Page 49 of A Touch of Shadows

Roland uncurled his hand and looked at the locket finally. The catch was small and delicate. The two pieces had been identical so he knew the trick to opening it. When her engagement to Evander had been announced he had bought them out of some sense of fatalism. Not the kind of thing she would normally wear. Too simple for a queen. But he wanted something to remember her by, wanted her to remember him. She had painted the miniatures.

‘One for you. One for me. Just so we never forget. At least we had this.’

Even after all this time, Roland realised, he had clung to that.

He’d thought she was dead, prayed she wasn’t. Why had she never sent word? Why had she never returned? He would have gone to her, protected her. He would have done anything. And all this time she’d been hiding in the forest, near Thirbridge.

Why had no one ever looked there?

Except Dane had. Warrants investigation, his old friend had said. But he’d never done it, had he? Roland had missed that one vital clue and now…

His finger moved almost by itself and he flicked open the locket. Finn let out something between a sigh and a groan while Anselm, unable to resist, craned in to look.

It didn’t just hold one picture. His own face stared back at him from one side, as he had been twenty years ago. Or at least, as she had seen him, because he didn’t remember ever being the idealised face painted there. But that didn’t matter. That was how she had seen him and that was how he had been for her. And he loved her for it.

But there was another picture on the other side, another portrait.

A girl with his black hair and deep brown eyes, with his mother’s nose and a jawline like his father’s but softer. A girl who looked like him.

A younger version of the same girl now sleeping on the bed.

‘Oh,’ Anselm said, coming to the same conclusion in an instant. ‘She’s your?—’

And he shut up before he could say it out loud. Always the survivor.

Elodie had run away from Asteroth. She had never come back. Now, finally, Roland knew why.

Carefully, deliberately, he closed off every emotion that surged to the fore. Every last one. He had to.

‘Finn,’ he said. ‘With me. Now.’

Roland snapped the locket shut and left the room without uttering another word. The legs of Finn’s chair scraped on the tiled floor, and there was a hushed exchange with Anselm before he hurried in Roland’s wake.

But what Roland was going to say to the boy when he finally managed to make himself stop walking, the Grandmaster had no idea at all.

CHAPTER 29

WREN

The bed felt strange and the air too still. There was no breeze coming in through the window and no sound of birdsong. She scrunched up her face against the light. Why was she in bed in daylight? Her body ached everywhere and she felt… strange. Different.

‘Wren?’ said a voice she didn’t know. ‘It is Wren, isn’t it?’

She opened her eyes to see a man she didn’t recognise standing at the far side of the room. Not Finn. His blond hair caught the light behind him like a halo. He was wearing some kind of uniform but his face had a gentleness that made her initial panic subside.

‘Who are you? Where am I?’

‘I’m Anselm Tarryn. I’m a friend of Finn’s. He’s just… he had to see the healer or he would have been here. And then he had to report. I offered to stay with you. We didn’t really expect you to wake up… Please, don’t be scared.’

Wren pushed herself up on her elbows even though every muscle in her body protested. ‘Was Finn hurt?’

‘No. He says you saved him.’

Had she? Or doomed him? What had she done? Even she didn’t know. It had been like a fever dream of light and darkness.

She let herself slump back down again. Anselm had answered only one of her first questions, she realised. ‘And where are we?’

Anselm smiled what was clearly meant to be a reassuring smile. ‘Knightsford. At the garrison. We arrived to the encampment just in time. They would have killed him. I saw what you did.’