Page 93 of A Kiss of Flame

Light forgive him, all he could do was love her, serve her. He pulled her against him and kissed her fully, losing himself in her, wanting her and wanting the magic that spilled out of her. She might not be able to control it, but it was still there. And she was an addiction. His downfall.

So be it.

‘You are my queen,’ he whispered. ‘My goddess, my everything. But we need to escape this place before the Aurum overwhelms you too. Between them they’ll tear you apart, love. Come with me and I will protect you.’

He had to get her out of Asteroth by any means necessary. Away from the reach of the Aurum and whatever was happening to her. The bracelet would hold the Nox at bay, but it wouldn’t work on the light that was filling her. This was all he could think of.

Because that was the choice he was making now, between his Wren and the vows he had made to serve the Aurum. That was what was being demanded of him.

And he hated himself for the decision he made.

Wren shivered in his embrace, but when her eyes met his, he saw only her trust, her love. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Finn?’ Hestia interrupted, wary now, right on the edge of realising what he was about to do. Another person who would hate him from this moment on. He was betraying her as well, wasn’t he? ‘Finn, what are you doing?’

What he had to do. That was the problem. And it would involve abandoning her, leaving her here with Leander, maybe even leaving her to die. ‘I’m sorry, Hestia,’ he said, his voice bleak as the winds of winter. ‘I have to.’

All you have to do, Hestia had told him, is break this, and it will bring you home.

Finn broke the pendant around his neck and released the spell Hestia had woven through it. Leander’s blood boiled on its surface and something sharp stabbed into his hand. Shadow kin coiled out. Stronger than any he had ever known, more powerful. He felt them burrowing through him, deep inside him.

And from that place deep inside him, from his blood and his bone, something responded. Something dark and endless, which had just been biding its time.

CHAPTER 49

WREN

Nestled in Finn’s strong arms, Wren felt the rush of dark magic around her. It was like the travelling spell Elodie had cast to take her out of Knightsford. If that spell had been turned inside out. This time, instead of a place full of light and flames that danced against their skin, a sickening aura of colours spiralling around them, there was a knot of shadow kin and a whirl of blue-black light. Blood surged in her veins and the Nox laughed as they passed through its realm. Dark tendrils of consciousness wound around her, tried to drag Wren away and drown her in the shadows.

Finn’s arms tightened around her and she tore her gaze from the chaos around them to look up at him. He watched her hungrily with a curious otherness in his eyes.

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Not just this dark version of the travelling spell, not this traverse beyond the veil and into the maw of the Nox, something was wrong with him.

‘Finn?’ she whispered and shook off the cloying tendrils of darkness creeping back through her brain.

‘Don’t be scared,’ he told her. His eyes glittered in the otherlight of the shadow kin’s embrace. They were blue, so blue. Like jewels. Like flames. Like the eyes of the shadow kin all around them. ‘It’s going to be all right now.’

Scared? Why would she be scared with him?

She was never scared with him.

‘Finn?’ Something was wrong, a voice deep in the back of her mind whispered. Something was wrong with him.

Tears matted his lashes together and spilled down his cheek. He pressed his face into her hair and kissed her head, still holding her far too tightly. The bracelet on her arm burned, pressed between their bodies, hot and cold all at once.

She felt the Nox squirm with sudden concern. Something was terribly wrong. It tried to reach her again, dark tendrils which wound about her like her hair when it tried to hold him. But those shadowy strands couldn’t quite find purchase, slipping from her, and the Nox’s cry of rage echoed around her, shaking her to her bones. And Finn’s grip just tightened further, digging into her flesh, bruising her.

Wren tore herself free of Finn just as the shadow kin unfurled around them and she fell. She couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t hold herself up. She was weak and wrung out, as if the spell had ripped every ounce of energy, light and dark, out of her. Her body was barely her own. Only the burning line of the bracelet on her arm gave her something to cling to, some indication that she was still real, still feeling things, still alive.

The flagstones she hit were black as night and polished to a mirror-like shine. She stared at her reflection, a strange wild girl with a fall of too-long hair the colour of raven wings around her pale and pinched face, her eyes so black they looked like holes in her head. She didn’t look like herself. She barely looked human. Something fell from the pocket of the long Ilanthian dress she wore. The little bird Carlotta had given her.

It will remind you of what you are, Wren.

And it did. It reminded her of who she was, what she was…

She was Wren. Not the Nox, not the Aurum. She was more than a vessel for magic. The Nox wanted to wipe her away and take control of her physical form. And the Aurum… now she realised that the Aurum had tried to do the same thing.

She thought of Elodie, the Aurum burning through her, of the knights overwhelmed by the powers they served, used and cast aside. And when Elodie couldn’t serve it any more, it had turned on Wren, sought her out and tried to use her instead.