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‘No!’ he burst out, jolting with an uncontrolled slap of his wings, so sudden I almost tumbled backwards at his feet. His eyes had snapped open, burning gaze finding mine with a fractured despair I could feel in the marrow of my bones. ‘No, Em, please. I wasn’t trying to stop you from breaking the cursed things – I know we need them. Just not … just not at the cost of you. That’s all. I swear I wasn’t … wasn’t …’

Wasn’t manipulating me to cling to the last advantage he’d have on a battlefield – my heartbeat came down a little as more rational realisations slipped through. Hehadhelped me get that key to Naxi, after all. Hehadtalked to Thysandra. Hehadset up that flawless plan to get as many bindings into the right hands as possible, even if he’d hated it, even if he could hardly bear to speak about it—

‘I want her dead as much as you do, Em,’ he whispered as he bent over, hands wrapping around my elbows, ink-black eyes begging me to believe it. Long hair tumbled over his face, and the soft strands tickled my forearms. ‘I just …’

‘You couldn’t stand to be weaker than others for once?’ I finished, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice.

He winced again, grip on my elbows tightening. No answer, again – we both knew the answer anyway, the unspoken words hovering in the crisp night air between our faces.

All my worrying. All my questions. All those conversations with him repeating again and again that of course he was fine, why would I ever think otherwise – while he had known exactly what was wrong from the moment I told him his binding had broken and he’d looked so strangely, unexpectedly grim about it.

‘Why in the world,’ I managed, voice straining with the effort to speak softly, slowly, ‘didn’t you justtellme about any of this, you impossible idiot?’

‘It might never have been relevant at all!’ His fingers were almost squeezingthroughmy arms now, holding on for dear life – as if once again someone might try and snatch me from his grip any moment. His hoarse voice shook violently. ‘Thysandra might not have talked before the war was over. And as long as you didn’t realise I was becoming dead weight, did you really expect me to helpfully remind you of it? So you could … could …’

He fell silent, his throat bobbing visibly in the shadows.

‘Dowhat?’ I forced out a cheerless laugh. ‘Did you expect me to mock you? Insult you? Throw you out?’

Again he flinched.

No objections. No correction. No explanation of the terrible fate that would have awaited him instead of any of those ridiculous exaggerations – none of the justifications I had expected from him in response.

I blinked, voice lowering. ‘Creon?’

The look in his dark eyes … Crumbling obsidian, bleeding ink. As if he’d just woken up from a nightmare, only to find himself stuck in an even crueller reality – the eyes of a male about to surrender to a long-feared, inevitable doom.

Throw you out.

Oh, dead and living gods help me.

‘That was a hypothetical suggestion to make the point of absurdity!’ I wasn’t sure if I should be laughing or cursing at this insanity, and Zera have mercy, why was he still looking at me in that same forlorn way, as if the next word from my lips might be a goodbye? ‘Of course I’m not shoving you aside over some stupid bound magic. Why in the world would you ever think …’

Oh.

Oh.

My mind abruptly caught up with my mouth.

Like tools.Hell take me, he’dtoldme – word for word, straight to my face, and still I hadn’t managed to connect the dots between his memories and the madness of this night. Phantom voices all over again. How could I ever have assumed he wouldn’t be hearing them, too, if they were still clamouring so loudly in my own mind?

He served his purpose.

Always the weapon. Always the protector.

‘Creon …’ His name trembled on my lips. ‘For the love of the gods, Creon, I’m not yourmother.’

He stiffened. ‘No, of course you’re not—’

‘And yet you assume I would leave you behind as well, the moment you lose your practical purpose?’ I shook my arms from his grip, rising on legs that suddenly were no longer shaking. Gone was the confusion, the horror of knowingsomethingwas wrong but not how to solve it. This I understood. This I could fix. ‘You know me better than that, Your Highness. You know I love you more than that.’

He stared at me as if I’d thrown some impossible mathematical question into his lap, paralysed on the moss and stone beneath him. ‘Yes, but—’

‘Creon.’

‘—but people fall out of love,’ he finished, voice choked and too quiet.

And there it was.