Page 121 of Curse of Darkness
The Sylvaren were fae who were twisted by the magic of their vicious queen, Sylvian, into vicious, war-hungry warriors that were nearly impossible to kill. Determined to destroy the southern kings and queens who had thwarted her previous attempts to expand her empire, Sylvian created an army of warsworn that broke like a tide over the south.
Every other king and queen formed an alliance against her—the first glimmerings of the Seelie Alliance—and when Maia broke Sylvian’s power at Charun and ascended to godhood, the Sylvaren warbands were slaughtered by the thousands. Some of them escaped into the frozen north, but they were branded outlaws and hunted by the Unseelie queens over the last few centuries. But some of them formed mercenary warbands that made themselves indispensable to certain powerful lords.
Finn’s father—the warlord of his clan—was exiled by Sylvian before the events of Charun. Finn doesn’t speak of it often, but his people were cast out from the host, their clan name stripped from record, and driven into the icy north. Sylvian named them the Forbidden, and insisted that her warsworn have nothing to do with them.
They were not to be spoken to. They were not to be given sustenance, or traded with. They were pacifists who were to be spat upon in company, and sneered upon in song.
The Forbidden eked out a means of survival there, with his father giving himself over to a new way of living.
They became hunters. Trackers.
They took the brutal training regimes the Sylvaren practiced and transformed them into something beautiful and peaceful that they called the Way of the Flame.
Fire unchecked can ravage the entire countryside, Finn once told me, but the flame itself—if kept controlled—can offer shelter and warmth. And the Way of the Flame teaches a practitioner to dance like fire itself. To move with the wind, with the elements that surround it. But never to kill with.
Finn refuses to speak of it, but I know there was some sort of sundering with his father and his clan. Something to do with spilling the blood of another.
He chose a different path. A bloodier path. And that path led him to me on that fateful battlefield long ago, where he chose to spare my life.
He’s the closest thing I have to a true brother.
“You checking out of my ass?” Finn asks, not breaking stride. “Or are you going to get down here and make yourself useful?”
I stalk down the stairs with a scowl. Definitely a pain-in-my-ass if nothing else. “I’ve seen you move. You could put me, Eris and Baylor into the dirt any time you choose, and yet you’ve rarely beaten one of us in the ring.”
Finn stills, one leg stretched out behind him, and the line of his sword echoing the stance over his head. Cursing under his breath, he straightens and shakes himself off. “What you don’t understand is that anytime I face one of you and don’t hurt you, I win,” he says softly. “I master the rage inside me. I prove to myself I’m in control. That I’m not some savage creature let off its leash.”
I toss him the water flask sitting by his shirt. It’s disturbing how much I empathize with him. Every day that I look in the mirror and see my own eyes looking back at me, and not the Shadow Sinister, is a victory.
“You make Lysander eat dirt every time.”
Finn grins, taking a hefty swallow of his water. “That asshole is too arrogant to allow him a single victory. I’d never hear the end of it.”
The pair of them have been arguing with each other and getting into trouble together for centuries.
Surveying the armory rack, I trace my fingers over the training swords.
It’s been a long night.
I don’t know if I have strength to attempt to forge Darkyn steel right now.
“Vi’s fine, Thiago,” Finn says gruffly, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “She’s beginning to surface.”
The bond.
Some part of what I feel must flash over my face. Vi told me of it, of course, and I would never begrudge her the safety and protection of another, but I can’t help wishing... wishing it was me.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he says roughly.
I breathe out. “I’m not. Logic dictates that if Vi’s ever in trouble, having you bonded to her is an enormous advantage. You’d be able to find her, no matter where she was.”
“That’s the prince speaking,” he points out. “And how do you feel?”
“Does it matter?”
Finn scrapes his long hair back into a fistful at the back of his head and binds it afresh with his leather thong. “It matters. My father always said that burying your truths in your heart only makes them fester. You need to be calm and focused when you face Adaia.”
Fine.I face him starkly. “I wish it was me. I wish I’d been the one she claimed.”
