Chapter 37

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.

‘Anselm?’ he shouted. ‘Where’s Wren?’

‘She took cover in the trees.’

The trees were wreathed in shadows, dark and terrible. And Wren…

Wren. They had Wren.

He wheeled away from the fight without thought and five men encircled him moments later. But Finn didn’t hesitate. All his life he had fought, and all his life he had reached for the light. Now it blazed inside him just as he had always wanted it to, and the sword moved like an extension not just of his arm, but his mind as well.

We fight the Nox, with flame and sword.

And now he embodied both.

He tore his way through them and urged his horse into a gallop, heading after her.

‘Finn! They’ve taken the boy!’ he heard Olivier call after him and the horse went from underneath him, screaming and kicking. Finn rolled and came up fighting as shadow kin tried to overwhelm him. The horse was away, thank the light. It didn’t share poor Dancer’s fate, not this time, and he celebrated that small victory.

Now all he could think of was Wren. He needed to find her, to save her.

She is our enemy. She is tainted to the core.

The voice almost brought him to his knees, knocking the breath from his chest. If he had been in any other place and time, he would have collapsed, but he was in the middle of a fight and didn’t have the time to let anything of the sort happen.

You are blessed. You are purified. The refining fire rushes through you and makes you perfected. No longer forsaken, you have been made anew. Be grateful for you are chosen.

And he was grateful. Of course he was grateful.

But it was Wren.

Finn gripped the sword harder and started forward again, his legs moving as if through knee-deep mud. The Aurum railed in the back of his mind but he pushed it away.

And then he saw her.

Wren was on her hands and knees in the darkness, jet black vines coiling around her, thorns cutting her skin, her eyes so wide and terrified, so very, very dark.

She was not their enemy. The Nox might be. But not her.

‘Wren!’ She was in danger, and whenever she was in danger he would come to her aid. He had vowed it long ago. It was engraved on every secret place of his heart. ‘Wren, I’m coming.’

She tried to speak but couldn’t. There was a twist of shadow coiled around her throat, and though her mouth opened, no sound came out. Nothing.

Finn hacked at the darkness around her but it just dissolved and reformed. That was when he realised his mistake. They were in a stone circle, a thin place, where the Nox could reach out to her and take her. Where it could make itself whole and make Wren its own for once and for all. And even with everything she had endured, everything she had suffered and fought her way through, it would take her.

Which was exactly what his brother had planned.

‘Wren,’ he tried again.

But the being held in the twisted knots of shadow wasn’t just Wren. The Aurum saw her, recognised the Nox, and a wave of pure unadulterated hatred stabbed its way through him and stole his breath.

The shadow kin snarled at him, but they couldn’t touch him. Not now. They didn’t need to.

The one holding her, its bright blue eyes flaming with malice, bared its shining teeth, gleaming with saliva, now made whole and so very dangerous. With a movement so fast he almost missed it, the shadow kin sank its teeth into Wren’s shoulder. This time she screamed out loud, a high and wavering sound which shook him to the core.

‘Finn, down!’ Roland yelled from behind him and Finn ducked instinctively, his training too deeply ingrained in him to ignore. Nightbreaker’s edge swept over his head, the wind caused by the air it sliced through cold on his skin, flattening his hair on his scalp.

The sword glowed, bright and beautiful, full of power and light, the same light he held inside him now.

It cut through the creature bearing down on him – the thing he had not even seen, so consumed had he been with worry for Wren – cutting a huge shadow kin clean in two. Roland stepped in front of him.

‘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…’