Page 52 of A Crown of Darkness
‘I am yours, now and always. I make this offer freely, without coercion. You are everything to me, Wren. Everything.’
‘You can’t know that.’
He raised his head, his eyes fixed unerringly on hers. ‘But I do. I always have. From the first moment I met you.’
‘Really?’ she asked, her tone scathing. ‘When I was dressed like a boy and running from a pack of mindless bullies?’
A smile flickered over his lips, a soft and human expression which made her heart turn itself inside out. He gave a soft, self-deprecating laugh. ‘All right, maybe not exactly then. But in the forest, in the darkwood…Wren…I say this freely, honestly. There’s nothing making me say this, no enchantment, only the truth. And the truth is, I have always been yours.’
‘Mine,’ she echoed. ‘Not…not the Nox’s?’
‘Yours,’ he confirmed. ‘I renounce my heritage, my vows and my blood for you. I am yours.’
Around them the air seemed to laugh and the darkness smiled against their skin.Yours, the voice of the Nox murmured.And thus mine. Freely, not through blood and death. Through free choice and love.
Wren stared into his eyes, trying to fix their colour in her mind, their softness in her heart, but even as she did so, they turned dark, as if filling with ink and Finn…Finn was gone.
Something else stood in his place, a warrior made of darkness.
And then she heard footsteps. They came from all around her and torches lit up the cavern as the guards arrived.
Far too many, all armed to the teeth.
With them came Oriole in her black robes, and Hestia too, the sisterhood gathering behind them. And if Hestia looked pale and ashamed, Oriole bore an expression of absolute triumph.
This was not good. Not good at all.
‘Well, my queen,’ said Leander, as he stepped from the midst of his men. ‘A merry dance you’ve led us, but now you’ve come to your power the game is over.’
CHAPTER 30
WREN
‘Hestia?’ Wren asked, amazed that her voice didn’t shake as she spoke.
‘Lady Hestia no longer commands the Sisterhood of the Nox,’ said Oriole coldly.
There was no doubt who now did, Wren thought, and any sense of nascent friendship she had felt for this woman dissolved.
If I fail…if something happens to me…Hestia had said. And something had definitely happened. She had no more power left, her magic broken, and clearly the sisterhood had discovered as much. And they had sided with Leander.
Perhaps that had been Oriole’s plan all along.
‘Why let me come here?’ Wren asked.
Oriole spread her hands wide. ‘This treasure house was closed to us, sealed away by the Nox herself because of that crown. And now it is ours again. You opened the way.’
And with the dark crown they could control the Nox. Wren recalled what Oriole had said about the Nox and the death and destruction their goddess had wrought.
Wren glanced at the crown briefly. It glimmered in the darkness, waiting.
No, she thought. Absolutely not. She had never wanted a crown, not in Cellandre, not in Pelias, and definitely not here.
‘I don’t think so,’ she replied. ‘Hestia?—’
‘Divine darkness…’ Hestia murmured the words, but her gaze was fixed on the boy beside her, Laurence. And the armed men flanking the two of them. ‘If I could help you I would.’
‘Still defiant?’ Leander actually had the nerve to laugh. ‘I’ve explained how this goes, my dearest cousin. If you defy me, Laurence will suffer for it. And Laurence will do whatever I say, won’t you, Laurence?’
