Page 25 of A Touch of Shadows
On the other side the face of a man looked back at them. Handsome, strong, his hair and eyes as dark as Wren’s, the lines of his face making him stern.
Finn snapped the locket shut. He shoved it back into Wren’s hand and got to his feet, retreating to the far side of the room.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ She rose unsteadily, as if the floor beneath her feet had suddenly become uneven.
‘That’s Roland de Silvius,’ he said, his voice shaken. ‘Made years ago, but there’s no mistaking him. He’s barely changed. Who is Elodie? Where did she come from?’
Wren shook her head, bewildered. How could he know the man in Elodie’s locket? ‘I don’t know. We’ve always been here.’
‘But she didn’t come from here, did she?’
‘No. We moved here when I was little…’
‘And you never asked where from?’
Wren looked around the tower room that had been a sanctuary and a stronghold, right to the last. This had been Elodie’s space. Wren herself had always preferred to be outside in the forest, in the greenwood, in the open air. Perhaps she should have paid more attention, but it was far too late now.
‘She didn’t like to talk about the past,’ was all she could tell him, and he gave her a look like he’d worked out something devastating.
‘I bet she didn’t,’ Finn muttered.
‘Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong? And who this Roland is?’
But she remembered too many times Elodie crying out in her dreams and nightmares, calling for Roland, weeping, his name on her lips like that of a lover or a lost soul. She screamed his name in the darkest moments of the darkest nights when the worst dreams tormented her. Whenever Wren had gone to her then, tried to help her or comfort her, Elodie had buried her face in her hands, refused to look at her.
Faced with the image before her, Wren began to suspect why. But she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t dare.
Finn seemed to have gathered his wits now. He straightened, staring at her as if seeing her for the first time. ‘You’ve never heard that name? Roland de Silvius, first Paladin of the Royal Court, Queen’s champion, the Grandmaster of the Knights of the Aurum?’
All that? It sounded terribly grand, a list of a name. Too big for one man.
Roland… She might have heard that name. And Elodie had told her of the Knights of the Aurum of course. But none of the rest of it. Not Grandmaster, or champion or anything like that. Just Roland.
This didn’t make any sense. Elodie was a hedge witch. A talented one no doubt, but nothing more, living in a benighted forest, miles from anywhere, on the edge of the civilised world. She had nothing to do with Grandmasters, or knights or Paladins. She scoffed if they were mentioned and warned Wren away from them. Even standing there now with Finn felt like some kind of betrayal.
‘But why would Elodie have his picture in a locket?’
Finn took another step towards her and stopped, looming over her, suddenly a threat. She hadn’t thought of him as one before. But the chance had always been there, hadn’t it? He was tall, warrior-trained, and knew all about the Knights of the Aurum. Who had she brought into their home?
‘A very good question, Wren of Darkwood. It’s the type of gift one would give only to someone you loved, isn’t it? And Roland only ever loved one person. The one person he couldn’t have of course, even if things had been different. We thought her killed in the battle for the Aurum twenty years ago. The love of Roland’s life, so all the stories say—I never asked him, but I didn’t have to. They are legendary. Roland de Silvius loved Queen Aeryn of Asteroth. The lost queen.’
FROM ‘THE BALLAD OF THE PALADIN AND THE QUEEN’
Sing not of a heart so broken and lost,
Nor a queen with blood on her hands,
Sing not of a knight with a broken vow
Whose love lies in shadowed lands.
Never was there a love so true,
As the love that could not be,
Never was there a knight so bold
Nor a queen so brave as she.