Page 66 of A Crown of Darkness
‘Anselm?’ he shouted. ‘Where’s Wren?’
‘She took cover in the trees.’
The trees were wreathed in shadows, dark and terrible. And Wren…
Wren. They had Wren.
He wheeled away from the fight without thought and five men encircled him moments later. But Finn didn’t hesitate. All his life he had fought, and all his life he had reached for the light. Now it blazed inside him just as he had always wanted it to, and the sword moved like an extension not just of his arm, but his mind as well.
We fight the Nox, with flame and sword.
And now he embodied both.
He tore his way through them and urged his horse into a gallop, heading after her.
‘Finn! They’ve taken the boy!’ he heard Olivier call after him and the horse went from underneath him, screaming and kicking. Finn rolled and came up fighting as shadow kin tried to overwhelm him. The horse was away, thank the light. It didn’tshare poor Dancer’s fate, not this time, and he celebrated that small victory.
Now all he could think of was Wren. He needed to find her, to save her.
She is our enemy. She is tainted to the core.
The voice almost brought him to his knees, knocking the breath from his chest. If he had been in any other place and time, he would have collapsed, but he was in the middle of a fight and didn’t have the time to let anything of the sort happen.
You are blessed. You are purified. The refining fire rushes through you and makes you perfected. No longer forsaken, you have been made anew. Be grateful for you are chosen.
And he was grateful. Of course he was grateful.
But it was Wren.
Finn gripped the sword harder and started forward again, his legs moving as if through knee-deep mud. The Aurum railed in the back of his mind but he pushed it away.
And then he saw her.
Wren was on her hands and knees in the darkness, jet black vines coiling around her, thorns cutting her skin, her eyes so wide and terrified, so very, very dark.
She was not their enemy. The Nox might be. But not her.
‘Wren!’ She was in danger, and whenever she was in danger he would come to her aid. He had vowed it long ago. It was engraved on every secret place of his heart. ‘Wren, I’m coming.’
She tried to speak but couldn’t. There was a twist of shadow coiled around her throat, and though her mouth opened, no sound came out. Nothing.
Finn hacked at the darkness around her but it just dissolved and reformed. That was when he realised his mistake. They were in a stone circle, a thin place, where the Nox could reach out to her and take her. Where it could make itself whole and make Wren its own for once and for all. And even with everything shehad endured, everything she had suffered and fought her way through, it would take her.
Which was exactly what his brother had planned.
‘Wren,’ he tried again.
But the being held in the twisted knots of shadow wasn’t just Wren. The Aurum saw her, recognised the Nox, and a wave of pure unadulterated hatred stabbed its way through him and stole his breath.
The shadow kin snarled at him, but they couldn’t touch him. Not now. They didn’t need to.
The one holding her, its bright blue eyes flaming with malice, bared its shining teeth, gleaming with saliva, now made whole and so very dangerous. With a movement so fast he almost missed it, the shadow kin sank its teeth into Wren’s shoulder. This time she screamed out loud, a high and wavering sound which shook him to the core.
‘Finn, down!’ Roland yelled from behind him and Finn ducked instinctively, his training too deeply ingrained in him to ignore. Nightbreaker’s edge swept over his head, the wind caused by the air it sliced through cold on his skin, flattening his hair on his scalp.
The sword glowed, bright and beautiful, full of power and light, the same light he held inside him now.
It cut through the creature bearing down on him – the thing he had not even seen, so consumed had he been with worry for Wren – cutting a huge shadow kin clean in two. Roland stepped in front of him.
