Page 120 of Curse of Darkness
“Thiago.”
“It’s the cold.” The words burst from my lips. “It’s the cold I can’t stand. The… nothingness. To forge Darkyn steel, I have to open myself back up to that Darkness, and it feels like… nothing.”
Finn stares at me, silently taking it all in. “You’re not alone. I want you to know that. And you don’t have to shoulder this entire burden by yourself. If you go up against the Horned One—you and Vi—then I will be there at your side. As will Eris and Baylor. Maybe even Thalia.”
Not alone, no. But maybe that’s the hardest part of this. I don’t want to see any of them die.
This time, the shadows come a little easier.
“You don’t have to do this right now,” Finn says.
I force the shadows I can conjure at will to thicken into a sword-like shape. Boiling clouds of Darkness becoming sharp-edged and vicious—
And I see Vi, curling over that sword, her knees weakening as if it cut her legs right out from under her.
“She will never bear another child.”
The blade vanishes, smoke dissipating into nothing.
Fuck.I turn and smash a punch into one of the training gurneys, sending the wooden knight swinging, its mace whipping through the air.
“You almost had it,” Finn says encouragingly.
“Almost isn’t good enough.” We have days at most before Angharad’s forces cross the River Nyx, and then she’s right on the edges of Mistmark, a mere day’s ride from Evernight’s most northern borders.
The Horned One at her side.
“You don’t pick up a sword and expect to master it on the first day.”
“I have to.”
Finn slowly sheathes the Sword of Mourning. “This isn’t going to work. You’re too bound up. Let’s work it out of you,” he says, crossing to the rack and tossing me a regular steel-edged training blade.
The hilt feels like an old friend in my hand. Maybe he’s right. I haven’t ventured down here since I returned. I need this.
“No pulling your punches,” I remind him.
Finn’s cocky grin feels like old times. “You’re going to regret saying that, you know?”
* * *
The following morning,there’s no change to Vi’s circumstances.
“She’s sleeping,” Mariana assures me, brushing the hair off my wife’s forehead. “She will rouse when she’s recovered.” Then she pushes back from the bed, hands on her hips as she rakes me over with a blistering look. “And if you don’t rest yourself, then you’re going to collapse at her feet when she wakes, my prince.”
How can I rest when every time I close my eyes, I see Vi collapsing into my arms? I spent the entire night in the chair beside her bed, sub-consciously monitoring her breathing as I went over the reports of granary hauls and recruitment that Baylor sent me. Boring, monotonous stuff that is absolutely critical in any war, practically guaranteed to put one to sleep, and yet, every time my eyes threatened to shut, I’d jolt awake with the sound of Vi’s scream in my ears.
“I’ll consider it,” I reply.
“Which means no,” Thalia says with an exasperated cluck of her tongue as she sweeps forward to join Mariana. “Out you go, then. If you’re not going to rest, then you can at least eat something and get some fresh air. We’ll have the maids bathe her and change her linens, whilst you refresh yourself.” As I open my mouth to argue, she arches a pointed brow. “And it will give Amaya time to visit with her mother.”
Without the threat of my presence.
“Fine.” I know when I’m routed. Grabbing my cloak, I retreat to the dining room where someone—Thalia, no doubt—has an enormous breakfast awaiting beneath a silver cloche.
Washing it all down with tepid tea, I head for the training yard.
Finn’s there already, his stance split as he twirls his sword through the first opening stances of a Warrior Greeting the Dawn. There’s something beautiful about watching him move. Despite everything I’ve heard about the brutal conditions of the Sylvaren war camps, the idea of seeing a hundred of them—or even a thousand—moving together like this in perfect synchronicity, must have been breathtaking.
