Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

ROLAND

The locket in his hand was a tiny thing to contain so much loss.

In it, she was forever young, forever beautiful. And though she could never have really been his, Roland knew that their hearts had been one. Even if she had been married to someone else.

He had called her Elodie. Not her royal name. Her childhood one, almost forgotten by everyone else. It had become a private name, just for the two of them. The name of her heart, she had said.

How did he reconcile that with his honour and duty? Loving Elodie had been everything, all of it wrapped up in one. But that wouldn't have mattered. He had been helpless. From the first moment he'd seen her, he had been hers, heart and soul.

A girl wandering through the palace kitchens at night and a boy, who had been given the thankless task of tending a fire more as a joke than anything else. Because he wasn't the son of some great noble, or the scion of a great house. Because the Aurum had chosen him anyway, and many people thought it was a mistake.

Not her though. She'd stopped and stared at him, seeing him for who he was in an instant. Because the Aurum was a part of her life, part of her. So infused in her blood, or so the seers said, that she might as well be its walking embodiment.

‘He's no one,' the guard accompanying her had sneered. And Elodie had shot the tall man a scathing look. She had been beautiful even then, a tiny thing, spun from fire and gold.

‘No he isn't,' she had replied. ‘He's mine .'

And he had been. Right from that second, even if he didn't really know what it meant at the time. He would have done anything for her.

Someone cleared their throat behind him and Roland sighed inwardly, closing the locket and tucking it safely in the pouch at his belt before turning around. The tent was a billowing roof overhead, the breeze outside making it feel like a sail in a storm.

Waiting for his attention, Anselm stood in the doorway. His former squire, now a knight in his own right, and his most trusted aide.

‘Reports in from the north, Grandmaster,' he said and approached the desk with a number of papers in his arms.

‘Any news of Ward?' he asked, but Anselm shook his head.

‘Just that he left Sidonia as planned. He's probably making his way here through the forest, avoiding the roads. You know how he is.'

Sneaky, the others would say. But Finnian Ward was so much more than that. He was the most promising among his knights, and would have joined the ranks of Paladins if only the Aurum was willing to acknowledge new vows. Or anything really. But since the queen had been lost, the Aurum was just a flame. Needing no fuel, it burned and never waned, its magic sustaining it. But it didn't react to anyone anymore. Not since that terrible night.

Blood on the marble, so much blood. Bodies strewn everywhere, broken like dolls, torn apart by the rising darkness… Elodie, illuminated by the flames, as if she was on fire within, while a wave of shadows bore down on her. She stood silhouetted with the Aurum behind her, and within her, the standing stones framing her, light in her veins glowing beneath her skin.

‘Get back, Roland. Now!' The door slammed between them like the closing of a tomb.

Roland had always been loyal. He had always obeyed her command but it was the one time he shouldn't have. He'd been too slow. If he had only taken those few steps inside before it was too late…

It haunted him.

They had all known about the prophecy.

When shadows take the Aurum, the Nox will take the throne.

No one had believed in it, though. That was the problem.

King Alessander of Ilanthus and Elodie's father Prince Consort Jonquil had hoped to ease tensions with the ridiculous marriage – how they could have hoped to unite the two nations was beyond him. Roland knew as well as anyone the queen loathed her treacherous husband Evander from the first. She had tried to make it work despite that, to no avail. And then Evander had almost fulfilled the prophecy and doomed them all. He had come so close, and only Elodie had saved them with her sacrifice.

Roland didn't know how she did it. The Nox was a goddess, unstoppable and all-powerful. Brought into the heart of the Sacrum, it would have fed from the magic that filled the place, syphoning off everything that sustained the Aurum, destroying it. In battle the Nox would shift its shape, take on the form you feared the most and ultimately destroy you, but Elodie had found a way to destroy it. Because Elodie – clever, peerless, powerful Elodie – always found a way. He'd known that. He'd trusted in her.

That was the only reason he had left, rushing to raise the alarm. He knew she would hold, and he could come back to help her. Or die by her side.

The battle for the gate had been brief and brutal, Ilanthian spies falling on the guards to let in their troops. But the knights had turned back the tide and Roland had sprinted back to the Sacrum, desperate to save her. To rescue her.

He had been too late.

Elodie had slammed the door to the Sacrum on him, to protect him, and had faced the Nox alone. It had towered over her, vast and terrible, still taking form.

Afterwards the Maidens of the Aurum, those guardians of the sacred flame, said the Nox was shattered into pieces and driven back to the darkness from which it hailed. The chamber of the Aurum was bathed in blood, the flame burned on in silence. And there was no sign at all of Elodie.

And Evander's death had plunged them into the war they had been trying to prevent.

Only the fact that Elodie had already taken out the Nox, along with her husband, had saved Asteroth and given them victory.

While quiescent, the Aurum had still helped their knights and Paladins in the war that had consumed their kingdoms, whereas the Ilanthians had lost their dark goddess and their ranks had descended into chaos. Peace had been imposed by force of arms and a humiliating defeat, but the Pact had never truly been accepted. Even with the exchange…

Roland forced his mind back to the here and now, to Anselm and Finnian. ‘I want to know as soon as there's any word of him.'

Losing Finnian would be too much. Not just for him personally – the boy was like the son he'd never had – but for the fragile peace, which hung on by a tattered thread. The Pact may not be fully accepted but it had saved countless lives. It meant peace with Ilanthus had to be preserved no matter what.

Elodie would have understood.

And there he was again, thinking about her.