Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

FINN

Shadows swam around Finn’s body. They burrowed through his blood and coiled, squeezing, around his heart. The drug they had given him appeared to be wearing off at last but that just left him weak, cold and shivering in the darkness. There was no light here. It was a place of death and nightmares, one he remembered all too well. He’d always thought that his memories were an exaggeration, those of a child, where everything seemed bigger and darker and far more threatening than they should to a man.

He had been wrong.

Every terror of that memory was a faint echo of what engulfed him now. Or perhaps that was part of the nightmare that was this place.

His body ached, shoulders, knees, even down to his toes digging into the freezing stone.

They had left him kneeling, arms bound behind him and tethered to his ankles, unable to get up or move, his body entirely exposed. There was nowhere to go. Not really. He was lost, helpless.

No, not helpless, some distant part of him tried to argue. There were still ways to fight. He was a knight. He had trained all his life for combat. He didn’t need weapons. He was one.

And yet he just knelt there. And waited. He couldn’t fight this. He was a fool to even think such thoughts.

When she appeared, he wasn’t even sure that it was Wren and not some figment of his imagination, his childhood terrors. For months after Roland took him away from Sidonia, Finn had woken up screaming in the night. No one could convince him that the Nox would not come for him.

And here she was, taking the form he feared the most, the woman he loved and the goddess he was fated to die for, all in one beautiful shape.

Wren stepped from the shadows as if made from them. Her hair was long now, longer than he had ever seen it. It swirled around her with a life of its own, always in motion, curling and drifting on currents only it could know. Her face looked so pale, and there were shadows under her dark eyes which made his heart lurch inside him. What had happened to her here? What had Leander done to her? He could only imagine and he didn’t want to. All he wanted to do was tear the bastard apart before falling at her feet, abasing himself and begging her forgiveness for ever putting her in such a position.

And she would never give it. He knew that now. The girl he loved, the one who would always forgive another, who had the most open and giving true heart he had ever met…she was gone.

Her mouth was a thin, hard line and still he longed to kiss those lips, to drink her down and lose himself in her.

She wore a gown, black as night and threaded with shimmering strands, which left nothing to his imagination. Ilanthian in style, it framed her body, highlighting the soft luminescence of her skin and the darkness of her hair and eyes. There were gems scattered through her hair and they caught the light like the stars in the night’s sky.

Wait…the light…there was some kind of light. She reflected it back at him. It gleamed in her eyes, and on the edge of the sacrificial knife she carried.

Another thing about this place he would never forget. That very same knife, in the hands of his father, pressing like a line of ice against his skin.

But his father was dead now. Dead by Finn’s own hand, even if his will had not been behind it. Leander had used him and now Leander was king. And Finn…

Finn was back where he was always meant to be. A sacrifice. Her sacrifice.

After twenty years, she was coming to collect.

It wasn’t Wren. It couldn’t be Wren. Had it been like this for her, he wondered vaguely, looking at his face and knowing it wasn’t him but someone else for all that time? Were all the tortures Leander had put her through as painful as this?

She must have known.

But in the throne room she hadn’t come to him, she hadn’t moved. She had chosen the sisterhood instead and found her safety there.

He still liked to believe that in that moment they could have escaped, even if that was the hope and dream of a child.

He had failed her so completely.

He deserved this.

The sisterhood had removed the bracelet that he himself had put on her, limiting her magic. Containing her. And now she was free. And so was the Nox. It was too late.

There was no use in fighting, not now. Nothing he could do but surrender to the inevitable and show her that, by this action alone, he was sorry.

With a sigh, he tilted back his head, exposing his throat to her, and she hesitated, her footsteps stilling in their advance.

‘What are you waiting for?’ he asked, horrified to hear the trembling in his own voice and the way it bounced back, mocking him from every corner of the chamber. ‘I’m here. This is what you want. What you always wanted.’

‘What I wanted?’ she murmured, her voice dreamlike. ‘What would you know about what I wanted?’

He laughed. He couldn’t help himself. It wasn’t joyful or mocking or anything like that. It was a broken sound wrenched out of his chest, out of his heart, because Wren was gone. And the being standing in front of him was still so beautiful that it was almost a relief that she would be the one to kill him.

‘You’re right,’ he conceded. ‘I don’t know what you want, apart from my life. Or rather my death. Wren…Wren wanted her forest. She wanted to go back there and live there in peace and quiet. She wanted me to go with her and I should have. I should never have let them take her to Pelias. I should have listened but I was a fool. So I’ll pay for that now. It seems fair, doesn’t it? To die for her. Does she…’ A wild hope seized him. Not a hope of salvation or anything so stupid as that. But a small hope, which was, at the same time, the greatest tragedy. ‘Is there any of her left in you? Will she know? If I tell you how I love her, will she know?’

The woman shook her head, more in dismay than denial, but that hardly mattered. The Nox was just playing with him now.

‘This is a lie,’ she hissed. ‘You aren’t real.’

‘I’m more real than you are.’

When she didn’t come any closer he dropped his head again and stared at her. She seemed to swim in and out of focus, or was that his eyes filling with tears? What did it matter anyway? He was as good as dead here.

He shivered, his skin heating beneath her gaze. Desire surged back through him, unwelcome and strange. Just because she wore Wren’s face and body, just because she still looked like the woman he loved…worshipped…adored…

But then she was a goddess now. Of course he adored her.

This wasn’t right. That one thought managed to penetrate the tangled confusion of everything else. None of this was right.

‘Wren?’ he whispered, his voice a rusted knife in his throat.

‘Finn…’ she murmured in response and stepped towards him again until the knife was pointed at his throat. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from her eyes, from the tears silvering her cheeks.

‘Do it then,’ he told her, making his voice harsh in order to force the words out. ‘Do it and have done with me. Release me.’

Her hand shook and the point of the blade scraped against skin and stubble, a rasping noise which sent another shudder of fear and despair through him.

The Nox would never release him, he knew that. Not even in death. He was her creature and his soul would be hers. What that meant he wasn’t sure. Would the dark power she embodied consume him for eternity or reanimate him as some kind of mindless slave? Once his blood spilled for her…again, he reminded himself because he had bled so many times for Wren, he had died for her and still she had refused to let him go…

‘This isn’t real,’ she told him.

No, she was asking…begging… She didn’t want this to be real. Did she?

But that didn’t sound like the Nox at all.

Finn drew in a breath and leaned forward towards the knife, and to his surprise, Wren pulled back.

‘It is real,’ he replied. ‘All too real. And if you have to kill me, I understand, my love.’

She bared her teeth, so fierce and angry. ‘You aren’t my love. You aren’t real.’

Great light, he thought, she was beautiful. And powerful. And his…

And it was real. All too real.

‘Wren…’ Her name was an entire psalm and his heart sang the harmony. ‘This is real and you are everything to me. You have to know that. You always will be whether I live or die. Whether you kill me or not.’

For another agonising moment, she froze. Then her hand spasmed and she dropped the knife. It clattered to the floor between them and she closed her hand around his throat instead, nails digging into the skin. He stretched up into her grip, because he couldn’t rise, not bound as he was like a beast for slaughter. He was reaching out to a wild animal, half mad with grief, pain and betrayal. Her hold on his throat never moved, her slender hand like a collar holding him. Her dark eyes were wide and bewildered, but he saw hope there.

Finally he saw hope again. And knew it.

‘Wren…’ he whispered. She was here for him. To kill him or claim him, it didn’t matter which. He was hers.

Wren bent forward, her lips brushing his softly for a moment. Finn groaned, a deep and endless sound of submission, and she kissed him.

What could he do but kiss her back?