Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

FINN

The pain was incredible, blinding.

Shadow kin were meant to be spun from darkness, but this was real and solid. Too much so.

Finn thought of the remains he'd found in the forest and for a moment his heart faltered. They were going to kill him. They were going to kill them both. That knowledge froze him, and a wall of agony closed around him like the jaws of the beast itself. He couldn't help the scream that burst from him, but the answering cry was worse, torn from Wren's throat, raw and desperate.

Flames engulfed the thing above him. It shied back, shock making it release him and then rear up, towering over the two of them. Wren ran at it, only a burning branch in her hands, but flames seemed to billow out ahead of her and the darkness shrieked as she approached.

Witchfire? Was that witchfire?

‘Get back from him!' she yelled. ‘Get back!'

And to his eternal surprise, the shadow kin obeyed. All but the one that had bitten him. It hung there, as if caught in some kind of trap.

Wren hurled the burning stick at it, still screaming, the words incoherent now. It was a strange and twisted language that he almost knew. Pain made his consciousness wash in and out like the tide as he tried to place it.

The creature shook its head as if in pain or confusion, and then fixed its maddened eyes on her. Wren just stood there, unarmed, staring up at it as if mesmerised. Her hand dropped to her side, as if suddenly realising she didn't stand a chance now.

The shadow kin's maw plummeted towards her, like a wolf intent on a rabbit.

Finn's hand closed on the sword hilt and he moved without thought, surging up in front of her, bracing himself, the blade aloft.

And the creature struck it.

Steel, hand-forged by the Maidens of the Aurum in the old days, blessed by its flames. A holy weapon created to combat shadow kin and all creatures of the Nox. A sword once blessed by the queen and still carrying that holy light inside it.

He staggered beneath the sudden weight as the beast impaled itself and then sank to his knees beneath it. It thrashed, almost taking him to the ground again, and then went still as it slid down to the hilt.

Just when he thought it would crush him, it was gone, like a twist of smoke in a breeze, drifting away.

Finn's body went out from underneath him and he hit the ground harder than he would have imagined possible. It felt more like an unseen force had slammed into his back and laid him out, swatted him like a fly for defying whatever it had planned here.

The next thing he knew, Wren was beside him, turning him onto his back, her hands frantic at his torn and bloody clothes.

‘Talk to me,' she whispered. ‘Please Finn, talk to me. I need to see the wound. Do you understand? Please, say something.'

He blinked back the darkness crowding in at the edges of his sight.

She was terrified and lost, and he suspected she'd just worked some kind of miracle to save the two of them. But she really was astonishingly beautiful. Long dark hair spilled about her pale face. When had it got so long? It seemed to move like it had a mind of its own.

He reached up and caught some in his hand, tangling his fingers in it, feeling the silken slide of the strands against his skin. It had been short as a boy's when he first met her. That was why he'd mistaken her for one. And now it was long and wild, beautiful. How did it grow so quickly? Was everything about her magic?

Cold air against his skin told him she'd managed to open the jerkin and had exposed his side where the shadow kin had bitten him. It felt like ice, which was a bad sign. The pain was ebbing and that was not good either. It could be shock, and that was trouble enough, but it could be poison too.

Shadow kin killed in so many ways.

‘Shit,' she said, in the most unladylike manner possible. But that was Wren, he realised. She wasn't like the women of Pelias, all restraint and composure. She was passionate and determined, a half-wild thing of the forest. She spoke her mind, but surely without him she was going to get captured, or lost, or…

Mind you, he told himself, you're not doing the greatest job of protecting her, are you? And considering all he had learned, or thought he had learned, about the woman she called Elodie, the woman who was probably her mother…

But all he had ever wanted to do was protect the weak, serve the Aurum and the crown.

Him? Serving the Aurum and the crown? That was a joke. He was a fool. He would have made a terrible Paladin, even if the Aurum had ever actually awoken to receive his vow. If it had done more than lift an eyelid like a sleeping cat and then ignore him. He was clearly cursed. It had to be his bloodline. He couldn't do anything right. All he'd done so far was lead Wren even further into danger. If she hadn't stopped to help him in the first place, she would have been home with Elodie when her mother decided to burn the tower and flee. She'd be safe now.

Whereas instead…

This was all his fault.

Her hand touched the wound, and he bit back a curse at the flare of pain that engulfed his body.

‘So you are still with me?' she said, trying levity to mask her fear.

‘Still here.' Barely. His head swam. Was it poison? Was he shadow touched? He'd heard stories but he thought bites like this would take longer to infect the pure of heart. Or maybe he wasn't so pure. How could he be, given who he was? He was already half a shadow thing to begin with. His family had seen to that. Would it take him now? He would have thought his body could have put up a bit more of a fight. The corruption took days to claim most. Another way he had failed. It figured.

‘Wren, get the knife.' He touched his throat, to one side, where the pulse was pounding erratically beneath the skin. ‘Just here. One cut, and make it deep. Quickly.'

She frowned at him as if he'd lost his mind. Perhaps he had. But it was better this way. He could feel the sluggish cold running through his veins. It wouldn't take long.

‘Wren,' he tried again, fixing her with his gaze so she'd know he was serious. ‘Please. Before it's too late.'

She frowned, the skin around her endlessly dark eyes tightening. Something like disgust moved her mouth into a hard line. He wanted to kiss that mouth. Even now.

Light, how he wanted to kiss her. Just once for real. One last time.

‘Don't you dare,' she told him. ‘Don't suggest such a thing.'

For a moment he thought she meant the kiss, but he hadn't said that out loud. She meant killing him. He almost laughed.

‘You're just putting me out of my misery. Like I did with the horse. You must know what it will do to me… what I could do to you…'

He didn't want to be shadow touched, to lose what tattered remains there were of his soul, to become a monster consumed from within by shadow kin. He'd turn on her, on everyone.

Finn had struggled all his life to keep as far away from the remnants of the Nox as possible. It couldn't end like this. He wouldn't let it. If she wouldn't do it, he'd find a way himself. He scrabbled at his belt, seeking his knife himself, but before he could grab it, she knocked his hand aside. The next thing he knew, she'd pinned both his arms above his head, her legs trapping his. She hung over him, a veil of black hair masking everything but her face.

‘Look at me, Finn Ward. I'm not letting you kill yourself. Not for this.' She looked so fierce. That yearning filled him again, wild and irrational. He wanted her. More, he wanted her to want him. He wanted to belong to someone who looked on him the way she did.

No. That wasn't his fate. And neither was this. It couldn't be.

‘Don't make me become one of them,' he snarled, trying to throw her off, but she clung to him. Either she had gained some kind of supernatural strength all of a sudden or the poison was already stealing his. He'd fade and with that his sanity would drain away. He'd be lost.

She studied his face and then gave a strangled noise of pure frustration. ‘Ugh, you stupid man. Hold still.'

Before he could argue again, she pressed her free hand to his side, so warm against his skin, against the ice creeping through his blood, and she whispered something in that strange language he didn't know. But he recognised it now, so close to him, whispering against his senses. Only the Maidens of the Aurum spoke those words. But they were words of power.

Wren threw her head back as the light ripped through her, her face a mask of pain.

It shouldn't hurt, that's what they'd all been taught in Pelias. The women who channelled the magic of the Aurum in the heart of the Sacrum, its blessed maidens, claimed its touch was only pleasure. That it was like a lover, leaving them never in need of a man. That was what everyone said. The touch of such light was bliss, and those who could touch it in return were blessed.

But in Wren's face he saw only agony.

And then the light flooded him as well.