Page 109 of With Wing And Claw

As if in a dream, she watched a handful of fae make for her table, still in their hunter’s costumes, red smears on the fabric that might be wine or blood or both. Next to her, Nicanor was snapping commands. Around the hall, soldiers moved into position. There were not nearly enough of them, though, and even if reinforcements were waiting nearby …

The fae jostling towards her were unsheathing their blades.

She had to move – she had tomove– but her body remained stiff with shock even as her mind screamed at her to stand and defend herself, and—

And the first of her attackers started screeching.

He silenced the hall more easily than any commands or intervening soldiers could have done – that jarring, ear-splitting howl that seemed more animal than fae. His knees buckled. His hands went grasping, grabbling, for knives or anything sharp at all as gasps ofnoandpleaseandend it. She’d seen it before so many times, decades and decades of studying the work of any demon to visit the court, and yet she could not stop staring now as the crimson-clad male before her jerkily managed to unsheathe his own dagger, sobbing in invisible pain.

‘Stop him!’ someone bellowed from the back of the hall.

No one dared to lunge forward.

The fae male was still screaming as his blade sank between his own ribs.

His voice died away in a wet gurgle as he went slack on the crystalline floor … and then there was no sound left at all, the hall so quiet a pin-drop would have been a thunderclap. Around the tables, fae stood frozen. By the doors, Nicanor’s people had stiffened with their swords half-sheathed. Only the dead male’s companions moved, quiet like thieves in the night, as they inched back and away from his cramped corpse and away, most of all, from …

Naxi.

Who sat leaning on the table with one thin elbow, chin in her hand, smiling serenely at the deadlocked hall before her.

Two chairs away from her, Orthea looked about to be violently sick.

It was no well-considered strategy that had Thysandra turning back to the gathered court before her. There was no diplomacy to it. If anything, it was a lifetime of battlefield training that moved her lips now – the instinct, ingrained in her bones by years and years and years of fighting for her life, to never let forward momentum go to waste.

‘Thank you, Orthea,’ she heard herself say through the numb spinning of her own thoughts, and somehow she said it calmly, placidly, raising her own glass again as if in genuine gratitude. ‘And with that, I declare the feast opened. Enjoy your meal, everyone.’

Reckless audacity.

Then again, safe decisions didn’tlead to victory.

And the slain hunter still lay before her table in the growing pool of his own blood. Naxi still sat smiling so saintly – unable to take on more than a dozen fae at once, perhaps, buttheysure as hell did not know where that limit might lie.

Around the hall, fae began sitting down.

Not a victory. A stay of execution, if anything. But for now …

For now, she was alive.

She did not sag back in her seat with relief. Relief was weakness, and weakness was death – more so now than ever. Instead, she scooped a generous helping of venison onto her plate, then took another sip of wine – anything to look as if she had matters well under control. Anything to make the few hundred fae around her believetheywould be the ones on the losing side if they tried to attack her once again.

For now.

She did not dare to look at Nicanor. She did not dare to look at Naxi. Looking at anyone else for help would be weakness, too.

She stared sedately ahead instead, straight into the empty eyes of the dead hound, as hushed conversations slowly picked up again around her. She chewed venison and tasted dust.

For the sake of her cowardice.

A hundred and thirty loyal patriots …

Traitor’s daughter.

The heat in the hall was stifling, sticking to her skin like moist summer air. No matter how hard she tried to think and plan andunderstand, her thoughts kept sliding from her grasp – not so much scattered as bogged down, heavy like sluggish mud seeping between her fingers. She took another sip of wine. Her hand almost felt too heavy to lift the glass.

Think, Thysandra.

Someone had betrayed her. Not Nicanor’s people, the ones tasked with arresting their targets – they had never known the intention was to deliver the captives to the Alliance in the end. But Orthea had.