Page 76 of A Touch of Shadows

Another roll of thunder sounded, nearer this time, and she smelled the sweet sting of the oncoming storm, crackling in the air. The sword raised on high, she reached for the light. Light had always defied her. Always so difficult to control, always a trial, but now she realised it was just the opposite of the darkness.

And if she could command the darkness to go, light took its place.

Leander staggered back as light like a beacon burst from the stone circle, far brighter than anything she had seen before. It didn’t hurt this time. It was just the other side of her power. Not something to fight but to embrace. And to use. She knew what she had to do. The light flowed over her skin, but it drenched the man in her arms like a summer rain storm, illuminating Finn inside and out. It threaded its way along his veins and rippled through his skin, seeking out his wounds and forcing him back to life.

The earth shook. Wren felt it as the light subsided, trembling beneath her, as the Knights of the Aurum rode into the clearing to join the fight.

The sword was too heavy, the strain too much. She let it fall and wrapped herself around Finn, holding him close, filling him with what light she could still muster, drawing out the darkness that had threatened to take him. It had nowhere to go but into her, but that was all right. She could deal with it. She could keep it safe.

But she couldn’t fight anymore. She had to hold on and hope someone else would save them both.

What else could she do? Her strength was gone and it was taking everything she had to keep Finn alive.

The Nox laughed in the back of her mind and pressed its advantage again. She had forgotten it. And now she had nothing left to defend herself with from its renewed assault. It flung itself at her with a vengeance.

CHAPTER 45

ELODIE

Elodie fought as she had not fought in years. There had been no need. But she had lost none of her skill.

With the light of the Aurum blazing beneath her skin she moved like lightning. She barely noticed the faces who fell before her. Later, she knew, they’d come back to her. In her nightmares, or in the dark of the night when she couldn’t sleep at all. But for now, for this moment, they were blurs.

All but Leander’s. He looked too like his uncle. Too like Evander, who had hurt her and betrayed her. Who had betrayed everyone.

Perhaps they should have expected it all along. It had been a last-ditch attempt at peace, but she should have known it would never work. Her handsome prince had used it as a trick, a cunning plan to get inside Pelias, into the chamber of the Aurum and do his worst. A suicide mission perhaps, but Evander had never cared about that. He would have done anything to bring Elodie to her knees.

She hated him. Still hated him with a fire that never ceased, a fire she turned on his people now. It would have been too easy to lose herself in its blazing fury, let the Aurum fill her and be its instrument again, its hand on this earth. But there was a purpose to her action and she clung to that. She had to reach Wren, had to protect her. She had to stop this.

The prince – not Evander, Elodie reminded herself, but barely any better – retreated from Wren as the girl drew on more magic than Elodie would have thought possible and drove him out of the circle. This endless power belonged to Wren now, to her and the Nox. The two of them were working together, the magic entwining with her and wrapping itself around Finn. Wren was focused entirely on the man she held, the man who should have been long dead in any other circumstances.

But Wren wasn’t having that. Finn was hers. Body and soul. Perhaps he always had been. Light poured through her, a light so bright, and it anchored him to the world, to her.

Her Wren. So brilliant, so powerful, so impossibly stubborn. Elodie realised that she had never been more proud. Her Wren, still holding firm, still clinging to the light, still determined not to lose anyone she loved.

And it was love. There was no way she would be able to do it otherwise. Not even the Nox could work a wonder like that.

I knew it, Elodie wanted to shout in triumph. I knew I was right about her.

Horses thundered around the clearing, the Knights of the Aurum riding to their rescue. Her knights. The Ilanthian troops still standing broke to run. Shadow kin turned on their would-be rescuers, a swarm of darkness and malevolence. No, not this time, not when she could do something about it. Elodie raised a shield of light over the newly arrived knights, incinerating any of the dark creatures who came too close to them.

She had to look for him. She couldn’t help herself.

Her Paladin…

And on the far side of the clearing, across the circle of ancient stones, she saw him. She couldn’t fail to recognise him. He had been in her dreams for more than twenty years. He had once been her everything. Roland shouted his commands as he always had, clear and precise, and moved like the warrior he had always been. Entirely present in the moment, focused completely on his troops, his role, on the battle. He and his mount seemed to be one being, moving with one mind. A killer, and a champion, and everything she had ever wanted.

She almost stopped in her tracks, staring at him.

The impact to the back of her body sent her down in a heap but the light still shielding her deflected the worst. Leander aimed a kick at her head that she rolled to avoid. As much of a little bastard as Evander ever was then. It figured. She was up on her feet again before he could strike a more dangerous blow.

‘You finally crawled out of your hole then,’ he hissed at her. ‘It’s never going to be safe for you again, understand? I’m going to make you pay for everything.’

His retreating men shouted for him, but he didn’t move. He wanted her dead, she knew that. He wanted to kill her himself.

Like he would have half a chance of that.

‘Run away, little boy,’ she told him, swinging her sword nonchalantly into position. ‘Go home and lick your wounds, and don’t come back. Don’t ever come near what is mine again.’