Page 72 of A Touch of Shadows

He reached down and pulled Roland up behind him. The Grandmaster was bleeding from numerous wounds but nothing took out Roland de Silvius. He nodded to Finn and gritted his teeth, holding on with one hand while still brandishing Nightbreaker to defend them both now. Finn turned his horse’s head back towards the bulk of the knights. Safety in numbers, he reasoned. But even as he dug his heels in and the poor creature carrying two of them in armour strained to take them to relative safety, something closed around his body, something dark and strong, so much more powerful than any shadow kin he’d ever faced.

‘Finn!’ Roland shouted, as he was dragged off into the mass of shadow kin. Tendrils wrapped around him. Not vines this time, not unless vines were larger than a warrior’s forearm and could crush bone. Tentacles bound his legs tight and closed over his face, smothering him. He felt Roland’s hand close on his arm, desperate for purchase against the armour and finding none. Grabbing the gauntlet, he tried to cling to Roland but the force surrounding him was too powerful. It ripped them apart. The horse went over screaming and kicking, Roland somewhere underneath it, and even as he called out his guardian’s name, Finn felt the light blazing in him give way to something else. Something dark and terrible like a poison rushing along his veins from the place where the shadow kin had bitten him. Here, in the embrace of its family, he didn’t stand a chance. Everything dark and endless, all the rage and all the madness roiled up inside him, pushing reason and light aside.

He lost himself inside it and all that was good and light, all that he valued and cherished within himself, burned away to ashes.

CHAPTER 42

FINN

Finn came back to his senses on the edge of the stone circle, not so very far from Knightsford, head still spinning and clogged with darkness. He could still hear the sounds of battle far behind him, but he was not alone. Far from it.

Shadow kin whirled overhead, sealing off escape, huge things, far larger than any he had seen before. Not that he could have run anyway. His body moved like a marionette, something other manipulating him. Finn struggled to regain some semblance of control of his own body again and pain ripped through him, tearing at every nerve.

Wren stood in the circle, alone and afraid, her eyes so very wide. She stared at him like he was some kind of monster from her nightmares. She looked so small, standing there, while the shades of dark magic whirled around her.

On the far side of the circle he could see the figure of Elodie. She was manacled in shadow-wrought metal shackles, and slumped there, unmoving. He remembered the agony of their touch on his own skin. Perhaps she was lucky she was unconscious.

‘Finn? Look out!’

Her cry was the only warning he got as Leander attacked. Instinct brought the sword up to deflect the killing blow and Finn ducked aside, rolling with the momentum and coming back up in a defensive position to block another strike.

‘I thought you’d never get here,’ his brother snarled at him. ‘What took them so long? I would have thought you’d want to hasten to her side.’

‘You sent them? The shadow kin? Why?’ He’d seen men fighting and dying, men he lived and trained alongside, his friends and brothers-in-arms. He’d left Roland back there and who knew what might have happened to him. And Leander had sent that army of shadows? To bring him here? This couldn’t be happening.

‘You’re needed, little brother. You have a duty to perform. Or did you forget that too? The one thing you were born to do?’

Leander’s blade sliced through the armour. It shouldn’t be possible but shadow-wrought steel could cut through nearly anything. Finn felt it bite into his skin underneath. The leather jerkin took the worst of it, but nothing could protect him from that blade except to avoid it. He parried the next blow, his own sword of Aurum-forged steel the only thing strong enough to block it, and tried to retreat. But his brother just came after him again.

Leander had always been the better swordsman. He relished that. No matter how hard Finn trained, Leander was always better.

Another cut, another slash and Finn went down onto one knee, trapped between the stones, which sucked away any protection the Aurum could still give him. Precious little now. He could feel the vestiges of the Nox threading their way through him with each cut, his body aching and mind blurring. Slowing him down, draining him of strength, wearing away his will to fight.

Give up, it seemed to sing to him, and he longed to obey. Rest and be at peace at last. Accept the inevitable. You were born for this. Born to die.

He almost believed it.

Then Wren shouted his name. He turned, desperate to reach her, to save her, to do anything for her. Inside his mind light ignited again, her light, or the light she had given him. His one strength, his one remaining hope…

In the stone circle, she was pulling shadows from everywhere to join with her will, a terrible darkness welling up beneath her and massing overhead. She stood in its centre, a focal point and nexus. The key to whatever was happening here.

No, not the only key. The stones had a part to play. And so did he.

You were born for this, born to die.

Leander’s sword burst through his chest, the armour tearing like paper. Finn stumbled and dropped to his knees, staring at the point, surprised to find it there.

It didn’t hurt. That was the strange thing. In a weird, distracted way, he knew it should but there was no pain. Nothing hurt. The cold that spread through him stole away all pain, all feeling. And doubt. And fear.

Wren let out a wild, keening cry, the shock of it making her release the hold she had managed to maintain on all the magic in her, and the darkness rushed in on them both. Even as his eyes dimmed, he saw the darkness beyond darkness flood through her. The way the light had filled her when she saved him in the forest, when she had driven the poison of the shadow kin from his flesh and purified his blood. But now darkness took its place, a darkness so deep it was like a new kind of light. Glimmers of blue and violet raced across her skin like marsh light, luminous and terrible dancing flames that came out of nowhere. Wren’s eyes were fixed on him, wide and terrified, desperate, and all he could do was stare at her, into the endless depths of them. He couldn’t see any difference between pupil and iris, nor indeed any trace of the white. All was black and empty. Windows into the void beyond.

Her hair billowed out, growing longer by the second, lush and dark. The hair he had buried his hands in, wrapped in the silken strands, the hair that teased him and tormented him. It moved like she was underwater, or as if it had a life of its own. Perhaps it did. He had realised her hair reacted to magic, or reflected its use. He didn’t know the way it worked, but he’d seen it grow and seen her powers grow with it.

It had enchanted him from the first, he realised. Just as she had.

And now as endless dark magic flowed through her, channelled through the ground, drinking down his sacrificial blood and focused by the stones bearing down all around her, lightning flashed overhead and he saw her as she truly was.

A dark goddess. The one to whom his life was forfeit, one who already owned him body and soul. And who now collected her due.