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Rosalind had the presence of mind to quickly pull the map with the tunnels drawn in beneath the table.

They had already explained the gist of the plan to our captive, it turned out. Tared faded out with our letter immediately, and then we waited – unable to discuss anything of importance with Thysandra sitting next to us, and getting more and more disgruntled about the fact as time ticked by. Thysandra, to her credit, looked just as mystified about our reasons to take her from her cell before an agreement had been reached. Naxi had to be very well aware of the glares sent her way with increasing frequency, but she sat in her chair and kept on smiling, humming monotone songs to herself as outside our tent the noise of the camp grew louder and louder.

Five minutes passed, then ten.

Delwin showed up, had a short, whispered conversation with Agenor, then left again to pass on the preliminary conclusions to the humans waiting for news, taking Finn with him. My parents followed soon after with the list of magical rulers – off to find some alves to deliver the first calls to arms, I suspected.

Lyn was visibly getting antsy by that point, fidgeting feverishly with pencils and parchment, glaring at the sun to move alongthe sky faster. Thysandra took care to equally divide her furious glares between Naxi and Creon. I stared at the latter, tried to figure out how and why his lazy confidence had so suddenly morphed into this barely controlled dread tightening his lips and fingers, and failed miserably.

Five more minutes went by.

It was just before the twenty-minute mark that Tared returned – an eternity, and yet so surprisingly fast that I was fully prepared for him to report the empire’s guards had refused to accept the letter at all. But he was holding a new sheet of parchment, and beneath the obvious tension, his smile carried a hint of triumph.

‘It's addressed to you,’ he informed me as he handed me the message. ‘Thought I'd be polite and leave the honour to you.’

The Mother's foremost enemy.

I swallowed something thorny as I broke the seal.

It was infuriating, the way those written words made me remember the porcelain sound of her voice all over again – as if she had slipped the memory itself into the letter, silvery and amused, laughing at me from a few miles away—

Little dove,

Thank you for your generous offer. Unfortunately, we must reject it. It turns out Thysandra is perfectly redundant to our court; if we bargain with you, it will be over more than a traitor's daughter.

Send our regards to your father. For his sake, we hope he's dead before we meet again.

Fondly,

The Mother,

High Lady of faekind,

Empress of all the known world

I stared at those treacherous lines for a mindless moment before a heartfelt ‘Fuck’ escaped me.

‘Bad news?’ Tared said sharply.

‘You could call it that.’ I scanned the message one more time, then looked up to find four pairs of eyes staring at me with varying levels of eagerness and apprehension. Only Creon hadn't even bothered to look up, resting his head back in his chair with his eyes closed and ever-deepening lines tightening around his lips. In the white-and-blue light filtering through the tent cloth, the shadows sharpened his cheekbones to knife-edges, his scars to bleeding gashes.

He's served his purpose.

My heart twinged. Had he known this would be her response – so close to a repeat of the day he almost died, burned and bleeding, in the mud at the Golden Court?

‘Em?’ Lyn’s voice pulled me back to reality. ‘Does she reject the bargain?’

‘She … she does, yes.’ I threw her a slightly helpless look, unsure how many details I should add with Thysandra still in the same tent. ‘She—’

‘Does she make a counteroffer?’ Thysandra bit out – the first full sentence she'd spoken since her arrival. It burst from her lips as if it had been aching to escape for the full twenty minutes of our wait. ‘Is there anything else she will do for … for …’

Me.

She did not finish the sentence – afraid, it seemed, to claim even that much recognition for herself.

I hesitated for a fraction of a second, trying to find a kinder way to deliver the news but unable to settle on anything better than, ‘She doesn’t, no.’

Thysandra stared at me. ‘She doesn't?’