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My breath escaped in a burst so sudden it hurt. ‘Oh, gods. He … he’s alive?’

Tared didn’t reply, sinking to his knees to lower Edored into the grass with a long, shivering exhalation. His own trousers were three quarters drenched, his chest and upper arms covered in red blots and nail scratches – evidence of Edored’s vehement fight as he was plunged into the water that saved him.

But the progression of the plague magic … it appeared to have halted.

For a few instants, no sound disturbed the silence but Tared’s ragged breaths and the water dripping onto the flagstone tiles. I glanced at Creon, who had gone cold and unreadable, and back at Tared, who looked like he was bracing himself for something thoroughly unpleasant – a jarring quietness after the whirlwind of their flawless cooperation of a moment ago.

I swallowed. ‘Should we—‘

‘I suppose,’ Tared sharply interrupted me, rising to his feet and scowling at Creon like a male prepared for a bareknuckle fistfight, ‘I’m expected to thank you on my bare knees for this?’

I snapped my mouth shut.

That wasfuryburning in the alf’s grey eyes, sharp and venomous. Where in hell was this coming from? Had Creon given the impression he expected grovelling gratitude at any moment in the past minutes – had heeverdone any such thing?

But Creon merely raised an unimpressed eyebrow and coldly signed,You can keep your clothes on, as far as I’m concerned.

‘Could the two of you pick literally any other moment for this nonsense?’ I bit out, just in time to cut off Tared’s sharp inhalation. ‘Edored is still not exactly looking his best. Can we heal him with blue magic now, at least?’

Creon flicked the most careless flash of blue at Edored’s marred face, the way one might toss a mouldy piece of bread in the trash. The raw burn wounds did not soften.

‘Fuck,’ Tared muttered.

‘Naxi’s wounds healed with time, didn’t they?’ I said nervously, remembering the burns with which the little half demon had come down after her first exploration of the continent. ‘If we give it a few weeks, Ylfreda might be able to fix this, too?’

‘Yes.’ Tared bit out another muffled curse. ‘But that does mean we’re going to have to send him back home.’

I decided not to say that seemed a wise idea in any case. Creon merely threw a quick glance at Edored’s contorted face and signed,Need any assistance?

‘How very fucking selfless, Hytherion.’ I’d never heard Tared this close to cracking, his voice balancing on that thin edge between snapping and shouting. What in hell was going on? Was this just the panic of Edored’s near death breaking to the surface?

Creon’s smile was a sprinkle of salt into a freshly carved wound.You know me.

‘Unfortunately,’ Tared bit out. ‘I’d—'

‘Hey!’ I interrupted, my voice cracking. ‘If you idiots are so gods-damned determined to make a fight out of this, could you at least do itlater? This really isn’t the moment to …’

In a flicker of light, Beyla appeared with Lyn and Naxi by her side.

And then the courtyard was flooded with cries of horror and sobs of relief, rattled questions and panicked suggestions – enough consternation to pull the two of them apart for at least a few minutes.

But I saw the last looks they exchanged, and those did not suggest the war was over.

Chapter 14

Thesmalltemplekitchenwas painfully silent without Edored shouting poorly timed remarks at me.

We waited in tense silence for the larger part of the afternoon, barely speaking except to ask each other how long it had been since Tared had faded his cousin and Naxi to the Underground to discuss the situation with Ylfreda. Lyn furiously browsed through the piles of books she had uncovered in the temple that morning, fidgeting with her hair until she was a fuzzy little ball of bright orange at the dinner table. Creon lounged by the fire, glancing through disintegrating parchment scrolls, slender fingers unfolding text after text with an unwavering air of royal boredom. Beyla paced back and forth, throwing frustrated glances at the sun every time she passed the window, and I stared at walls and felt like an idiot.

Family or love.

Even the memory of Edored’s glassy eyes and burned cheeks were not enough to squash that brand new insight, the words running through my veins like chilling poison. How had it taken me a midnight temple abduction and the unexpected honour of Tared’s brother’s sword to figure out that this was not just a matter of warfare and strategy?

With Edored and his loose tongue gone, I had no heroic reasons left not to tell the rest of the company they could give up on their attempts to keep me away from Creon. Hell, Lyn and Naxi already knew. All I had to do was inform Tared and Beyla of the inevitable, and life would get immeasurably easier – the part of my life, at least, that consisted of reading books in Creon’s arms and kissing him awake in the mornings and sleeping wrapped in velvet wings at night.

The problem …

How very fucking selfless, Hytherion.