Chapter 43

CHAPTER 43

ELODIE

The door remained firmly locked. Once upon a time she and Maryn could have made short work of that. Light, they could have just blasted their way through the door itself. Or the wall. But the power that had once come to them so easily was no more than a flicker now. It felt like being left hollow and empty. Broken.

Elodie worked on the bracelet on Maryn’s arm, trying to open it every way she knew how, but the Aurum would not answer her now. She tried to force it, cajole it, even threaten it. Until finally, in desperation, she spat out a hedge witch charm of opening and the wretched thing twisted open as if made of straw. Elodie stared at it for the longest time, unsure of what to make of that.

Worse still, it didn’t help Maryn. Oh, at first she was relieved but the moment she reached for the light that had always been part of her, nothing answered and she sank back onto her chair, devastated.

‘What are we going to do?’ Maryn asked. And, in truth, Elodie didn’t have an answer.

They had spent enough time pretending she was still asleep now. It had not gained them anything. No one had come save a few guards and they didn’t linger. No one seemed in any way interested in them. Perhaps Leander was planning to leave Elodie to die in here after all. Perhaps he’d wall the two of them up, let thirst and starvation take them and that would be that.

The kings of Ilanthus had done far more savage things to their prisoners in the past.

Enough. She was done waiting. The element of surprise was all very well, but not if there was no one to surprise.

Elodie made herself push that thought aside as she dressed herself as a queen should dress, and Maryn helped her prepare as if for a battle.

Which it was. And this was a kind of armour as well.

She was Queen Aeryn of Asteroth and this was still her kingdom. She had not allowed Evander of Ilanthus to take it from her and she was certainly not going to allow his nephew to do it instead.

The rest of the maidens had been confined to the Sanctum, guarded by Leander’s personal troops. He had promised that if anyone interfered, they would be the next to be slaughtered. No one doubted it. Elodie took Maryn’s hands in her own.

‘Your majesty,’ said the maiden, and curtsied. For the first time, Elodie felt that title rest on her shoulders as if it actually belonged there. She had run so far and so fast from this responsibility in order to protect Wren but now…now the only way to do that was to embrace it.

So she made Maryn tell the guard that the queen had awoken. And then they waited.

The door unlocked and Elodie turned to face this new threat, head held high and glare ready to destroy whoever crossed her.

But it was just Lynette.

The lady-in-waiting stared at them for a stunned moment, her eyes wide as they fell on Elodie.

‘El—’ Maryn began, in a tone of warning.

Lynette threw up a hand and a blast of wind ripped through the room, hurling Maryn back against the wall. It buffeted against Elodie as well but she held her ground, the assault not directed at her.

‘You said you’d keep her quiet, Maryn,’ Lynette said. ‘Keep her asleep. That was our arrangement. That she could stay alive as long as she stayed out of it all. She’s witchkind in the end, you said, more hedge witch than queen. You promised you’d handle it. It seems like you couldn’t even manage that.’

‘Lynette, don’t hurt her,’ Maryn gasped. ‘Please…’

So Maryn had known. And Maryn had cooperated…

The surge of betrayal and anger was pointless. Elodie swallowed it down. Her explanations and pointless reasons could wait.

‘Lynette, what do you think you’re doing?’ Elodie used the calmest, steadiest tones she could manage. Inside, her heart raced and her stomach churned in shock and betrayal but she couldn’t let that show. Whatever deal Maryn had made, it had been to save her life. But it still hurt that her cousin hadn’t seen fit to warn her that Lynette of all people was involved in all this.

This wasn’t about Lynette, or Maryn, but Leander. He was the enemy here. Whatever the women had needed to do in order to survive, to protect her, Elodie hoped it had been worth it.

But where had Lynette come by that magic? Not from him, surely?

‘I didn’t want to hurt you, your majesty.’ Lynette said the title with complete disdain. ‘You were never meant to wake up and so you would have kept the Aurum trapped and helpless. King Leander agreed to that, because you saved his life. He doesn’t want to hurt you. But you being awake changes everything.’

‘Except the Aurum didn’t stay with me.’ There was no point in pretending. If she knew magic, she’d sense it.

The breeze moving around them both intensified, but still Elodie held firm. It seemed that Lynette’s abilities weren’t having the effect she expected. Or at least not on Elodie. ‘Then where is it?’

‘Why? So you can try and trap it again? Why would you want to do that?’

‘I don’t want to trap it. I want to destroy it.’

‘In service to the Nox?’

‘The Nox? No. I want them both broken. They have enslaved us all for too long. I’m letting the old magic free again, Elodie. My sisters may be dead, but I will finish our work. I promised. We all did.’

‘You’re witchkind?’ Elodie had never known that. She suspected no one did until it was far too late.

‘Yes, I’m witchkind.’

Several things slotted into place now. Who else would have had unfettered access to Wren’s poor maid, Carlotta, to weave that puppeting spell around her?

‘And…Carlotta? Did you do that to her? Lynette?’

‘I had to. You don’t understand. You’re so entrenched in the duality of Aurum and Nox, Elodie.’

‘You tried to kill Leander and now you’re siding with him?’

Lynette threw her head back and gave a guttural cry of frustration. ‘This isn’t about him. Great powers of old, he’s loathsome. He’s a spoilt child who thinks everything is his due. But he’s a means to an end.’

‘I don’t understand.’ She had to keep the woman talking. She had to work out what was happening and find some way to reach her. But Elodie could already sense the fragile threads of control on Lynette’s sanity slipping. She was drenched in old magic and it had a way of unravelling the minds of those who suppressed it for too long.

‘Of course you don’t. You don’t understand any of it. I thought you might. You were a hedge witch. You lived in Cellandre and I hoped, when you came back here, you and Wren…I hoped…you could set us free.’

Elodie shook her head. ‘Set…set who free?’

‘Witchkind. All of us. But no. You just settled back into being queen and Chosen, letting the Aurum consume you. I had to act. My sisters failed but I will not.’ Lynette drew herself up to her full height, a wild and dangerous light in her eyes. ‘I will break both Nox and Aurum, and restore the old magic, and witchkind will be free again. The College of Winter will be ours and the Maidens of the Aurum and the Sisterhood of the Nox will bend their knees. Without the magic they have syphoned away from our world, the wild and natural power innate in witchkind twisted to serve them, they’ll have no choice. This is how it was always meant to be. But you and your line seized magic and made it the preserve of a few. You sought to control it through channels of light and dark alone. But there is so much more.’

‘What more? What are you talking about?’ Oh but Elodie feared that she knew.

‘Old magic! The oldest! Promised to us all!’ She screamed the words, and a wild light of madness entered her eyes. The demure and polished woman was hardly discernible any more. How long had Lynette been hiding, waiting, manoeuvring herself into the right position? Not to mention the effects of old magic on those who used it unwisely and without guidance from its guardians…

A broad figure filled the doorway behind her. Yvain. ‘Lynette?’ he said. ‘My love? I heard raised voices.’

Lynette flinched and Elodie could see the shame, the regret, the guilt.

‘Oh Lynette,’ Elodie gasped, realising the full horror of it. ‘Lynette, what have you done to him?’

The knight had a blank look to his face, and a grim cast about him. Another spell was tangled around him. Elodie could almost see it now, like threads cutting into his skin. Not just one spell. Layers and layers of them, a lifetime of enchantments. Dear light, what had she done?

‘All is well, my love. Wait outside. I’ll be with you in moments.’ Lynette’s voice shook far too much for that to be convincing but Yvain didn’t seem concerned.

‘Of course,’ he murmured as if lost in a dream. ‘But the king sent word. He has need of the princess. The Ilanthian guards are here to take her to the Sacrum.’

Wren. Leander had Wren or soon would.

‘Just a moment, love,’ Lynette said, her eyes fixed on Elodie, reading the horror there. ‘I will deal with him. First, I need to help the queen go back to sleep. She needs her rest.’

She raised her hand, magic swirling around it like an oil slick. Not the crisp feeling of the light of the Aurum or the dark embrace of the Nox’s shadows. This was almost as out of control as the woman wielding it. Old magic, Elodie realised, wrenched from the air itself and twisted into something sickening, reflecting the mind that tried to control it. Elodie had woven old magic in the forest and since, in fragments. It had been fresh and clear and made her think of misty mornings or a sea breeze. It had never felt like this to her.

Old magic was all around them, as it had been in Cellandre, in the air and in the stones, in the water, in each of them. Where once it had slept, now it was awake but in Lynette’s hands it was twisted with hatred.

‘Don’t do this, Lynette,’ she warned. Although what she could do to stop her, Elodie had no idea. But there had to be something. Anything. She couldn’t match Lynette force for force.

‘Why not, your majesty? You don’t have access to the Aurum anymore, neither of you. And that’s all you’ve ever?—’

Except it wasn’t. She was more than just the Chosen of the Aurum. And as Lynette said, she had been a hedge witch. Perhaps she still was.

Elodie worked her fingers in the dance of an old hedge witch charm of protection, her muscles remembering the movements better than her mind. She wrapped it in othertongue and released it like a stone from a sling.

The force slammed into Lynette’s face, knocking her head back as if punched. She slid to the ground at Yvain’s feet.

Snarling, she wiped her bloody nose and clawed her way up his leg. Elodie began to spin another defence, waiting for Lynette to turn that magic on her.

‘Yvain, kill them both,’ she commanded instead.

And Yvain of Goalais, poor, faithful, loyal Yvain, the perfect husband and perfect knight, shuddered, all emotion wiping from his features as he stepped forward, sword raised, a living, moving and deadly statue.