Page 67 of A Crown of Darkness

‘Let her go!’ he shouted. ‘Let my daughter go!’

‘Roland, look out,’ Finn tried to say, but too late. Shadow kin struck Roland from every angle, tearing into his body with teeth and claws. His head fell back, his eyes glassy with agony, his mouth stretched wide.

Finn didn’t think, couldn’t think. All he knew was that his guardian was dying and he was just standing there. He snatched up Nightbreaker and rage filled him, blinding and wild, the type of rage that had only ever taken him when Wren was in danger. He barely saw anything, and yet he saw everything. Every movement, every shadow, every weapon. His body was that of the Paladin he had always wanted to be, possessed of the white-hot fury of the Aurum as he laid into them, a blade in each hand, one light and one dark.

The shadows fell before him and Roland landed in a heap at his feet. He heard Anselm and Olivier fighting their way to him.

And just like that, all went still.

Wren was gone. There was no sign of Laurence either. The Ilanthian soldiers were dead and all traces of the Nox had vanished. Everything. Shadow kin, the dark crown, Laurence, Wren…

Everything was still and quiet but for the sound of his heaving breath and his fellow knights racing to his side. Finn dropped to his knees, his hands turning Roland over and checking him for injuries.

And there were many. So many.

This was Roland, his guardian, the only man who had ever acted like a father to him in all his pitiful life. Roland, who had always been the strongest, the epitome of the greatest of knights, a kind and caring man who Finn had completely failed to appreciate…

‘Grandmaster,’ he gasped, as the strength the Aurum had imbued him with bled away in shock and horror. ‘Talk to me, Roland, please…’

CHAPTER 38

ELODIE

A cry of anguish brought Elodie up from the haze of nothingness that had claimed her, jolting her as if she awoke from a dream of falling, seconds before she hit the ground. Her breath caught in her throat like a ball of ice and all she could feel was the thundering of her heart. And then…then a terrible wrench as that same heart tore itself apart.

A cold wind blew through her and she tried to look around.

Everything felt different.

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Not just here, not just in this place between worlds which served as her prison. Because that’s what it was, she realised. She had failed the Aurum, and it did not take failure lightly.

But this was a place of the Aurum and right now the Aurum felt…

A loss?

The mist that surrounded her stirred, rising and falling like something vast and endless was breathing, something in pain. Elodie searched through it, not even sure what she sought until she saw it.

A figure knelt in the mist, half a dream and half a mirage.

For a moment, she thought it was the Aurum back again to torment her, but the blazing light was no more than a flickering candle flame now. Fading. Dying.

She still knew him. How could she not?

‘Roland?’ Elodie whispered.

He lifted his head like a flower seeking the sun, following only the sound of her shaking voice. The pain etched on his handsome features made her heart lurch.

‘Elodie?’ he murmured. ‘Where…where are we?’

She scrambled across the vast and empty space between them and flung her arms around him.

Which was when she knew for sure that this was not another trick of the Aurum. He didn’t vanish like smoke, or change into something else. There was no laughter, no sneer.

He felt real and warm…

Great light and shadows of old, how was he here?

‘Roland? What happened to you?’ Something stabbed at her eyes and she blinked back tears made of acid which needled their corners. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be here, not like this. It made no sense at all.

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