Chapter 54

CHAPTER 54

ROLAND

Roland didn’t know where he found the strength or the ability to move but something desperate and primal drove him. Elodie was only a step behind, her face pale, her hands trembling.

As they reached the spot where the two of them lay, still entwined together, Elodie sobbed, trying to gather Wren’s limp form in her arms. ‘What happened? Wren, please, love, please wake up.’

Finn stirred first, though he looked like even breathing was agony. He blinked slowly at them and for a moment Roland feared he’d lost his wits.

‘Wren?’ His lips seemed to stumble over her name and his voice sounded like it had been tortured to breaking. Roland helped him up carefully, but he just gazed at her still form. ‘No.’

‘There was so much magic,’ Elodie whispered. ‘She couldn’t take it all in. Even Wren couldn’t…’

‘Oh, you would be very surprised at what she can do,’ said a young voice behind them. Somehow it didn’t sound young though. It was ancient. And wild. And oh, so powerful. More so than ever.

‘Lark?’ Roland whispered and the little girl from the forest smiled at him. There were flowers in her hair, living growing flowers, blossoming even as he watched. Robin stood beside her but his whole attention was fixed on Wren. His skin had taken on a mossy green tint that made him look even more wild and unnatural.

‘Do something,’ Elodie snapped, ever imperious.

Robin tilted his head to look at her. ‘You kept her safe for us for so long, Elodie. We promised in Cellandre that we would protect her. Did you think we would forget?’

‘I don’t know what something like you thinks is safe , but this…this is not safe!’

‘Hedge witch,’ said the boy who was not a boy, ‘can you not heal her yourself? That was always your gift. Not the Aurum, not all those charms, just healing. You were so very good at it when you set all else aside. Have you forgotten that as well?’

Hedge witch …Roland saw the expression change in Elodie’s eyes, as if she had been slapped. And perhaps she had, and by the boy, no less.

‘Try, Elodie,’ said Lark. ‘I believe in you.’

Healing, Roland had always been taught, was the hardest of all magics. And the most important. It was a blessing from the Aurum and yet the Aurum was gone. There was no sign of Nightbreaker, nor of the crown. No sign of the shadow kin or the flames. He couldn’t even feel the touch of them in his heart. Not anymore.

‘I don’t…I don’t know what to do…’ Elodie whispered, and for the first time in his life he saw her look lost.

‘Yes, you do,’ he told her suddenly. ‘You always do. Elodie, my love, heal her.’

Elodie hugged Wren to her, a mother with her only child, and kissed her head. She murmured something and Roland heard the soft sound resolve into a lullaby. She rocked Wren gently against her, and sang about driving the darkness away, and about sleeping softly, and about the morning that would come. It was the gentlest song, one so old that no one truly knew its source.

‘ My child, my child ,’ Elodie sang, ‘ my precious child, when you wake a new day will dawn. ’

Wren stirred and opened her eyes. Slowly Roland let out the breath he had been holding, the one threatening to make his lungs burst.

His daughter’s eyes were no longer black and endless, no longer the darker mirror of his. They were green, and bright, and lit from within like sunlight streaming through new leaves in the forest.

‘Elodie?’ Wren murmured and held her even tighter. ‘Don’t let go, not yet. Please.’

‘Never, my love. Never.’

‘Where’s Finn?’

‘Here!’ The word was pulled out of him as if by raw need. He reached out a shaking hand to take hers, pulled her fingers to his lips and kissed them.

‘And Roland?’ Wren asked. With her attention turned on him, Roland felt a world of love rising inside him. His daughter, no matter what had made her or why, no matter what she had become. She was his. Even if he had to share her with powers beyond his understanding.

‘I’m here. No harm will come to you on my watch.’

Wren smiled. ‘Thank you, Grandmaster…Father…’

Roland smiled. When he looked for the strange witchkind children who were not children at all, they had gone again, as silently as they had come.