Page 37 of A Crown of Darkness
that once was yours.
Come and be mine,
and let me be your servant forever.
CHAPTER 21
FINN
Shadows swam around Finn’s body. They burrowed through his blood and coiled, squeezing, around his heart. The drug they had given him appeared to be wearing off at last but that just left him weak, cold and shivering in the darkness. There was no light here. It was a place of death and nightmares, one he remembered all too well. He’d always thought that his memories were an exaggeration, those of a child, where everything seemed bigger and darker and far more threatening than they should to a man.
He had been wrong.
Every terror of that memory was a faint echo of what engulfed him now. Or perhaps that was part of the nightmare that was this place.
His body ached, shoulders, knees, even down to his toes digging into the freezing stone.
They had left him kneeling, arms bound behind him and tethered to his ankles, unable to get up or move, his body entirely exposed. There was nowhere to go. Not really. He was lost, helpless.
No, not helpless, some distant part of him tried to argue. There were still ways to fight. He was a knight. He had trained all his life for combat. He didn’t need weapons. He was one.
And yet he just knelt there. And waited. He couldn’t fight this. He was a fool to even think such thoughts.
When she appeared, he wasn’t even sure that it was Wren and not some figment of his imagination, his childhood terrors. For months after Roland took him away from Sidonia, Finn had woken up screaming in the night. No one could convince him that the Nox would not come for him.
And here she was, taking the form he feared the most, the woman he loved and the goddess he was fated to die for, all in one beautiful shape.
Wren stepped from the shadows as if made from them. Her hair was long now, longer than he had ever seen it. It swirled around her with a life of its own, always in motion, curling and drifting on currents only it could know. Her face looked so pale, and there were shadows under her dark eyes which made his heart lurch inside him. What had happened to her here? What had Leander done to her? He could only imagine and he didn’t want to. All he wanted to do was tear the bastard apart before falling at her feet, abasing himself and begging her forgiveness for ever putting her in such a position.
And she would never give it. He knew that now. The girl he loved, the one who would always forgive another, who had the most open and giving true heart he had ever met…she was gone.
Her mouth was a thin, hard line and still he longed to kiss those lips, to drink her down and lose himself in her.
She wore a gown, black as night and threaded with shimmering strands, which left nothing to his imagination. Ilanthian in style, it framed her body, highlighting the soft luminescence of her skin and the darkness of her hair and eyes.There were gems scattered through her hair and they caught the light like the stars in the night’s sky.
Wait…the light…there was some kind of light. She reflected it back at him. It gleamed in her eyes, and on the edge of the sacrificial knife she carried.
Another thing about this place he would never forget. That very same knife, in the hands of his father, pressing like a line of ice against his skin.
But his father was dead now. Dead by Finn’s own hand, even if his will had not been behind it. Leander had used him and now Leander was king. And Finn…
Finn was back where he was always meant to be. A sacrifice. Her sacrifice.
After twenty years, she was coming to collect.
It wasn’t Wren. It couldn’t be Wren. Had it been like this for her, he wondered vaguely, looking at his face and knowing it wasn’t him but someone else for all that time? Were all the tortures Leander had put her through as painful as this?
She must have known.
But in the throne room she hadn’t come to him, she hadn’t moved. She had chosen the sisterhood instead and found her safety there.
He still liked to believe that in that moment they could have escaped, even if that was the hope and dream of a child.
He had failed her so completely.
He deserved this.
The sisterhood had removed the bracelet that he himself had put on her, limiting her magic. Containing her. And now she was free. And so was the Nox. It was too late.
