Page 7 of A Kiss of Flame
Whatever she said to the champion of the lost queen, de Silvius listened. She had but one request for herself and that was that he take as hostage the youngest son of King Alessander.
De Silvius asked where the boy was to be found, for she stood there alone.
Lady Rayden led the knights to the chamber of sacrifice where de Silvius found the king standing over his young son, knife in hand, ready to spill the child’s blood to call forth the Nox, though this was a futile effort and the dark goddess was no more.
He took the boy as a royal hostage and made him his ward.
CHAPTER 3
FINN
‘He was with her, you know. When the Ilanthians almost took her. Maybe he led her there in the first place. They can’t be trusted. None of them.’
The hushed voice wasn’t as subtle as its owner thought. It carried on the breeze across the courtyard to the place where Finn was cleaning his sword. He tried not to flinch, keeping to the steady rhythm as he sharpened the blade.
It was something Roland had taught him long ago, to always take care of a weapon no matter how humble. A sword could mean your life. Even a sword as great as Roland’s Nightbreaker was just a weapon and needed to be treated with care.
So Finn focused on his task and not the loose tongues around him.
Let them talk, he thought. Let them gossip. He knew the truth of what had happened in the stone circle at Knightsford. Or some of it anyway. Enough. He knew enough.
He had to find a way to make sense of it all.
And as for the moment he and Wren had stood in front of the black flames…
He pushed that firmly from his mind.
A nightmare. Or at least he wished it had been a nightmare.
Every moment since had been stolen, every glimpse of her left him hungry and hollow. Wren haunted him, and made him a shell of himself. He couldn’t bear to be around the various gatherings in the palace, knowing she was so close and that to reach out to her would invite disaster.
So he withdrew. From her, from everyone. And he let the gossip grow unchecked. He tried not to care and failed at that, too.
The flames had turned black. Not for long, not forever. But he knew what he had seen. The woman who commanded shadow kin, who drew the night around her like a cloak and had filled him with such blinding light… the woman he loved…
She had done that.
And yet still he ached for her.
He couldn’t help himself. And that was part of the problem, wasn’t it? Because he was a son of the line of Sidon. He had been marked for the Nox from his birth. All she needed to do was embrace her power and command him and he would have no choice to obey.
How did he even know if what he felt was real?
But how could it not be?
‘Are you planning on wearing that sword down to a toothpick?’ Anselm asked with a laugh.
Finn looked up, distracted to see his friend approaching across the courtyard. When Finn had been a boy and Roland had first brought him to Pelias, he’d been terrified but defiant, a wild little thing, or so Roland had called him. An unholy terror according to everyone else. The fights had been inevitable and the scowls he cast at everyone must have made him impossible to warm to.
He recalled distinctly sitting not far from here, huddled in shadows where he felt safest, nursing bruises and grazed knuckles. And Anselm coming to find him. All golden curls and aristocratic bearing.
He’d held out his hand. ‘Tarquin is an arse,’ he said. He was of course correct.
Finn hadn’t known what to make of that. ‘I think I broke his nose.’
‘He deserved it. Come on, we should get to training.’
‘You… you want me to go with you?’ Finn had asked. No one wanted to be around him and that suited him. He was Ilanthian and they were Asterothian. They were enemies to the core. He was a hostage here.