Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

FINN

The chamber of the Aurum was strangely cold and dark. Someone had lit lanterns all around the edge but their light didn’t seem to penetrate as it should. In the centre, the bowl-like depression where the flames should have been was empty. Finn took all this in just before the knights let him go and he fell onto the marble. It was polished to a mirror sheen and in it he could see…

Long silvery hair, falling like silk around a thin, elegant face with high cheekbones, a strong jaw almost hidden by beard growth, and eyes so cold and heartless they looked like ice. He supported himself on his shaking arms, staring at Leander’s face, with Leander’s eyes, and knowing that it was him in there. Finally seeing the reality of it made the thunder of his heart drown out any other sounds at first. Nausea boiled in his stomach.

Hestia reached him first, her hand hooking under his chin to draw his attention up to her instead. She knelt in front of him like the mother he had never known.

‘Don’t look,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll work this out. There has to be a way?—’

‘And I would very much like to hear the explanation,’ Maryn cut in. ‘Or is this another Ilanthian trick?’

‘It’s not a trick,’ Finn said. The corners of his eyes stung but he would be damned if he would let tears fall at a time like this. Rage and fear and everything in between flooded him. ‘How? How is it possible?’

Hestia helped him to his feet. ‘The Paladin’s light is still in you, a part of your soul, but Leander’s body is rejecting it. Don’t try to draw on it again, understand me? It might kill you.’

Maryn was still watching but everyone else had gone now. She’d sent them away, he realised, because whatever was going on here was against every principle she knew and clearly no one wanted word getting out. He stood between Hestia Rayden, servant of the Nox, and Sister Maryn, the foremost Maiden of the Aurum, and neither of them knew what had happened to him any more than he did.

Maryn approached carefully. ‘Strange,’ she murmured, making Finn feel like some kind of experiment. ‘Do you see this?’

‘Well of course I do. I’m not an idiot.’

‘You didn’t see it all this time, sister .’ The word dripped with animosity.

‘I am almost drained of my magic. He was unconscious. Anything I could do now would risk my life without help from another. It was all I could do to heal him. And you didn’t notice either. You were too busy blaming us for everything. You and your regent.’

‘Stop,’ Finn told them wearily. It was too much and he felt like some kind of prize they were fighting over. ‘Tell me what you do know, or what you can see. Please.’

Maryn huffed. ‘Well, now I know for sure you aren’t Leander, it makes more sense. As much as it can make sense. I see the Aurum’s light in you, and also…not. Like an afterimage from staring at the sun. The othersight is confusing at the best of times but this…this makes no sense.’

‘Leander always was unnaturally talented,’ Hestia said softly. ‘He studied magic by whatever means he could and stole what he couldn’t master, even old magic. What did he say to you in that room before he…’

There had been light, the light of the Aurum. Wren had been trying to save him, even then. She couldn’t work the magic herself but perhaps she had reached out through him. And Leander had held the pendant and…

‘His blood was on my pendant, where he touched it. He was dying. The Aurum’s light was alive in me, swamping me. Wren raised it, or it tried to use her, or…’ Finn gave up. He didn’t know anything helpful. ‘He said something. Gibberish.’

‘Othertongue,’ Hestia finished for him. ‘Not gibberish. It had to be. He tapped into the spell in the pendant and piggybacked on it. That’s not part of our magic.’

‘Nor ours,’ Maryn replied, thoughtfully. ‘But some witchkind can slip between their own minds and those of familiars. How would your crown prince have learned that?’

No need to ask why he did it. Leander had wanted to live, had wanted Wren, and he’d wanted the crown which had been denied him. Now…now he had it all. Finn felt as if someone had punched him in the guts at the thought.

‘He has friends in the College of Winter,’ Hestia said bitterly. ‘They still use old magic, those who can harness it. Although “friends” is probably too warm a term. Some of our sisters have relatives there, after all, men who fled the blade or those who didn’t want to serve. Lady Oriole, for example, who had his training in her hands. Divine darkness, is this the meaning of my vision? The crown on Finn’s head but not—’ Finn couldn’t miss her tortured expression.

‘What vision?’ Maryn snapped.

‘Of Finn as the king of Ilanthus, a king who would save us from this madness and unite our people, ushering in a period of peace and prosperity.’

‘That certainly doesn’t sound like Leander,’ Maryn said bitterly. ‘What did you see? What exactly?’

‘A battle in the Sanctum, a boy’s hand on a dark crown, Finn on the Ilanthian throne… The details are unimportant.’

‘I’ve found that with visions the details are often the most important thing of all. And your sisterhood, do they agree with you? Could they have done this?’

‘But I can’t believe the sisterhood would have a hand in this. We were trying to build an alliance. The king saw no harm in my mission here.’

Maryn’s hands knotted together as she kept studying Finn’s face, like she was looking for a thread to unravel. She shook her head slowly. ‘No harm at all. I never took Alessander for a fool. But then I never took the College for traitors either. Cold and distant, perhaps, and far too interested in taking magic apart to work out what makes it powerful, and obsessed with old magic. But we are all witchkind. Oh, this is not good. What are they up to?’

‘They?’ Hestia asked.

‘The College. I thought they might have an answer about Elodie, something old magic could help with, or one of their healers… I sent word but they have not yet replied. The chancellor was always a helpful enough sort but there has been some political upheaval brewing of late so I just thought he was too busy to?—’

Behind them a door banged open, making all three of them jump, and Lady Ylena entered, followed by her entire retinue. The lady regent looked like an incarnation of wrath and it was all Finn could do not to drop to his knees. It was purely an instinct of self-preservation.

‘Have you discovered anything useful?’ Ylena snapped without preamble.

Finn expected Maryn to instantly tell her all but the maiden turned to face her mother, her shoulders taut. ‘He knows nothing, lady regent.’

‘Or he refuses to speak of what he knows. He’s an Ilanthian, Maryn. He lies as easily as breathing. They both do. I have indulged your bleeding heart long enough. Your courtesy to Lady Hestia is one thing but he’s conscious now, recovered enough. Find out what he knows or I’ll have others put him to the question in more definitive ways. It would be a shame to undo all your good work but needs must.’

Hestia’s hand tightened on Finn’s arm. There was a tremble buried in that grip and he wondered what they might have done to her while he was unconscious. Courtesy to Hestia, Ylena had said. That had to mean Maryn had protected her somehow.

‘I’m not your torturer, Mother,’ Maryn growled, distaste evident in her expression.

‘You’re whatever I tell you to be. Or I will replace you.’

The maiden let a slow smile spread over her face, a smile without any warmth at all. ‘Sadly for you, my lady, only the Aurum can do that.’ She glanced at the empty hollow where their holy flames should have burned. ‘And it’s not available right now.’

‘Because of them! I tire of this. Take him to the dungeons and wring answers from him.’

‘What you are suggesting is an act of war,’ Hestia protested. ‘He is a prince of Ilanthus. He was injured beneath your roof, under a truce, by one of your servants. Right here. This goes against every tenet of the Pact.’

But Ylena just tilted her head to one side as if looking at a recalcitrant child. ‘You think we are not already at war, Lady Hestia? That witchkind chit was no servant of mine. More likely she belonged to your kind. I never took you for a fool, but you came here on a fool’s errand so perhaps I misjudged. Know this, I will send that boy back to his father in pieces if needs be. I will know what you did with the princess and I will know now.’

They could tell her, Finn thought, but she really wouldn’t like it. And killing him would only…

‘Then you do my father’s work for him,’ he said in what he hoped was the same arrogant tone Leander would use. He knew it far too well. ‘You’ll rid him of a failure of a son, clear the way for Finnian Ward to be his heir, and give them all the war of vengeance they have longed for. All in one go. Well done, Lady Ylena. How long do you think they have been planning this? Asteroth will be razed to the ground and the earth sown with salt. Look around you. You no longer have the Aurum to protect you. And my father has been gathering his forces for years, waiting for his moment. Do not hand it to him on a platter.’

Lady Ylena’s eyes narrowed and he knew he’d scored a point or two there. Not that it truly mattered. Not to her. It was probably a mistake. He was good at them.

‘Take him away,’ she snarled.

Hestia cried out something, words in othertongue that made his skin crawl.

His gaze went unerringly to Maryn. The Maiden of the Aurum trembled, her hands clenched into fists at her sides as she struggled to channel what power she still could. With the Aurum asleep, she was also scraping away at her reserves. For him, for Hestia.

‘Go,’ she told him, her voice strained. ‘Quickly. Both of you. Hestia, you know what to do. I give you the strength, by my vow, what magic I can. It’s old magic but all I can offer.’

Before Finn knew what was happening Hestia seized him in her arms. Pain and exertion lined her face as she drew on those fragments of magic she could glean from the world around them, old magic of stone and silence, long forgotten and alien to her. Maryn had woken it and now Hestia used it, trying to transmute its poison into some kind of power. Shadows spilled out all around them, twisting around their bodies, and Finn felt the light inside him flicker wildly. Pain lanced in its wake as the dark magic threaded through Leander’s body fought against it. This wasn’t possible, he wanted to say, not here in the Sanctum, not here in the heart of Pelias.

A travelling spell, one woven of a magic both familiar and entirely different to the light or shadows Finn had felt before, coalesced through them.

Hestia screamed in pain as it burrowed through her, tearing at the shadows of her own power and pulling it apart. It was vicious and determined, and Finn felt it wind around them, the light in his mind and the darkness in Leander’s body screaming at its touch. But it was strong, this old magic, stronger than it should ever be, choking the powers innate in him and in Hestia, as it swept the two of them away.