At last.

CHAPTER 37

FINN

The thrill of battle fired his blood and the sword sang in his hand. Finn charged into the fray, and the faces that rose before him fell away just as quickly. Light filled him, the light of the Aurum, the light Wren had gifted to him. Part of him wanted to shout for joy, for triumph.

He was saved. She had saved him. This was where he was meant to be and what he was meant to do. This was what had always been intended.

He felt free at last. More free than he had ever been. The shadows inside him had been wiped away, every last one. His enemies were helpless before him. Mere soldiers of Ilanthus were nothing before him. He let the Aurum loose and turned the attack back on them.

Anselm and Olivier flanked him, charging alongside him, and the light filled them as well. It overflowed from him and they were sworn knights as well, touched by Wren’s power and made Paladins in protecting him. She had saved them too. All of them. They were her men, and she had made them so effortlessly. Not in the same way he was, perhaps, but no less true. She accepted them as they were.

He looked for Roland and there he was, in the thick of the fight, in the middle of the road, Nightbreaker blazing in his hands. The Grandmaster was as skilled in battle as any of his men and the powers of the Aurum were as at home within him as anyone else. He was illuminated with it and Finn could feel his guardian’s every movement, his rage, his determination to protect his daughter. He could feel everything and the zeal with which Roland fought only fuelled the fire inside Finn’s soul. The Aurum blazed and sang inside him, racing along his veins and shooting up his spine to set his mind alight.

The shadows were a tide, sucking at the world, draining the tattered remains of old magic in order to strengthen itself. It crowed at him, that he was a fool, gullible and stupid, that it had already won.

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