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I gave a small smile, remembering just in time not to shrug with Alyra on my shoulder. Four chairs away, Agenor drew in an audibly unhappy breath but said, ‘Yes.’

‘One mage against the entirety of the Crimson Court?’ a gruff-looking alf barked, his frown distorting the crude wolf tattoos drawn over his face and neck. ‘Even if she’s godsworn’ – a few people flinched at that – ‘that seems a little ambitious to me.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of confronting the Mother head-on,’ I said, unpleasantly aware that this was the first time many of them heard me speak. It added too much weight to every word leavingmy lips, no matter how hard I tried to sound like addressing the collective leadership of the immortal world was something I’d done on a daily basis in the twenty-one years of my life. ‘And it would be at least two of us. Creon knows the court better than I do.’

And just like that, the first impression was ruined.

It was barely a silence, the heartbeat of speechlessness that followed. It was too full of sharp inhales and curling lips to ever be counted as such, a hundred furious objections rising in that moment stretching from my last syllable to the first snarled response. I steeled myself, ready for the inevitable –fae whoreor some version of it, every ugly rumour and shred of truth that had been circling the archipelago for weeks—

‘And if I need to refresh anyone’s memory,’ Tared cut in, sounding bored, ‘Creon’s help was instrumental both in saving Tolya and in winning our first battle at the Golden Court. I suggest we don’t go down this path of discussionagain.’

The bite in that last word was unmistakable, and I saw several around the circle wince as they shut their mouths.

A strained silence fell. More than a few alves gave the impression they’d rather hand over their swords than agree with this madness, and yet none of them responded, save with a few deadly glares that Tared ignored with enviable indifference. Those cold greetings at the start of the evening … How many houses had he angered and offended just to get them to agree to Creon’s presence at this meeting?

‘Thank you,’ he dryly added when the hall remained quiet, and if he was at all bothered by the same question, his unhurried posture didn’t show it. ‘Please continue, Em.’

I forced a smile. ‘Much appreciated. Where were we?’

‘You mentioned you weren’t planning to charge at the Mother directly,’ Helenka said, pupil-less green eyes narrowed andaimed at me with ruthless sharpness. ‘So what are you thinking of? I doubt you’ll manage to sneak in through the back door.’

‘It’s a sentient back door,’ I said. ‘That might help.’

She stared at me as if I’d lost my mind.

‘Here’s what I’ve been thinking,’ I continued, which was, strictly speaking, a lie – some of these thoughts were Creon’s or Agenor’s ideas that had been bounced back and forth and honed by hours of deliberation this afternoon. But I’d informed them from the start that I wasn’t going to sit here as a weapon to be wielded by the rest of the world, and they obligingly stayed silent now, allowing me to set out my course as if no one but me had been involved in the plan. ‘We don’t have the forces towinagainst the Mother’s, especially with the bindings still in place. But I’m pretty sure we have the forces to distract her for a few hours, and if I can make use of that, it might be everything we need.’

‘The Labyrinth,’ one of the nymphs whispered, looking at Lyn. ‘You said she escaped through the Labyrinth, didn’t you?’

Lyn’s smile was like the midsummer sun – so bright it turned deadly.

‘It’s pretty friendly, assuming you’re polite to it,’ I said, and now Helenka was not the only one visibly doubting my sanity. ‘It saved my life when I escaped the court a few months ago. I’m reasonably sure I can convince it to help me through again, and then we’d be right at the heart of the court, immediately below the bone hall.’

The murmurs picking up around me might have sounded doubtful, but it was the right sort of doubt – the sound of people hesitant to hope rather than people determined to be unimpressed. A white-haired vampire king leaned over as if to bite me and groused, ‘And you think your godsworn magic will be enough to attack her?’

Attack. Not evenkill. They’d all stood before that blue- and black-eyed horror while she locked away their magic and their future; they’d all felt the extent of her power. Was it so strange they had trouble imagining the harm I might do?

‘I managed to blind her without any divine help at all,’ I said. Couldn’t hurt to remind them. ‘I do think I’ll be able to deal her at least a few blows, yes. And there’s still that throne she refuses to leave alone for a moment – depending on how much damage we can do by targetingthat, we may not even need to face her directly at all.’

‘But we don’t know what exactly her throne does.’

‘We don’t.’ I hated the fact itself more than having to confess it – hated that even after speaking with goddesses and reading several bookcases’ worth of histories, I still hadn't figured out the answer to that one essential question. ‘But her protectiveness suggests it can’t hurt to smash it to pieces.’

They were silent for a moment as they considered that. I dared to glance at Creon for the first time. Eyes dark, face unreadable, he lounged in his seat with all the lethal grace of a panther curling up for his afternoon nap, the perfect predator in his natural element. Only his fingers moved between us as my gaze slid his way, almost imperceptible twitches, forming the shapes I knew so well …

Love you.

It took every bit of self-restraint I possessed not to smile as I turned back to our audience.

‘So, say we do it the way you suggested …’ an alf with half-shaved hair began, the light around his tall frame flickering worryingly. They wouldn’t like to be kept away from the real action, Tared had warned us that afternoon, even if they would understand why sending a godsworn, unbound mage ahead was the only sensible choice. ‘What do you propose the rest of usdo in the meantime? Just storm the court and kill every single bastard we get within sword range?’

Someone to my left huffed, ‘Alves.’

The half-shaved male veered up as if a wasp had stung his bottom. ‘Oh, do you have any better suggestions, Vivesha? If our magic is useless, your tree tricks won’t be—’

‘Freydur,’ Tared interrupted sharply.

‘Tree tricks?’ the nymph queen who’d spoken shrieked in the same moment, soaring to a pitch that could have broken glass. ‘Our sacred magic –tree tricks? Should I be calling those swords of yours brute lumps of steel, if you—'