Page 38 of A Crown of Darkness
There was no use in fighting, not now. Nothing he could do but surrender to the inevitable and show her that, by this action alone, he was sorry.
With a sigh, he tilted back his head, exposing his throat to her, and she hesitated, her footsteps stilling in their advance.
‘What are you waiting for?’ he asked, horrified to hear the trembling in his own voice and the way it bounced back, mocking him from every corner of the chamber. ‘I’m here. This is what you want. What you always wanted.’
‘What I wanted?’ she murmured, her voice dreamlike. ‘What would you know about what I wanted?’
He laughed. He couldn’t help himself. It wasn’t joyful or mocking or anything like that. It was a broken sound wrenched out of his chest, out of his heart, because Wren was gone. And the being standing in front of him was still so beautiful that it was almost a relief that she would be the one to kill him.
‘You’re right,’ he conceded. ‘I don’t know what you want, apart from my life. Or rather my death. Wren…Wren wanted her forest. She wanted to go back there and live there in peace and quiet. She wanted me to go with her and I should have. I should never have let them take her to Pelias. I should have listened but I was a fool. So I’ll pay for that now. It seems fair, doesn’t it? To die for her. Does she…’ A wild hope seized him. Not a hope of salvation or anything so stupid as that. But a small hope, which was, at the same time, the greatest tragedy. ‘Is there any of her left in you? Will she know? If I tell you how I love her, will she know?’
The woman shook her head, more in dismay than denial, but that hardly mattered. The Nox was just playing with him now.
‘This is a lie,’ she hissed. ‘You aren’t real.’
‘I’m more real than you are.’
When she didn’t come any closer he dropped his head again and stared at her. She seemed to swim in and out of focus, or was that his eyes filling with tears? What did it matter anyway? He was as good as dead here.
He shivered, his skin heating beneath her gaze. Desire surged back through him, unwelcome and strange. Just because she wore Wren’s face and body, just because she still looked like the woman he loved…worshipped…adored…
But then she was a goddess now. Of course he adored her.
This wasn’t right. That one thought managed to penetrate the tangled confusion of everything else. None of this was right.
‘Wren?’ he whispered, his voice a rusted knife in his throat.
‘Finn…’ she murmured in response and stepped towards him again until the knife was pointed at his throat. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from her eyes, from the tears silvering her cheeks.
‘Do it then,’ he told her, making his voice harsh in order to force the words out. ‘Do it and have done with me. Release me.’
Her hand shook and the point of the blade scraped against skin and stubble, a rasping noise which sent another shudder of fear and despair through him.
The Nox would never release him, he knew that. Not even in death. He was her creature and his soul would be hers. What that meant he wasn’t sure. Would the dark power she embodied consume him for eternity or reanimate him as some kind of mindless slave? Once his blood spilled for her…again, he reminded himself because he had bled so many times for Wren, he had died for her and still she had refused to let him go…
‘This isn’t real,’ she told him.
No, she was asking…begging… She didn’t want this to be real. Did she?
But that didn’t sound like the Nox at all.
Finn drew in a breath and leaned forward towards the knife, and to his surprise, Wren pulled back.
‘It is real,’ he replied. ‘All too real. And if you have to kill me, I understand, my love.’
She bared her teeth, so fierce and angry. ‘You aren’t my love. You aren’t real.’
Great light, he thought, she was beautiful. And powerful. And his…
And itwasreal. All too real.
‘Wren…’ Her name was an entire psalm and his heart sang the harmony. ‘This is real and you are everything to me. You have to know that. You always will be whether I live or die. Whether you kill me or not.’
For another agonising moment, she froze. Then her hand spasmed and she dropped the knife. It clattered to the floor between them and she closed her hand around his throat instead, nails digging into the skin. He stretched up into her grip, because he couldn’t rise, not bound as he was like a beast for slaughter. He was reaching out to a wild animal, half mad with grief, pain and betrayal. Her hold on his throat never moved, her slender hand like a collar holding him. Her dark eyes were wide and bewildered, but he saw hope there.
Finally he saw hope again. And knew it.
‘Wren…’ he whispered. She was here for him. To kill him or claim him, it didn’t matter which. He was hers.
