Page 48 of A Touch of Shadows

Old instincts overtook whatever had robbed him of his senses at the Ilanthian camp. Finn was on his feet at attention before he knew what he was doing.

‘Grandmaster?’ he began and then faltered. He glanced at the girl and concern ghosted over his face. Concern for her. Interesting. She slept on.

‘Your report. We can go outside so as not to disturb her, if you want.’

Finn chewed on his lower lip and swayed slightly on his feet. He looked wretched. The beating was only half of it. He looked like everything he was had been scooped out of him and only partially restored. Had the shadow-wrought manacles done something to him? But their effect tended to be on witchkind, and to Roland’s knowledge Finn was nothing of the sort.

But something was different about him. Something Roland couldn’t quite define, and Finn was not willing to share. Not yet.

‘Ilanthian troops led by Leander followed me from Sidonia, and ambushed me in the woods. Wren… this woman… helped me.’ His voice trailed off. ‘We were captured. He was going to execute me.’

‘And the light? Was it her work?’

Finn glanced at her before he could stop himself. So it had been. Finn didn’t even have to give an answer. Roland let out the breath trapped in his chest, and saw the realisation of what Finn had just given away fill his eyes with shame. His panic was evident as the words spilled out.

‘I don’t think she knew what she was doing. I don’t think…’

That hardly mattered. If she hadn’t been properly trained in magic, training could be given. The innate ability was the thing. But Roland had never seen anyone untrained raise a beacon so bright, or make the sense of the Aurum’s fire rise in his chest the way it had. Not since Elodie. This aftermath was because of the lack of training, not from any deficiency. Once she had rested and regained her strength, she would recover. ‘Where did you find her? Who is she?’

Finn just stared at him as if he was stupid. Roland frowned, which he knew was the expression most of his men dreaded seeing on his face. His ward was no different. He forced his voice to gentleness, which belied the urgency he felt now.

‘Finn? What aren’t you telling me?’

Roland hadn’t thought it possible to see Finn still squirm like a boy caught breaking all the rules after so long. But he did.

Meanwhile, Anselm had wandered to the bedside table where the girl’s few belongings were stacked up neatly in a pile. He picked up a small leather-bound book and opened it. Leafing through the pages, he too frowned.

‘Grandmaster?’ He held out the book. The leather was marked with the symbol of the Aurum. Roland took it, suddenly unsure.

‘I don’t think it’s her fault,’ Finn blurted out. ‘I don’t think she knows. I don’t think she knows anything.’

The pages were blank, all of them. Some kind of notebook but one with nothing written in it. Roland studied it briefly and handed it back to Anselm to return. Curious. As he let it go he felt the tingle of an enchantment around it.

‘What else?’ he asked the knight.

Anselm held out a locket dangling on a simple chain, also bearing the symbol. For a moment Roland thought that his heart might stop beating. It wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be…

Identical to his own.

‘Roland, please,’ Finn whispered, frantic to dissuade him. ‘Don’t.’

But it was too late. He didn’t have to open it. He already knew what it was, what it would contain. His picture, his portrait, the one Elodie had painted, the match to one of her in his locket that he still carried with him after all these years.

How did this child have Elodie’s locket?

‘Where did you find her?’ he growled, closing his hand around the metal as if to crush it in his grasp.

Finn sank back onto the chair and looked at the unconscious girl again. Pity filled his face. Not for Roland, but clearly directed at the girl. ‘In the forest, near Thirbridge. Near the darkwood. There’s a tower. She burned it.’

‘This girl burned it?’

The boy shook his head dumbly. ‘It was on fire when we got there. We went back later, Wren insisted. To look for her.’ There was a subtle emphasis on the final word, and Roland knew that Finn believed what he suspected. That they had found her. That she’d survived that terrible night.

‘Did you?’ he asked hesitantly. He hated how tentative his question sounded. ‘Find her?’

‘Wren said… she said the book told her to meet her at the Seven Sisters, near here. That she’d… that Elodie… I mean…’

Elodie.