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The edge of wickedness in his grin could have sent me to my knees. As if we weren’t sitting here on the brink of war – as if the weight of the world wasn’t weighing on our shoulders. Small moments of reprieve that I craved like sunlight and oxygen; it was all I could do to suppress a groan when Lyn turned towards us on the other side of the tent. ‘Creon?’

He sobered up immediately. ‘What is it?’

‘Do you still need those maps?’

To figure out where the Mother was sending her ships, what innocent lives she’d declared forfeit this time around … The boulder sank back into my stomach.

Choices to be made. It always came down to the same thing in the end.

Creon wordlessly shoved the atlas across the table to Lyn, then slowly said, ‘We might at least get an idea of their direction byposting some people as lookouts on nearby islands. If we know whether she takes the east or the west straits …’

‘Yes,’ Lyn said, drawing out the word with obvious hesitation. ‘Yes, we should, but …’

She faltered.

‘But the question is what we’d do with the knowledge?’ Tared finished.

A groan. ‘Exactly.’

‘Defend the place she’s planning to attack?’ I said, a little puzzled by the grimness of their expressions. This was the self-evident part, wasn’t it? We could argue abouthowto defend the intended victims orwhoexactly would take the task upon them … but that seemed rather secondary, a matter of details. ‘As soon as we know where she’s going, we can—’

‘With what army?’ Tared grimly interrupted me.

I frowned. ‘Beg your pardon?’

He muttered a curse as he dropped into his chair and stretched his long legs. ‘If she’s sending out a fleet of the size Beyla’s observations suggest, we’re going to need more than a few alves from the Underground to stop them. And the one thing all our allies did seem to agree on was that we would not be fighting multiple battles.’

It took a moment for that to sink in.

‘So then what would you suggest instead?’ They had all become worryingly quiet around me – evenCreondidn’t smile or nod when I glanced his way. ‘You’re not saying you don’t want to defend whoever her target is at all, are you?’

‘It’s hardly a matter of wanting,’ Nenya muttered, arms crossed, long red nails tapping impatiently against her lace sleeves. ‘Rather of what we can afford.’

‘Yes.’ The tightness in Tared’s voice was unmistakable now. ‘She could probably wipe out half of us with just the group she’s sent on its way today, and even if we took half ofthemwith us,she’d barely bat an eye. Taking her bait before we have either worked out the bindings or found the human allies we need is a madman’s bet at best.’

I wasn’t sure what was worse – his words or the silence that followed, the eloquent absence of objections. Lyn gloomily chewed on her curls. Nenya absently scratched the scars marring her cheek. Edored looked like he was still working out the numbers Tared had presented, but evenhisface was unusually glum – ready to accept the conclusions, as puzzling as they may be to him.

And Creon …

Taut jaw. Bottomless eyes. But he didn’t look up from the table and he didn’t speak – not a word of protest.

‘No,’ I said breathlessly, not sure what I was denying – the Motherdidhave the advantage of numbers and the bindings, and hell, of her defences, too. But she may be planning to wipe a whole nymph isle off the face of the earth, just as she’d tried to do with Tolya before, and how could anyone just blankly accept those hard facts if they all knew the consequences?

‘Em …’ Lyn started, her voice a fraction choked.

‘We stopped the Sun fleet at Tolya. All of it, with just the two of us.’ I felt more and more like some frantic, drivelling lunatic as I glanced at Creon and received nothing but the faintest headshake in response. ‘Why couldn’t we try again? Even if there’s a few more of them this time …’

‘It’s not just the numbers, Em,’ he interrupted, his voice low and rough. ‘They’ve seen you work at the Golden Court and lived to tell the tale. Your godsworn powers are no longer a surprise like they were at Tolya. She’ll know very damn well you might show up again, and you can bet a good amount of money that her army will be prepared this time.’

I swallowed. ‘But—’

‘And even if you come out of it alive this time,’ Nenya stiffly added, ‘you’ll have shown her that she can lure you out this way.’

Giving her all the reason in the world to attack again and again and again, more viciously every time to make sure I’d keep taking the bait … Until eventually, inevitably, something would kill me. The Mother knew as well as I did that every fight was a roll of the dice in a way; for all my magic, for all my strategy, Ihadbeen lucky to escape my brushes with death so far.

And I only had to be unlucky once for it to all be over.

My mouth was starting to go dry. I understood every argument they were making – couldn’t help but accept every single one – and yet the rational conclusion that followed refused to seem even remotely reasonable. If we didn’t take the bait … then we’d just sit here. Wait here. Stay quiet and safe on the one island the Mother wouldn’t bother to attack in this war.