Page 24 of A Touch of Shadows

Wren shook her head. ‘What is there to tell? She raised me.’ And now she was gone. No one could have survived this.

The kitchen and workrooms were destroyed, the distillery must have gone up in a fireball, and their living room and bedrooms were ash, but as they moved further up the winding staircase, it wasn’t as bad.

The round room at the top of the tower looked like a whirlwind had gone through it, and everything stank of smoke, but the flames had not reached it. Elodie’s treasures were strewn everywhere. Even the precious telescope lay broken on the floor.

So the Ilanthians had come here, before she made it back. They must have.

Had Elodie still been here? Had they taken her? Was she already on her way back to Sidonia in black metal chains enchanted to suppress her magic, destined for a lifetime of slavery?

They had certainly taken anything of actual value, not that there had been much. Even the chest that Elodie kept locked at all times had been smashed open, the contents rifled through and most of it gone.

Elodie thought Wren didn’t know about her secret treasures, but Wren had always been a curious child and suspiciously good at sneaking around, poking her nose in where it didn’t belong. That said, she had never examined the contents of the chest too closely. They had always been Elodie’s secrets and they felt private, sacrosanct.

Wren knelt before it and a sob lodged in her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart felt like it would tear itself out of her, and her eyes burned as she tried to sort through the scattered remains of a life.

At the bottom of the chest she found a locket. How had they missed that? On the floor beside it she found a leather-bound notebook, the cover etched with the symbol of the Aurum, the wheel of flames. It was battered and well used, old. She opened the book to find Elodie’s neat writing covering the pages. So much of it. Her eyesight blurred with tears as she tried to read it. A diary? She didn’t remember Elodie ever keeping one but she could have, Wren supposed. It felt like an invasion, but what else did she have now? She flicked through the pages, brushing her filthy fingertips against the ink and wishing she could ask Elodie what to do.

The page shifted beneath her touch and she shied back with a cry.

‘What is it?’ Finn asked, instantly at her side. Had he been watching her? Waiting for her to pick something up? Or was he just as concerned about what they might find here as Wren was? ‘What’s wrong?’

The words on the page changed, the ink drawing together, moving like water until it formed other words. A warning.

Run, little bird, and don’t look back. Make for the Seven Sisters and I’ll find you there. Don’t trust anyone, neither hunter or knight.

Elodie’s writing, unmistakable and still moving, adding more as she read it.

They are looking for both of us and I will not let them take you.

‘What’s the Seven Sisters?’ she asked.

‘Standing stones, in a clearing in the southern end of the forest, not far from Knightsford,’ he said, that touch of wariness back in his voice. ‘They’re old magic, the oldest. They stand at the conjunction of several lines of power, I believe. A dangerous place.’

She examined the locket again. It was beautiful, a delicate fancy, inscribed with the symbol of the Aurum as well. But why was Elodie warning her away from the knights while carrying treasures marked with their symbol?

‘Elodie says to meet her there. In the book.’

She tried to show him but the words on the page faded again, leaving just a smear of water-stained ink.

Whatever enchantment Elodie had woven around it had done its job, it seemed.

‘She’s powerful, your Elodie,’ Finn said, the wary tone never leaving his voice. ‘And she escaped Leander. Probably used the fire as a distraction. Clever.’ Was that a begrudging tone of respect?

She was about to say she had never met anyone more powerful, but Elodie was the only witch she knew and most of her practice lay in the mundane, in herbs and knowledge and healing. And in her link to the forest itself. All the other things Wren herself could never actually master. But that’s when she heard it.

We are witchkind. We will live free or die.

It was like a whisper in the back of Wren’s mind.

Now that sounded more like Elodie than the words in the book.

She swallowed hard. ‘We have to go south,’ she said at last. ‘To Knightsford. You to warn them of the Ilanthians and me to the stones, to find her.’

‘Can I see the locket?’ he asked abruptly and she frowned. But there didn’t seem to be a reason not to let him. As he took it his fingers brushed against her skin and he froze for a moment. Wren felt something like a shiver pass right through her before he pulled back.

Finn opened the locket carefully, as if afraid he’d damage it, and stared at the images inside.

On one side was a small child with dark hair and huge eyes. Wren as she had been. She remembered Elodie painting it, remembered having to sit still, remembered fidgeting and squirming until Elodie gave up and released her back into the wild. Elodie had laughed at her, rather than been annoyed. Said she was a feral little thing and nothing would ever change that. But she’d said it with fondness.

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