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I snapped around.

He’d sat up straight in his chair for the first time, grey eyes calm like a ripple-less water surface, that faint, mirthless smile I knew so well around his lips. Still he wouldn’t meet my gaze. Instead, he had turned towards the alf female opposite me, his voice a soothing, reassuring contrast to the acidity with which her last words had left her mouth.

Next to him, even Lyn looked a fraction surprised.

‘What?’ Valdora snapped.

‘That bargain.’ He shrugged – that nonchalant shrug that could have placated a roaring wildfire. ‘We’d be absolute idiots to accept it. Do we really want to grant any of our allies that sort of influence over us?’

I stared at him.

He still didn’t look my way.

‘Please elaborate,’ I vaguely heard Valdora say.

‘Here’s the thing.’ I’d forgotten how reassuring he could sound when he wasn’t muttering insults under his breath – how perfectly, naturally in control. It didn’t fail to silence a full circle of murmuring immortals now, as he leaned forward and planted his elbows on his knees with the air of a male who has considered a subject for months ‘We should keep in mind that whatever we decide here is going to set a precedent for every single one of our allies above. Apparently this is a demand they can make now. So what if Em makes that bargain and Bakaru shows up tomorrow, insisting that Nenya never exchanges a word with a single alf again?’

The room had gone icily, eerily silent.

What in the world washappening? I gaped at Tared, not sure how to reconcile the male I was hearing with the male who’d told me to go to hell in the quiet darkness of Tolya, who I’d been all but certain would have me removed from his household the moment everything settled down enough for me to pack my bags. Was I being an idiot and entirely misunderstanding every single word he spoke? Or was he actually …

DefendingCreon?

I’d sooner have expected Edored to develop a taste for fine arts and high fashion.

‘Well,’ Valdora muttered defiantly, ‘but—’

‘We should remember,’ Tared continued, as if she hadn't spoken at all, ‘that far too many people out there are quietly but deeply unhappy about the Alliance existing at all. Far too many kings and rulers strongly dislike the fact that we have found a loyalty here that doesn’t adhere to their strict lines of species and islands. They won’t do anything about it now, while they have a greater enemy to worry about. But I’d be willing to bet the bones of my ancestors that many of them would be very, very happy to see some cracks appear here once we get closer to the end of thiswar, and bargains to literally forbid communication among us is the most blatant example of it I’ve seen so far.’

Wolves against wolves, Lyn had said. I glanced at her and found her sitting with closed eyes now, small hands balled into fists in her lap – something to do with the phoenix elders, I suspected, with the island where she had been born yet hadn't lived for centuries.

‘So.’ Tared’s joyless smile might have looked like it was aimed at me, but his eyes continued to stubbornly avoid mine, trailing over the wall behind me before swerving back to Valdora. ‘I suggest we don’t make the mistake of considering this merely an innocent proposal to guarantee their own safety. Let’s not allow the people who have never given a damn aboutoursafety to drive a wedge between us and our friends.’

Wait.

Had he just called Creon afriend?

It didn’t make sense –noneof this made sense – and yet around me people were nodding hesitantly, muttering words of unwilling agreement. Why was no one calling him out on this obvious nonsense?Wasit even obvious nonsense? Or was this just how Tared Thorgedson ruled the alves whose leader he’d accidentally and involuntarily become – by sounding sensible at the right moments, and maybe even meaning it, too?

I had been awake for too long. My thoughts seemed to be blurring around the edges, tiredness slowing everything down. If he was truly, sensibly defending Creon here – then hell, why would he still not bloodylookat me?

‘So what do you recommend, then?’ someone was saying.

‘We reject their proposal.’ A hint of that skewed grin slid over his face. ‘Perhaps a little more diplomatically than Em suggested, although I see no reason to make itmuchmore diplomatic. We remind them that we don’t want them harmed any more than they do, and that none of us would let Creonanywhere near them if we suspected dangerous intentions on his part. And then we see what counteroffer they make.’

‘That’s hardly aplan, is it?’ Nenya said sourly.

His grin broadened a fraction. ‘You should know by now I’m shit at plans.’

‘It all depends on their response, anyway,’ Lyn added, managing to make her look at Tared look as though this was a topic the two of them had discussed for hours. ‘And I can think of a hundred ways they might react, off the top of my head. There’s no sense in obsessively working out strategies for all of them if they’ll have a message back to us before we’re done.’

The group seemed to accept that with surprisingly little protestations.

‘So I think we’re done for tonight.’ The relief in her words was unmistakable. ‘Please inform your houses and your bloodlines of all we discussed, and we’ll let you know if new information comes up. Any questions?’

A handful of last questions were swiftly dealt with; Tared’s intervention seemed to have taken the bite even from those most determined to cause trouble, and none of them directly targeted me. Then people were walking and fading out with muttered greetings and goodnight wishes, leaving just a handful of us behind in that glittering treasury. Naxi slipped out the door without looking anyone in the eyes. Nenya swept out like a stately empress. Lyn skilfully manoeuvred Valdora to the other side of the room, circling back to the subject of the guards the Svirla family would be posting around the Cobalt Court.

That left only Tared and me at the table.