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His curt laugh spoke volumes. ‘No.’

‘While Thysandra …’ I sucked in a breath between my teeth. ‘Well. Thysandra.’

‘I’m not the objective voice of reason you might need when it comes to Thysandra,’ he said under his breath, head in his hands when I turned back to him. ‘As Agenor said – bad blood. I may understand her, but it’s hard for me to sympathise with the person who insisted I was living the life of her dreams while I was throwing up from pain and being sent right back into the training ring for the fifth time that day.’

A shudder ran through me. ‘Yes, I thought it might be something like that.’

‘You were right, as usual.’ He sighed, looking up. ‘That said, my old grudges are a terrible reason to let her rot away in a cell if we need her to help us out in the end. So …’

‘So we need to figure out something better.’ I wandered over to the wardrobe, where piles of my underwear had slowly claimed several of his drawers for themselves. ‘Trying to make her open up is probably the wrong approach altogether, don’t you think? You changed your mind those days because Lyn kept talking toyou, not because you were being besieged by people who needed something from you.’

This time he didn’t answer.

I glanced over my shoulder as I snatched my underwear from its drawer, heart skipping a beat – had I said something wrong again? But there was no anger in his expression, no unexpected sharpness. He sat motionless on the edge of the bed, wings draped loosely over the blankets but a frown on his face that looked not nearly so leisurely – a look that was at once a puzzle and a solution.

Our gazes met.

And just like that, I knew exactly what he was thinking.

‘How much do you trust her?’ I said slowly. ‘Naxi?’

His wry smile told me I’d hit the mark on my first try. ‘I trust her to know what she wants, at least. So if we can make sure that doesn’t involve, say, destroying any more bindings …’

There was no need to finish that sentence.

Gods help me, it wasaddictive, the way our thoughts intuitively found each other and took solid shape in the empty space between us. The wicked twinkle in his eyes. The sudden clarity of my mind. It was no longer the fear of shameful failure that drove my limbs to move; instead, it was the rush of knowing exactly what to do.

‘Lyn and Tared …’ I started.

Creon shrugged. ‘They have good reasons to be cautious.’

‘They’ll try to stop us.’

‘Probably,’ he admitted dryly.

‘So then it’s probably best if I go alone,’ I said, stepping into my underwear and striding to the chair where I’d chucked my clothes last night. ‘They’d forgive me much more easily than you if they were to find out.’

He looked like he wanted to object, but remained silent as I slipped into the indigo dress I’d worn last night. It still smelledof ink and bird. I shook my messy curls over my shoulder and plopped down onto the armrest to put on my socks, looking up again only once I’d finished that task.

He still hadn't moved. He still wore that troubled look – the expression of a male torn between two unpleasant choices.

‘You don’t want me to go alone,’ I concluded, grimacing.

With a joyless chuckle, he slumped on the edge of the bed, shaking his head. ‘I feel you’re doing more than enough on your own already.’

‘So are you.’ I hopped off the chair, walked over to the desk, and pulled the key Tared had pressed into my hands two days ago from the smallest drawer. ‘I’ll be fine, I promise. And youreallydon’t want to be found doing anything that could be interpreted by unhappy allies as an attempt to free Thysandra, no matter what your true intentions may be.’

His lips quirked into a smirk that made my stomach feel too tight for my guts. ‘Whereas it would be perfectly fine if you were caught doing any such thing?’

I glared at him. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Oh, yes. You mean you’re determined to do everything by yourself again.’ This time, that skewed little smilehadto be deliberate, the devilish gleam in the black of his eyes. It might look innocent enough, the way he casually stretched his legs in front of him – but I’d be damned if he didn’t know exactly what it did to the toned lines of his muscles, or how the motion mercilessly drew the eye to the half-hard masterpiece between his thighs. ‘One condition, then.’

‘I don’t make blind deals with fae,’ I said with a snort.

‘There’s nothing blind about this,’ he dryly informed me. ‘You’re seeing exactly what you’re getting.’

‘That’s the condition?’ It would have been more satisfying if my voice had sounded convincingly outraged, rather than choked and a fraction wobbly. ‘Fucking you?’