Page 2 of A Crown of Darkness

Oh, but she did know. Elodie knew she should say something, anything, but she was afraid as well. The light of the hearth had played on his face, in his eyes.

And he had been so kind. She longed for kindness, gentleness, for someone who would love her completely and never fail her.

There wasn’t time. Within a year, Aelenor was dead and Elodie was engaged to be married to a prince of Ilanthus. And what a disaster that had proved to be…

The flames of the Aurum warmed her face and she looked up into the light. She was no longer a girl. Not in any way but in her heart. And everything had fallen apart.

What was your vow?

The voice echoed strangely. It sounded a little like her mother’s voice, but it was something else as well. More than one voice. A chorus. It rang around the back of her mind, and came from every corner of the chamber. The white stones encircling her vibrated with its sound. Outside them, there was only darkness.

And that wasn’t right either. She should have been able to see the whole Sanctum. There should have been maidens in attendance, and courtiers, Paladins to guard her…Roland…and Wren…

This wasn’t right. She wasn’t a fifteen-year-old girl hearing all the options of her future being closed off. She was a woman, a queen, a mother…

What was your vow?

The voice that was many voices came again, more insistent this time.

‘To…to serve.’ Her words were forced from her throat, whether she wanted to speak or not.

And have you?

The ground shook beneath her and Elodie stared into the fire, tears burning the corners of her eyes. Had she? She had tried to. That had to count for something, didn’t it?

But the Aurum rarely bothered with intentions. Action was all.

And have you served us, Elodie?

Elodie closed her eyes but the light forced them to open again, forced her to look into its depth, and in the white-hot heart of the flames of the Aurum images formed. A man, strong, broad-shouldered, tall. Not the boy she had fallen in love with the moment she saw him, the man with whom she should have spent her life, but the man he became, the man she had deserted. Her every desire. The love of her life. He held a sword in front of him like a challenge, a sword which became a column of light, and his expression was both grave and heartbroken.

The last time she had seen him…

Beside him stood a girl, small and slight, with a mass of black hair which moved like ink in water around her, alive with enchantment and power. Her dark eyes looked huge in her pale, resolute face, and she spread her hands wide. Darkness and shadows tangled around her fingertips. But in that darkness Elodie could see stars. Light within the shadows. It should have been impossible, but not for her daughter.

Wren.

And Roland.

Elodie’s heart ached. But they were lost to her now. They were gone. And she…she didn’t know where she was.

We fight the Nox, they had sworn, all of them, Elodie, Roland, even Wren in her innocence,with flame and sword.

Well?the voice of the Aurum asked.

The flames roared through her, deafening her and blinding her as everything she was, everything she would have been and everything she wanted was burned away again.

CHAPTER 1

WREN

‘That’s enough, princess,’ a voice called out behind her, in a kind of sing-song that was almost mockery. ‘Come back quietly now. We don’t want trouble.’

Wren froze in the middle of the sumptuous corridor, her heart threatening to tear itself out of the cage of her ribs. Her bare feet sank into the deep pile of the carpeting as if she might somehow root herself there.

Already. How had they found her already?

Three of them this time. They were all smiling, the bastards, like this was some kind of joke. And to them it was, she realised. They’d been charged with watching her. Maybe the door hadn’t been left unmanned accidentally.