Page 44 of A Touch of Shadows

Wren reached effortlessly through the veil of power that had seemed so solid. Through it and then beyond it… into a pure endless void where a thing made entirely of darkness waited.

She felt it gather itself together, turning its eyes on her. But it was cracked, like shattered glass, so many tiny fragments missing from its wholeness. And a single vital gap right in its heart, if heart was a word that could be used about something so hollow and empty. It was like a puzzle missing half its pieces but still trying to hold itself together.

She stared into the endless night, at the collapsed stars swirling through its eyes.

There was no light there and never would be. It hungered but was eternally empty.

And it looked back at her, standing there, helpless and so very small. Lost in its gaze, something touched her, probing. And then drove itself through her body and soul. It felt like lightning spearing through her to the ground, the earth itself making her a conduit.

When she opened her eyes again, it was like looking through the same fragmented glass. The encampment around her came alive with swirling lines of power. Wren tilted her head to one side, studying the way they moved. Light and dark ran like rivers through the ground, spiralling to a vortex around the two brothers.

Leander pulsed with the channels of shadow, standing over Finnian, the golden light threaded through from his blood. The shadow-wrought chains binding him suppressed it, but it still writhed beneath his skin, desperate to get out. To join the blazing flow surrounding him.

As she watched, hypnotised, the sun was setting, the night drawing in. The shadows, so many shadows, responded by stretching out around her. The balance between the powers was shifting. Light was not the answer. Not here and now.

Wren drew on those shadows now. And they answered as they never had before, racing across the ground towards her.

‘What are you doing?’ Leander growled at her. ‘Stop it or I kill him.’

‘You’re going to kill him anyway,’ she said, and the voice hardly sounded like her own. Calm, distant, determined. In such contrast to his, filled with the passion of his hatred and insatiable need for vengeance. Not even for anything in particular. Finn’s existence alone was the insult.

Her eyes locked on Finn’s, and he gazed up at her in fierce adoration. Trusting, faithful, ready to do anything for her. Even die, if she asked it. It was a different kind of power, his trust in her, her responsibility for him, one she had never expected and the strength of it shook her to the core.

More shadows raced towards her and she welcomed them, felt them inside her, crawling under her skin. Where she had always turned them away before she called them to her now, and oh, it felt good. The air shimmered, and the other Ilanthian guards edged backwards, fear making their loyalty to their crown prince waver.

And Leander knew it.

‘You can’t channel the Aurum, Wren. It will burn right through you.’

Wren laughed, a bright sound in all the darkness rushing in around her. He thought she was touching the Aurum? She may not know exactly what she was doing, but it was not light she was gathering to herself.

Light might be flooding into the places from which she pulled the shadows, but the darkness that filled her had nothing to do with the Aurum. There was only one thing it could be and she didn’t dare to name it.

At the sound of her sudden amusement, Leander went even more pale and she saw the hands holding the sword tighten. Fear, she could smell it on him. She let a slow smile spread over her mouth, let him see it, and darker laughter rippled through the back of her mind.

The voice from far away seemed to sing to her. The one that had sung to her as a child. The one Elodie had always driven away.

Show him. Show him how wrong he is. They have grown arrogant these kings, without my hand at their throat. Make him bow and beg.

And she could. She knew she could. She could reduce Prince Leander of Ilanthus to a quivering wreck if she wanted to. She could turn him from a prince to a slave with a thought.

She only had to look at his brother. She thought she had burned all the poison of the shadow kin out of him. Maybe she had. But seeing how the powers flowed together with her new sight, how each filled in the space when the other was drawn… had she left something else behind? Something bright and terrible. Then, when she had been in danger, could he have pulled on that power to protect her? Just as she did now for him.

And, from the deepest darkness, something else was reaching out to fill her. She didn’t even know herself. Perhaps she wasn’t herself. But, delirious with power and righteous vengeance, she welcomed it.

‘Take her!’ Leander yelled at his troops, who stood as if spellbound around her, staring. His voice was a howl of panic. ‘Take her down now!’

They couldn’t. They wouldn’t. She would kill them all if they tried. More and more shadows filled her and she wound them together, ready to lash out in a wave of nightmare and darkness.

‘Wren,’ another voice said, soft and tired. So very tired. ‘Wren, don’t. This isn’t you.’

Finn? But how was it Finn? She’d turned him into a monster. She hadn’t thought there was anything of Finn left in there.

‘Wren, please…’

She stared at him, still on his knees, still staring at her, still at Leander’s mercy.

No, that was not acceptable. He was a beacon in the shadows she wrought, bright and beautiful, blazing with light now, and she would not allow anyone to snuff it out.