Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

WREN

Roland was grim and everyone else picked up their mood from him. It was inevitable. And of course he wasn’t wrong. It was dangerous, this flight south. On horseback, Wren took her place in the centre of the group, knights before and behind her, Laurence and Finn at her side. They rode in silence, leaving the College of Winter far behind them. All the time she expected an attack. Leander wanted her and the crown. He’d be waiting.

And then there was Finn.

The light in him shimmered under the surface, just out of reach, just out of sight. But she could feel it. Crawling through him, aware of her, watching her, when he was distracted or focused on the road. And it hated her. The Aurum.

Perhaps the armour kept it at bay. Perhaps it was Finn himself fighting it, but even he couldn’t keep that up forever. She remembered the Aurum from Pelias, the way it had taken control of Elodie.

If Elodie, who had trained and studied and lived a life ready to be the Chosen of the Aurum, hadn’t been able to withstand it, how could Finn?

The Nox was still broken. Wren might have access to some of its power but so much was banished beyond the veil and it couldn’t reach her. Not unless Leander had his way.

The crown was buried in a pack on the back of Roland’s horse. Hestia’s son followed the Grandmaster like a puppy, desperate for some kind of safety, and Wren felt the same way. Perhaps he reminded the boy of Gaius, or perhaps he just sensed that Roland was someone who could help him.

It was impossible to be in the Grandmaster’s presence without feeling that he could still make everything all right. Even Finn seemed to fall under that spell without a moment of doubt.

Roland would make everything better. He always did. He always had.

Light, she wished with all her heart that he would now. Just with a wave of his hand, or a sweep of his sword.

They were still two days north of Pelias when the attack came, on a desolate stretch of road which offered little by way of refuge.

It was too quiet. She noticed that first. Far too quiet. No birdsong, nothing moving in the fields and hedgerows on either side of them.

‘Smoke,’ said Olivier. ‘In the air, can you smell it?’

‘Keep your wits,’ Roland replied. ‘Anselm? Ride ahead.’

Wren’s skin tightened around her frame and she shivered as if a cloud had passed over the sun, stealing all the warmth of the day. Shadows stirred eagerly in the bushes on either side of the road.

Too eagerly.

They whispered, just on the edge of her hearing, and Wren stiffened in the saddle. Her horse almost bucked, dancing back instead of forward, and Olivier and Finn both turned to help her. Distracted, all of them. By her. Just when that was the last thing they needed.

‘Look out!’ she shouted.

They came out of the trees, and up from beneath the stones, shadow kin larger than any she had ever seen, and behind them Ilanthian soldiers. Wren tried to control her mount but the poor beast gave a crazed whinny and tore the reins from her hands, bolting ahead. All she could do was cling to the saddle, scrabbling to get the leather back into her grip.

The noise in her head became a high-pitched whine and behind her she heard the clash of steel. Anselm shouted something and the thunder of the horses’ hooves drowned it out.

She reached out to the shadow kin, trying to focus, to command them, to turn them against their Ilanthian masters. They were her creatures, weren’t they? Or the Nox’s anyway. They had to obey her. They always had before.

But not this time. Even as she reached out, she felt the promised control snatched away, the magic wrenched out of her hands.

He laughed. She heard him laugh. Leander…

Oh little bird, it’s not so easy. Did you really think I’d let you go just like that? They miss you. They want you back and I’ve promised to help. They won’t obey you now.

His voice was almost like a caress. It chilled her to her heart.

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.