Page 23 of A Touch of Shadows

No, she couldn’t have…

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

The look he gave her branded her a liar. ‘I went back and checked. Dead horses, dead men, torn apart, crushed and broken. Shadow kin. Nothing else does that.’

Oh. She chewed on her lower lip. There had always been shadow kin in the darkwood and they had always been attracted to Wren, dancing attendance on her if she let them. Wild creatures spun from the fragments of the Nox that lingered here, but usually they avoided anything that might fight back. Elodie had taught her how to drive them off as soon as she could learn the words to do so. But this time she had called them, the shadow kin.

That sentient, rage-filled darkness, those voices that had whispered to her, that hunger, that need…

She pushed the thoughts away. She couldn’t face them right now.

‘And the prince?’

He laughed. ‘Oh no, not him. He retreated long before it got near him. But he’ll be back with reinforcements. I know him. He will not give up, especially now that he knows what you can do.’

‘But I?—’

‘Don’t give me that. What else would have done that?’

She let out a shaky breath. She had to persuade him that it hadn’t been her. Not directly, not intentionally. ‘The darkwood. It answers sometimes. Never like that, not before. But it’s dangerous. It… it has shadow kin and other things living there, gathering together… Elodie says?—’

‘Who is this Elodie? If she’s teaching you she must be powerful indeed. Is she your mother?’

‘She’s… she’s…’ How did she explain? Her mother, although Elodie had never said it out loud. There hadn’t been a need. And now she might not ever get a chance. Everyone else said it though. They were snide about it sometimes. A beautiful woman who arrived alone with a child in her arms. The witch’s bastard… that’s what they had called Wren. Now the words hung around her neck like a noose. ‘She was in the tower. That’s where we lived. And you saw it.’

The flames, so hot, consuming the whole building. Like it had been doused in oil and burned from the inside out. No one could have got out of that.

‘You think she’s dead?’ he asked and his voice gentled again. He was trying to be kind. Even in the midst of all this, he was trying. That was the sort of man he was. She didn’t deserve that, not if she really had called up that wall and the shadow kin within to tear their pursuers apart.

Wren shrugged. She didn’t want to think it. But what other option was there? She just couldn’t seem to force the words out, so she settled for staring at him defiantly, aware of the tears burning in her eyes. He read her face easily. ‘You want to go back and look, don’t you? It won’t be safe. We should go to Knightsford. We can get help there.’

And on foot it would take days. But she needed to know if Elodie was there now. If she was still alive.

‘I’ll be careful,’ she told Finn. ‘What if she’s hurt? Or captured? What if this Leander has her?’

She couldn’t say the rest. All her other fears. But invoking the prince of Ilanthus’s name seemed to do the trick.

‘Fine,’ he sighed. ‘But we will go only in daylight. And you do exactly what I say, understand? No tricks, no adventures of your own. We stay away from the darkwood. And definitely no magic.’

She let him think it was his decision to make. It was the least she could do.

CHAPTER 13

WREN

The tower loomed over them, black and empty, the morning light playing through the smoke that still hung in the air around it. The windows were gone, as was the door. Everything inside on the lower floor had been destroyed.

Wren tried to force herself to keep breathing as they stepped inside. The heat must have been intense, which told her at once nothing natural had done this. No normal fire.

Elodie had spoken about conjuring witchfire on occasion. It was a weapon of last resort, she said. That amount of magic was only to be used in desperate need.

Wren had never seen it though, and certainly never managed to produce so much as a spark herself. Light was not her forte. She was better at driving the darkness away than drawing the light to her. Now she wished she had listened properly. At least she might understand better what had happened here.

Wren ran her hand down the soot-blackened wall. Her fingers came away coated in a thick sticky darkness, which she hurriedly wiped off on her jerkin. It felt like tar.

Glancing back, she saw Finn examining everything with a critical eye. He was as aware of what all this might mean as she was.

‘Tell me about her,’ he said at last.