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‘I see.’ If my father had sounded on the verge of cursing before, he now gave the impression he might start screaming any moment. ‘And fourthly?’

‘Corydas shouted something interesting in an attempt to bait me,’ Creon said, raking a blood-stained hand through his hair. ‘If I understood him correctly, his point was that I would be able to harm him about as much as I’d be able to harm the Crimson Court itself. Which suggests to me that the Mother assumes we’ll be hindered by the bindings once we try to attack the building, too.’

‘Yes.’ Agenor sucked in a breath between his teeth. ‘Did he say anything else?’

‘He was a little too busy dealing with my knife in his windpipe,’ Creon said, half a grin growing on his face. ‘Bastard always annoyed the hell out of me.’

Agenor’s laugh was joyless as a mourner’s wail. ‘Well, that’s one happy result, at least.’

‘Hardly worth dying for, though, is it?’ Tared said sharply. ‘As useful as all of this is, would it be too much to inform usbeforehand, next time you decide to bet your life on your overenthusiastic estimation of your own powers?’

‘And maybe take an unbound mage with you if you ever try something similar again,’ Lyn grumbled. ‘Madman.’

‘I suggest we just don’t try anything similar again,’ I said, unable to suppress a shiver.

‘Yes,’ Agenor said grimly, rising to his feet. ‘I would strongly prefer that solution, too, but I don’t suppose Achlys and Melinoëwill hold back for much longer now that they have the Golden Court back in their hands. Once they start attacking the other islands, I doubt we’ll have much of a choice.’

I swallowed. ‘Unless we figure out how to identify the bindings?’

‘That would be helpful, yes.’ He elegantly avoided the pool of blood on his way to the door. ‘If no one else is planning on dying for now, I should go see how my people are managing in Inika’s quarter. Let me know if anything comes up, and— Oh.’ He turned in the doorway, eyes finding me. ‘One last thing. I presume that bargain with the phoenix elders is not going to happen?’

‘You know me so well,’ I said wryly.

Clearly, he didn’t feel like smiling, but he managed to send me a quick grin all the same; it even managed to look quite genuine. ‘In that case, I suggest you hurry up finding another way to get them on our side. If we want to fight that war without functioning magicandwithout any significant winged forces, we may as well surrender immediately.’

‘We’re meeting in the Wanderer’s Wing after lunch to discuss the phoenixes,’ Lyn said, staring at her hands, her lips a wafer-thin line. ‘I’ll let you know what we come up with.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, and with a last quick nod, he turned on his heel and strode out.

It didn’t seem to matter to my heart that Creon was no longer bleeding, even the smallest scrapes found and healed with an ocean’s worth of blue. Nor did it help much that the living room had been scrubbed clean with both magic and soap, no drop ofblood left behind. I sat on his bed, watched him strip off his ruined clothes, and found my stomach turning all over again, every strip of paler, newly-formed skin another reminder of just how close I’d been to losing him between the sandstone walls of the Golden Court.

If Tared hadn't been around. If Beyla had cared just a little less. If they’d cared but been just a little slower. If, if, if …

‘Em,’ Creon interrupted my spiralling thoughts, that hoarse, warm voice I still hadn't fully gotten used to. ‘Keep breathing.’

He didn’t even need to look my way, gaze fixed on the torn sleeves he was peeling off his arms. His demon senses noticed all there was to notice: my rattling heart, my twisting stomach, the aimless fear keeping every muscle in my body on high alert even as I merely sat and waited.

‘I’m trying not to panic,’ I said, voice small.

‘Being angry at yourself over panicking is rarely ever helpful,’ he wryly reminded me, flinging his shirt through the open bathroom door and rubbing absently over a smudge of blood it had left behind. Below those stains, the lighter lines of healed skin contrasted sharply with the crude black ink of his older injuries, the wounds the Mother had immortalised on his body for the sole purpose of teaching him a lesson – past and present, a macabre chronicle of scars.

My guts only clenched harder at the thought.

‘I was just very much not prepared,’ I managed, unsure if that was truly the root of the fear, but sure that it was at leastsomethingI wanted to say – something I needed him to understand. ‘For Beyla to drag me onto a battlefield. For you to be dying without any sort of warning there would be a fight at all. I … I don’t exactly like the idea of having to worry about you every minute you’re out of my sight, just in case you’re suddenly battling people again.’

He quietly stripped off his trousers, then looked up again – gloriously naked, but even that couldn’t persuade my heart to stop bouncing around my chest like a panicked deer. ‘There really is no need to worry that much about me, cactus.’

‘In that case, you did a pretty terrible job of making that point,’ I said weakly.

‘Admittedly.’ He hesitated, glancing at the bathroom and then at me, and sighed. ‘Want to help?’

I hauled myself off the bed, tore off my own blood-soaked dress, and followed him. Near-death experience or no, it would take more than a bit of panic for me to pass up a chance to rub soap all over him.

We worked in silence for a few minutes, in the dusky light of that small bathroom barely large enough for us to move around each other. I scrubbed the blood and sweat off his back with soap and warm water from the shallow basin, massaging the lather deep into his skin. He healed the last scrapes and bruises on my limbs with magic drawn from the dark stone walls. I brushed the grime off his wings, cautious not to put too much pressure on the newly healed surface, and he rinsed the filth from my hair, combing out the wet strands with his fingers with soft, heartbreaking tenderness.

They were safe, these silent moments. Sheltered. An intimacy so much quieter than the heated moments of last night, yet somehow no less intense – a slow, smouldering fire that ran as deep as any white-hot blaze had ever done.

It was in that steam-filled fog of lavender soap and warm bodies that he eventually quietly said, ‘I suppose it’s the curse of war that sometimes you have no choice but to take risks. And you never know quite how risky they are until you’re standing on a battlefield with an arrow in your back.’