Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

WREN

The ground trembled, and all around Wren people were running, shouting, raising the alarm.

The thunder was coming nearer and she saw light glimmering through the trees as well as the sky now, flooding the clearing. Finn gathered her in his arms, the chains so cold they burned against her skin, just as Leander had promised, but she didn't care. He was alive. He was holding her, shielding her as she had tried to shield him.

‘It's a beacon. An Aurum-sent beacon!' someone shouted. ‘Defend the crown prince.'

Elodie was coming. She had to be. She would always come when Wren needed her, dead or alive – and Wren still wasn't sure which – but it had to be her. The forest shook with her rage. Elodie was coming in light and fury. The sky lit up with waves of coloured light.

But it wasn't Elodie who arrived.

They came through the trees in every direction.

Knights flooded the clearing, their armour shining in the dying light. Their horses' hooves turning the earth to mud, as their blades tore through their enemies.

Wren tasted the blood in the air, and drank in the cries of death and destruction as they fell on the Ilanthians. Or perhaps it was the thing inside her, the mass of darkness and shadows she had linked to on the other side of reality. It relished every drop of blood, every death. It drank down every moment of despair and defeat and it laughed. Everywhere she looked, battle surged around her and all she could do was cling to Finn, to hold him against her and try to fight the fierce joy.

Leander vaulted onto a mount, his bodyguards surrounding him. They all fled, leaving his pavilion and his luxuries behind him trampled into the mud. Those of his men who didn't follow him immediately died, right there, ensuring his escape.

And, suddenly, everything went strangely still.

The Knights of the Aurum encircled her and there was nothing she could do now, no way to escape them. She couldn't let them take her either. Elodie had always been adamant. She had to make them go away, and leave her alone. She had to…

The darkness in her rose again, ready to fight them all, ready to strike them down or be extinguished doing so. She sobbed as she felt the thing in the beyond revel in the prospect and surge forward to fill her again.

‘Wren.' The voice was a breath against her skin. Not Elodie. Or the voice of power. Not this time. Real and right there, with her.

Strong arms held her close, strong but gentle, the only real thing in her unreal world. She turned her head to look at him, only a fraction of an inch away from her. He blazed like a fire, all the glory of the Aurum in a human shape.

‘Wren,' Finn whispered, his breath harsh against her ears, his voice strained beyond endurance. But his words… he sounded like Elodie, the words he said an echo of her words. ‘Let go. Just let go. We're safe. We're going to be okay. Don't give in to it.'

She took a breath. Then another. She felt the shadows in her start to recede, that dreadful consciousness retreating, satisfied. For now.

It left her feeling wrung out and sick. Empty.

The world was righting itself but all it left behind was a terrible feeling of abject horror. It was part of her, she was part of it. But what…

You know what it is.

She had felt the touch of the Nox from its exile. The parts of it the lost queen had cast into the furthest darkness when she tore it apart and scattered it. So different from the diluted power found in the darkwood. And, through Wren, it had a way home. She wasn't even sure how she knew it, but she had opened some kind of doorway, and that worked both ways.

Another breath, and another, and the reality of it slammed into her mind like a fist. What had she done?

Even as the world shifted around her, lines of power melting away, she could make out the leading knight dismounting and coming towards them, a man tall and broad.

He removed his helmet to reveal his midnight hair and eyes as endlessly dark as her own. He strode across the space between them, his expression all concern, but not for her. He didn't know her. How could he?

‘Finnian? What happened?' asked Roland de Silvius.

Wren felt Finn's arms tighten around her, as if he could somehow protect her from what was coming. He couldn't. She knew that. They had all seen her. They all knew what she'd done. Her world was about to change and there was nothing either of them could do about it. Not now.