Page 64 of A Kiss of Flame

And Roland… her Roland…

The sword crashed against the post above her head, severing the chains holding her there. She slumped, falling towards the flames, helpless to stop herself. Her meagre strength was gone, the fight in her all but done. But strong arms seized her and pulled her clear. Someone hauled her over the withers of a horse and they were moving again, riding through the night. Hooves struck stone and the stone walls of the fortress fell away.

A body clothed in metal held her against him like she was something precious. And his voice… she knew his voice…

‘Elodie?’ he panted, adrenaline and exertion making him breathless. Or maybe that was fear. But he had never been afraid. Not her Roland. Never. ‘Elodie, can you hear me?’

She tried to answer, tried to find words, but there were no words and there was no more air in her lungs. Only smoke and shadows, only darkness. She had failed to protect Wren and now they all knew.

There was nothing else she could do. She had lost and the Nox had won. That was all she knew.

Elodie finally let the pain take her into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER 34

FINN

‘Where are you going?’ Hestia cried out, hurrying after him as far as the main entrance hall. Finn stalked onwards, ignoring her. The Sassone house wasn’t far from here.

His ancestors had chosen the embassy with care, near to the outskirts of Pelias’s lower city in case they had to leave in a hurry, but still in a rich and prosperous area populated by the old families. Being almost next to Castel Sassone had been the concession that got them the location.

No one from the court of Sidon would stand to be accused of slumming it. And the people of Pelias could feel safe knowing their strongest nobleman guarded the way. But if Sassone had turned on the crown now…

Finn didn’t make it outside. Something unseen wrapped itself around him, something dark and determined, and oh so powerful.

‘Stop, Finnian. I can’t let you leave.’ Hestia held out her hands, shadows tangling around her fingertips and flooding her eyes. She held him. He knew she was powerful but he had never considered how powerful. ‘It’s too dangerous. And you are too important to us now. We need you.’

She thought she was protecting him? Furious, he tried to tear himself free, not caring what she had to say, not now. There was no time for this.

Light burned up through him, bright and desperate, the Aurum reaching out for anyone who would serve it. All of the knights had to be feeling this, a wild and desperate urge to get to the fight, to defend Elodie. They would break themselves apart on the gates and the walls until they reached her.

And beneath it… laughter, dark and terrible laughter. With its power wrapped around him he could hear the Nox, feel its sense of impending victory. Elodie would die and Wren’s defences would crumble and he… he…

It would take him as its slave. It would make him love it.

He wrenched words from his throat. ‘Hestia, stop. I have to help Wren. Let me go.’

As if using her name summoned it, light filled him as it had once in the forest, when Wren had filled him with the blessings of the Aurum. Bright and terrible, blinding him from the inside, it roared along his veins. It tore through the spell holding him as if it was no more than smoke.

Had he done that? No, not possible. He couldn’t do anything of the sort. That kind of magic wasn’t possible for his line. Leander could wield shadows and summon shadow kin to do his bidding, but not Finn, and none of them could command light.

When he looked back at his cousin, she was on her knees, the effort of holding him draining her.

‘Hestia,’ he tried again. ‘Wren needs me. Please…’

The light grew even brighter, like a blade in the heart of a forge, white hot and transforming to something new. The force holding him recoiled so suddenly that he stumbled forward as the spell snapped, ploughing through the open doorway.

‘Come back,’ Hestia called weakly, but she couldn’t hold him now. ‘You have to come back. You don’t understand.’

There wasn’t time for this. No time at all and no one from Ilanthus needed him. They had made that more than clear over the years. But the pendant felt cold and heavy around his neck, an unwanted weight he should shed, if only there was time.

The light in him subsided to a dull glow and he knew there were a thousand questions to answer. No time for that either.

Laurence, Hestia’s son, was in the courtyard outside, peering out through the gates. He ran back to Finn as he emerged from the building, ignoring his shaken expression. ‘You’re going to help, aren’t you? Prince Finnian, you have to help.’

‘Tell me what you know,’ he said.

It was amazing what an adolescent boy could discover in the lower city. Quickly, and with an efficiency that shouldn’t have been a surprise given he was Hestia’s son, the boy told him that Sassone had put out word that the queen would confess, that he had taken her to Castel Sassone and planned to execute her there. He was calling on the people to rise up, to follow him instead of the false queen. Finn closed his eyes, imagining for a moment the chaos that was going to unleash across Pelias. Sides taken, old grudges reawakened, and loyalties torn apart. Sassone must have lost his mind. Or he truly believed Elodie a traitor and that was its own kind of madness.