Page 91 of A Kiss of Flame

What had she done?

CHAPTER 48

FINN

How could he have been so stupid?

He could feel the shadow kin in the chamber beyond, seething and roiling, taunting him. They were voices on the edge of his hearing, speaking a language he almost remembered from his nightmares.

He couldn’t lose Wren. And at the same time, Finn knew Wren would never forgive him. Not this.

But he did it anyway.

He didn’t dare take his eye off Wren as she dragged herself back to her feet and tried to fling open the door. But Hestia had seen to that. No one was getting in or out of this room until she decided they could.

He turned to Hestia, who was bent over Leander and desperately trying to save him. Even now. He was still her family, still her prince. And for once, this was not his fault. Finn dropped to his knees beside her.

‘Hestia, help me,’ he hissed. ‘Can’t you talk to her, explain… I don’t know. Please.’

The look his cousin gave him would have quelled the arguments of a king. ‘I’m trying to save his life.’ But then she seemed to shudder and looked back down to Leander. ‘But I can’t.’

‘She can. She saved me.’

Hestia rolled her eyes at him. ‘Before you bound her power. The things you boys do… Here.’ She grabbed Finn’s hands and pressed them against Leander’s wound. ‘Keep the pressure on. He’s lost so much blood already. He can’t afford any more.’

Leander squirmed beneath him, delirious with pain now, as Finn pressed down. His blood was hot and sticky on Finn’s hands but he didn’t hesitate as Hestia drew herself to her feet and turned to Wren.

Shadow magic still flowed around Wren, her hair waving gently in the air as if underwater, and her eyes were endlessly dark, as if filled with the Nox already. The bracelet was still holding it in check, thank the light, holding her in check, but Finn could see the strain in her face, the pain he had caused her. Was still causing. Just by locking her magic away with that damned piece of metal.

Leander’s blood had called it forth but Finn was the one who had locked it inside her. It was still devouring her but now it had nowhere else to go.

But what else could he have done? It was that or give up his free will. And he was not about to do that.

Even for her.

But it hurt more than he could say. He knew what she had tried to do and she almost succeeded. She had tried to control him, to make him her slave, no more than a puppet to her will. Wren, of all people. He would never have believed it of her. And yet, he’d looked into her eyes and seen her intention.

Or seen the intention of the sentience that lurked behind her mind.

It was here now as well. He could feel that. Drawing closer from the beyond, ready to tear through the veil and claim her, but without her magic she couldn’t help it.

The bracelet, right now, was the only thing still keeping Wren herself. And the only thing keeping him a free man.

‘Finn…’ Leander hissed, and Finn’s attention snapped back to his half-brother, dying on the floor of the antechamber, his blood turning the exquisite carpet scarlet. ‘Finn, listen to me.’

He reached up, his hand closing on the glass pendant.

‘What?’ Finn asked, leaning closer, but Leander winced, his teeth bared. And the words that came out weren’t intelligible, a series of whispers and sighs, like the othertongue Wren and Elodie sometimes used, but not even that. It slurred together and then, finally, he slumped back down. His hand was the last thing to fall, sliding away from the pendant and leaving it smeared with his blood.

‘Hestia,’ Finn gasped. ‘Wren… he’s… help him.’

Even though it was Leander, even after everything, he couldn’t just stand by and let him die.

Hestia opened her mouth to speak but Wren lifted one hand, like an empress, and to Finn’s horror, his cousin’s voice stilled in her throat. She dropped to her knees, her face lifting with an expression of abject adoration.

Finn felt it wash over him, right there in this small antechamber, the sheer power Wren embodied. He had always known it but now… now she wasn’t even trying to hold back anymore. She always had, he realised. Out of love, out of care, out of all Elodie’s teachings. But it didn’t matter to her now.

Had Leander done this with his dying breath?