Page 66 of A Kiss of Flame
‘I can’t hold it all together,’ she hissed. ‘It’s like… there’s magic at work here. The magic that trapped Elodie and cut her off from the Aurum. It’s all running wild. I can’t… I can’t…’ Her eyes were too large, too dark, and Finn could feel her control slipping away even as she clung to him. She couldn’t hold on much longer, he could see that. It was old magic, both light and dark and everything in between, but it was tangled and vile.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘But Elodie,’ Wren protested. ‘We came here for Elodie. It’s centred on her.’
‘Roland has her,’ Anselm supplied. ‘They’ll get her to safety first but then they’ll be back. We don’t have much time. Finn’s right, if my father finds you here…’
Too late, Finn wanted to say. Sassone’s guards were regrouping as the knights withdrew to the gates, covering Roland’s retreat with Elodie. Which left them trapped inside.
And if this spell was centred on Elodie, it should be subsiding. But it wasn’t. He could feel it building, like a vortex looking for a new focal point, and centring on Wren instead.
They couldn’t make it out of the gates, not now. The battle was focused there.
‘How did you get in?’ he asked Anselm. ‘Can we go back that way?’
But Anselm had frozen, staring past Finn with an expression of dread on his face. He smothered it quickly, pulling on an unreadable mask instead.
‘Olivier,’ he said in a strangely calm and quiet voice, ‘you need to get them out of here.’
‘Anselm?’ Sassone roared. He bore down on them, his men fanning out around him to cut off any hope of escape. ‘Did you bring her here, boy?’ There was wary joy in his eyes, a kind of relief and the realisation that all might not be lost. ‘Well done, my son. I knew you wouldn’t fail me.’
Anselm stepped forward on his own, sword bare. ‘You will not have her, Father. The princess is not a tool for you to use.’
Hope and pride twisted into something terrible instead. ‘I might have guessed. You never do anything right, do you? Too much your mother’s son.’
Anselm flinched, his shoulders tightening, though only Finn, standing so close to him, would have been able to spot it.
‘My mother was loyal to the crown at least. Up to the day you killed her.’
‘Stand down, boy. I won’t tell you again!’ Sassone’s voice, enraged and thwarted but not yet defeated. Finn understood his thinking in an instant. If he could take the princess while Roland rescued the queen, he still had a hand to play. Desperate now, and dangerous, because without this last victory, he had lost everything. He had no idea how bad it could yet be.
Anselm Tarryn didn’t move. ‘It’s over, Father. You’ve failed. Stand down and yield to us in the Aurum’s name.’ It was an audacious demand given the numbers surrounding them. But Anselm didn’t hesitate to make it anyway.
Finn blinked, realising that he’d always dismissed Anselm’s loyalty as more convenient than anything else. But not now.
Sassone scowled and gave a curt signal.
The first arrow took Anselm in the shoulder, and he was flung to one side, almost off his feet but not quite. He spun back, the shaft jutting from his body, his face white with shock. He had no armour, no more than Finn did, but that didn’t stop him as he squared up again to block the way, to protect his princess.
Men rushed at them and Olivier stepped up to meet them. He drove them back, his sword a line of light, holding the line to the left. Finn took up the right flank.
Anselm still stood between his father and Wren.
Sassone nodded and the archer fired again. Another arrow punched into Anselm’s side this time and he sank to his knees. Olivier gave a howl of dismay, torn between defending Wren and his beloved comrade. Finn took three of Sassone’s guards, sweeping his sword around in a blur of light, but there were too many of them.
Anselm keeled over and Wren dropped to her knees beside him, her hands coming away bright with his blood as she tried to help him.
Behind Finn, from the city outside, a great shout went up.
‘To arms, Knights of the Aurum! The queen is saved. To arms against the traitors.’
The knights were coming back and the ground shook with their charge. Sassone and his men broke off, faced with the full fury of the forces of Asteroth. The fortress was broken and all they could hope for now was to escape with their lives. They ran.
But a wave of darkness rose up behind them. The nearest ones fell without even a sound. The screaming of the next group would haunt him.
He’d forgotten Wren, forgotten what might happen to her in the wild maelstrom of magic that had been cast in the Castel Sassone. Dark and terrible, Wren now lost herself in it. Her arms spread wide, and her head flung back, shadows flocked to her, ready, at her command, to tear apart those who fled.
Finn had seen her do this before, when she hadn’t even realised what she could do. The shadow kin she had summoned that time had turned the forest into an abattoir in moments. Perhaps she didn’t realise she was doing it now. That was his one hope.