Page 69 of A Touch of Shadows
The writing didn’t look like Elodie’s this time. Clearly that deception was at an end. It didn’t matter, Wren decided. Now she knew it wasn’t Elodie, she’d just have to be a bit more wary, that was all.
Come to the Seven Sisters, it said.
Sure, she thought, as easy as that.
And as soon as she thought that, another word appeared, one she didn’t know. It was othertongue, but not in any form that she knew. The power radiating from it made her stumble and, when Elodie turned to look at her, she snapped the book shut.
‘This will have to do,’ Elodie told her and held out her hands.
The strands of her spell still lingered enough that Wren had no choice but to reach out and join hands with her.
‘Please don’t do this,’ Wren whispered, but Elodie just tightened her grip and began to murmur the words of othertongue as she had in Knightsford. Light swelled around them, blinding and terrible, setting every nerve in Wren’s body on fire. She tried to pull back, to tear herself free, but she couldn’t. All the same, she struggled, panic sweeping through her.
She had to get out of this. She had to make Elodie stop.
Come to the Seven Sisters, the book had told her, and it had given her the means to do so. If she was just brave enough to do it.
The book sent out a final flicker of shadow and Elodie’s spell holding Wren shattered.
Elodie’s eyes opened wide as she felt it come apart, locked on Wren’s face as Wren, unable to do anything else now, fixed her mind on the stone circle. She didn’t know what it looked like but she tried to conjure up an image and something sprang into the forefront of her mind, like she had picked it out of the air. Tall standing stones in a ring, seven of them, ancient and cold, wreathed in darkness. Nothing grew in the middle. It was empty. The image wasn’t a comfort, and it didn’t feel like an escape. More like a trap.
Elodie had told her not to trust it, that it wasn’t safe, but Wren hadn’t listened. The book had given her a word, had forced it on her, and that was the word she said now. She had to. It fell cold and hard like iron from her lips, instead of the sweeping song she usually associated with othertongue. Even as she said it, she knew she had made a terrible mistake.
For a moment everything seemed to freeze. In Elodie’s eyes, Wren saw the dawning horror spread through the blue of her irises like storm clouds.
‘What have you done?’ Elodie whispered, and her voice, always so sure and certain, always so strong, quavered in horrified disbelief.
CHAPTER 40
WREN
Something dark and endless enveloped the both of them, ripping them out of the path of light and slamming them back to the ground with a crack like a lightning strike. Light flared, bright and blinding, and then darkness swept in behind it.
Wren rolled slowly onto her back, every part of her protesting. She stared up at the cloudless night’s sky, the moon high and the stars clear and bright. And, as she brought her gaze down lower, she saw the stones rising in a ring around her, tilted in towards her like the teeth of some great beast rising from the dark earth. Elodie lay a little further off, at the edge of the circle, very still, a crumpled heap.
Shapes circled them, moving, sliding from shadow to shadow. Not human. Wren knew that in an instant. There were shadow kin gathered all around them, clinging to the edge of the stones, stalking their newly arrived prey.
What had she done?
‘Elodie?’ she called. But Elodie didn’t move. Wren forced herself up onto her feet and stumbled across the space between them, half running, half crawling, until she reached Elodie’s unconscious form. ‘Elodie, I’m sorry. Please… please, wake up.’
‘Well,’ said an all too familiar voice from the darkness. ‘This worked out better than expected, didn’t it, little bird? I hoped to snare you. I didn’t for a moment imagine we’d get her as well. Well done, my darling. You’re everything I hoped for and more.’
Leander leaned on one of the standing stones as if he hadn’t anything better to do with his life. As Wren watched, his remaining men fanned out around the stones, keeping clear of the swarming shadow kin but cutting off any possible escape, even if she was lucky enough to make it that far.
And to flee now, she’d have to leave Elodie behind, so that wasn’t about to happen.
What had she done?
Leander walked towards her, brushing one of the shadow kin back when it drifted too close to him. It obeyed his thoughtless gesture instantly, like a dog well-trained by its master. Who or what was he? A prince of Ilanthus who could command the dark fragments of the Nox? Wren’s mouth went dry and her throat tightened.
‘I couldn’t have imagined my little book would work so very well. It was more of a whim to leave it there for you. I’d thought the queen would have taught her daughter better than that, but it seems she was remiss in a lot of areas, wasn’t she? Too many secrets to keep, that’s her problem. Always has been.’
His book. So they must have been his words all along. Telling her not to trust Finn, not to trust Elodie, to run away, to hide, to come here. Confusing her, frightening her. Playing with her.
Great light, she was such a fool.
Wren grabbed the book from her side and hurled it at him, aiming straight for his head. Leander laughed as he snatched it out of the air, petting it like something precious. ‘Now princess, we’re really going to have to do something about that temper of yours.’