Chapter 47

CHAPTER 47

WREN

Dark flames sped out, encircling her as if lines of oil had been painted on the shining marble floor, filling the hollow which once held the Aurum. Wren heard a cry of dismay, a single voice almost broken with loss, and turned slowly, examining those people present.

Not the king of Ilanthus. Leander looked triumphant, his white-blond hair flowing back from a face so like that of his ancestor she couldn’t tell which one he really was anymore.

But an old woman, dressed in finery but on her knees, wore an expression of anguish which gave Wren pause. She stared at her and then rose from the throne. Shadows coiled around her, whispering their sibilant song of praise as she moved across the space between them. Treacherous shadow kin who had sided with Leander over the Nox…oh, she would make them suffer too. The problem was they would only thank her for it. Flames followed her, dark and terrible, a blue-black light which illuminated the chamber of the Aurum in a new darklight of ancient magic. They licked around her feet and climbed the standing stones, to ripple across the polished marble of the ceiling.

Wren came to a halt in front of the lady regent of Asteroth and looked down on her.

She had been afraid of this woman once. She had loathed her. She had slandered Wren’s father and driven him away.

‘Bow to your queen, Asteroth,’ Leander announced in a smugly triumphant voice. How he loved to make people grovel. ‘Do her homage.’

Half of those present cowered, dropping their faces towards the floor around her. One after the other they bowed. All save Ylena, who, though she was still on her knees, still somehow held herself straight and tall.

‘Great-Aunt Ylena,’ Wren murmured, and reached out her hand. It was an offering of truce, far more than the regent was due now. But instead of taking it the old woman glared at it, repulsed. Slowly she dragged her aged eyes up to Wren’s face.

‘You are not my great-niece. You have no place here. Look what you’re doing to our most holy place.’

Wren looked around her. The Sacrum was alive with shadows and otherlight. It was beautiful, a shifting, ever-moving kaleidoscope of darkness, aglow from within. Couldn’t the old woman see that? The blue flashes of shadow kin eyes lit up the darkest corners, reflecting off polished marble, and lines like lightning shimmered in the air and tunnelled through the stone.

‘Would you have cold and unfeeling light instead?’ Wren asked.

‘What would I have? I would have my queen of the line of Aelyn restored, our lost queen given back to us. I would have Asteroth free.’

‘Instead you’ll have the queen I’ve given you,’ said Leander. ‘More than any of you deserve.’

He pulled Wren away, schooling his features to something like devotion. All a lie, of course. Everything about him was a lie.

‘My love, my goddess, my queen,’ he intoned. ‘Accept me as yours now, your lord and king, and I will rule our lands with iron and with steel. I will be your champion and the strong arm to defend you.’

He sounded so smug. So self-assured.

The Nox and Wren both wanted to roll their eyes and refuse him but the press of metal on her throat and arms tightened, ready to compel her obedience. The crown felt heavy, the old crown of Ilanthus, the crown of the goddess queen.

Who had been lost to them.

Elodie wasn’t the only lost queen, Wren realised. She frowned, struggling with that thought.

‘I was a goddess,’ she said. Or perhaps that was the Nox. ‘And I was a queen. And…’

The rush of rage that flooded her stole her voice but the words carried on, shaking the stones around her. The fragile sanity she had managed to build around the Nox in Sidonia shattered.

And it was taken from me. Freedom was taken from me. The blood of my blood was weaponised against me. I was used, sent as an assassin, made into a monster…

Wren tried to catch her breath but it was too much. It was all too much. Such a being of power in such a fragile form…it wasn’t right, it wasn’t meant to be. She needed something to cling to. Someone, something…she needed…

I will be a monster no more.

She faced Leander and saw that he believed he had won. Even now. He thought that the crown would subdue the Nox, and control her.

But the Nox was no longer alone. Wren was with her, entwined with her. And she was not going to let that happen.

‘I think not,’ she said and the voice was her own. And yet it was more than just that. It throbbed and echoed with the greater force of the beyond, of the deepest darkness and the endless night. It was the endless void and the eternity of stars in that voice. ‘You may serve, but you are not the one to command me. You never were.’

She took the Nox into herself and let it fill her. And at the same time, the Nox opened itself to her.

This was what they were meant to be. There was old magic in the stones here, flowing through the ground beneath them and spiralling up to this place of power. The Aurum might have claimed it, but it was not the only being that could reach it and manipulate it.

Once she had been part of that old magic. It had been split and broken, just as she had been split and broken. But now she was made whole. And it could be made whole as well.

Long ago, before the Aurum and the Nox, this had been a place of witchkind. Carlotta had died here, in this place, and she had been Wren’s friend. She had given her a gift, a twist of straw in the shape of a bird.

‘ It’ll help you remember who you are… ’

The last trace of her friend’s spirit still lingered here, in these stones, in this place of power, and Wren touched it now, reaching for it as if seeking a blessing.

And oh, she remembered.

The Nox remembered.

Something was still missing but it would not be long. She knew that, could feel it. All that she still needed was coming. Like a stormfront, like a rising tide, like the inexorable turn of the seasons…

The other part of her. Of the magic of this place. The light to her darkness.

Leander hesitated, a frown growing on his perfect brow, those pale eyebrows drawing together and his silver eyes clouding in doubt. ‘Serve?’ he echoed, in tones that almost rhymed it with slave.

Wren smiled at him, the coldest, most chilling smile that had ever found its place on her lips. ‘Did you think you were fated to rule me, little king? The crown was made with blood and old magic. And perhaps had you used it earlier, it might even have worked. But not here. Not in the Sanctum, in the circle of ancient stones where the veil is thin. And this is above all a place of old magic. A place of power. Why else would the Aurum guard it so jealously? Your pet witch lied to you about the timing, about Wren weakening. But of course she did. She is witchkind and Wren is first and foremost witchkind as well,’ she reminded him. ‘ We are witchkind. We live free or die.’

The old magic surged up around her, the magic she’d touched in the forest, the magic which flowed in her veins as much as any darkness.

The shadow-wrought metal at her neck and wrists glowed with a fierce light, the darklight in them flaring brighter and brighter as she reformed them, changing them, just as she had seen Elodie do in the stone circle of the Seven Sisters, remaking them as she desired. Steel became silver, their innate magic hardened to diamonds, and they twisted themselves into new shapes. Nothing could bind her now, not made whole, not in this place of ancient power. The old magic in the land was loose again and now she drew on it as well, transforming those tools meant to enslave her into weapons of her own. Bands of pure power glowed in their place, focus points for that ancient magic. The metal moved, twisting itself around her skin, changing itself.

She drew all that magic into her and called on what she needed most. The missing part of her.

The door to the chamber exploded in a burst of blinding light and a man formed of light and flames stepped inside, a figure blazing in glory. Wren turned, hungry for him, and saw the look of blind hatred on his face.

Finn had come to find her. And so had the Aurum.