Chapter 34

CHAPTER 34

WREN

Finn’s touch was different. Determined and knowing, but still so gentle it felt like he was going to drive her out of her mind. But this time he took what she offered and Wren let him. She wanted him to know that she was his, as much as he was hers. That this went both ways.

The greatest pleasure lay in giving him everything he could desire. She had tasted his submission and it was sweet indeed, but it wasn’t everything. Her lover was strong and skilled, he knew how to make her cry out or sigh, and he knew every nuance of sound in between. There was no restraint this time. He held back nothing in deference to her.

It was more than she had ever imagined. Finn filled her, surrounded her. The weight of his body moving against hers stimulated every part of her. Somewhere deep inside her he touched some place of pleasure which robbed her of sanity and she cried out his name. Light grew inside her, light which could not be contained. The shadows too, all that darkness that was part of her, reached out for him. She held it back, denied it the control it so craved. She pulled the shadows from him, back into herself. Her hair coiled around her limbs, holding her back from reaching for him, the Nox inside her howling with need. It didn’t matter. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t let it take Finn again. Not her Finn.

The pulse of need beat stronger and stronger. Finn kissed her exposed neck as she arched against him, as he thrust into her again and again. The power in her blossomed like night-flowering jasmine, winding through her with greedy tendrils and drawing still more of the shadows from him.

Finn shuddered, his body stiffening, and he buried his face in the crook of her neck, his mouth opening wide, his teeth grazing her skin. Wren cried out, opening to him, falling with him as he came.

And all the darkness in the world filled her.

Her eyes snapped open, as, dizzy and delirious, she beheld the man entwined with her.

He was made of light, of fire, of the rays of the sun itself. She had to close her eyes again lest he blind her.

She came with a cry of ecstasy, her body no longer her own, and she didn’t care. He was all she wanted, and all her inner darkness desired. All those shadows, all those corners of the night, ached for the light that blazed through him now.

The Aurum, she thought, but it was a far-off and distant realisation. It was the Aurum inside him, filling him, scourging him until not a trace of the Nox remained. It was making him whole again, purifying him, filling him with the fire of a Paladin.

No, she was doing it. She was calling the Aurum somehow, just as she had in battle, and it was answering, freed at last from the long confinement it had endured. She could hear it singing to her, exalting in its liberation and the sheer pleasure it took from their joining.

Finn’s voice cried out and broke, her name, she was sure it was her name, but it was a song as well. Her name was a psalm on his lips once again, the Aurum echoing through it.

For a moment neither of them could move. They were caught there, lost in their union and their ecstasy.

He moved first, awkwardly, as if it was a great effort, but as he came back to himself he seemed aware that he might be crushing her. He wasn’t. She wanted to tell him that but couldn’t find the words.

She couldn’t find any words.

‘Did I…did I hurt you?’ he whispered. His voice was hoarse, but sated. And that warmth…light, she had missed that warmth, and the ache of affection.

Wren shook her head and felt her smile lift her face.

‘You glowed,’ she told him.

Finn gave a soft, almost-laugh. ‘I burned.’ His breath came out in a deep rush. ‘You are a wonder, my love. How did you do that?’

‘I just called on what was there. The Aurum loves you, Finn. It always has done. I knew it would save you.’

He bent his head again, kissing her lips first, then her jawline, then her neck. He was still inside her, and his cock seemed to stir again as he moved.

‘I am still yours, you know,’ he whispered. ‘Body and soul.’

She swallowed hard on the knot of emotion rising in her throat. ‘And I’m yours. That’s the secret, isn’t it? It isn’t about one or the other of us, but about both of us. Together.’

‘Together,’ he agreed, and turned his attention to her pleasure again.

Later, much later, as dawn stained the window, Wren woke with Finn’s arms still wrapped around her, and his long legs tangled with hers. She lay there, watching the play of light on the ceiling above her.

Not just the light of sunrise, she realised, nor the early rays coming through the branches of the trees outside the window. The glow was too warm, and it held more colours in its depths than sunlight.

What have you done? the Nox whispered, resentment threading through her mind.

She had saved him, that was what. Freed him from its control. She had done what she had to do to save him from a lifetime enslaved to a dark goddess. She might not be able to resist it forever, but she would not let it take him as well.

You fool. The loathing in the voice was unmistakable. You’ve just handed him over to another form of subjugation. At least we would have let him live.

Wren’s immediate answer – that she was glad he was free, that it was just trying to trick her again – stumbled before she could fully give it form. Something was wrong. The Nox didn’t sound angry, not really. It sounded…bitter, defeated, and heartbroken with it.

It sounded regretful.

‘What do you mean?’ she whispered as softly as she could. She didn’t want to wake Finn, not yet. He was exhausted. After everything he had been through, she wanted to let him rest while he could. Turning her face, she studied his, soft in sleep, the tight lines around his eyes from stress and constant suffering barely visible now. Peaceful. He looked peaceful and that was good, wasn’t it?

But the glow she had seen reflected on the ceiling came from beneath his skin. It ran like flames on the surface of oil, shimmering and bright, illuminating him from within, turning him to gold.

He belongs to the Aurum now , the Nox went on. It fills him. Oh, child, what have you done? He is lost to us.

That had been what he had always wanted, Wren reminded herself. He was a Knight of the Aurum, a Paladin, touched by its light. She had led him to the Nox and back onto a path he had fought against all his life.

You think the Aurum will treat him better than it has treated any other of its chosen? It will burn him until there is nothing left. It needs a champion. It needs a home. And you have given it both…

‘Wren?’ Finn’s voice was blurred with sleep, but he had opened his eyes and was gazing back at her now.

They were so bright, like the sky on a summer morning, like sunlight seen through deep water, aglow from within. The light in his skin may have faded, but it had coalesced in his eyes instead.

‘Yes,’ she managed. The word almost lodged in her throat.

What had she done? She never thought things through, that was what Elodie had always said. She acted on instinct and that led to disasters. It always had done.

Reach for the light, Elodie had always said that. But what if Elodie was wrong?

Finn brought a hand up to stroke her hair and he smiled. Like he hadn’t a care in the world.

‘How did you do that?’ he asked, and then gave his soft, self-deprecating laugh. ‘Magic, I know. Everything about you is magic. And every time I think I am lost, you’re there to save me, heart.’

He sounded so happy, so at peace.

This was what he had wanted, she reminded herself. This was what he had always wanted. To be safe in the light. To serve the Aurum.

And now it filled him. Spilled out of him. Suffused every part of him. She could feel it radiating through him.

A frown flickered over his brow as he watched her. ‘Are you all right? Is something wrong?’

‘Don’t you feel it?’ she asked.

‘Feel what?’

How could he not know?

They were two opposite powers, light and dark, Aurum and Nox. And there was nothing she could do now to keep him. She had given him up, given him everything he wanted to save him.

But she couldn’t tell him that. Not when she had to look right at him and see the love and the hope die in his beautiful blue eyes.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing. Just a dream. A bad dream.’

Finn smiled, his fingers playing with the strands of her hair. ‘Let me chase that away?’