Page 118 of With Wing And Claw

Thysandra blinked at the door one last time, then cursed and dragged herself off the couch, onto her bare feet.Forward. Towards the bathroom. Scented steam whirled towards her. She staggered over the threshold, onto the lilac floor tiles, and almost passed out at the sight of the plush white towels waiting for her.

‘Need help?’ Naxi said, looking up from the bottles of bath oil she’d been studying.

Thysandra’s reflex was to say no. Help was always costly in the end.

But she did need it.

She needed it, and Naxi had never been going anywhere.

‘Yes,’ she mumbled, shutting the door behind her. ‘Please.’

She steadied herself against the wall, the edges of the gold and ivory mosaic tiles harsh against her fingers, as Naxi’s quick hands unbuttoned the back of her dress, then the slits for her wings. They steadied her, those touches. Nothing sensual about them, nothing seductive; they trailed down her spine and over her shoulder blades feeling simply like … care.

Liketenderness.

The dark red silk slid off, pooling around her feet like discarded skin. Her underwear came next, and then she was naked, the bath beckoning in a haze of steam and chamomile scent.

‘Go on,’ Naxi murmured, nudging the small of her back.

She stumbled forward. Her hands found the cool ceramic of the bathtub; her legs somehow managed to lift themselves. The water was almost painfully hot, a temperature so perfect she couldn’t help but moan as she sank into it – letting it seep into every pore of her body, rinsing out the poison and sweat and the wine and the fear.

Rinsing out something older, too, a tightness that slumbered so deep in her bones she had not known of its existence until it uncoiled.

She was alive.

And somehow she was … not alone.

It didn’t make sense. Life was a solitary fight, each for their own and none for all – or at least that was what the court and the Mother had taught her. But the Mother had lied. The Mother had died. Her fatherhadtried to save her, and even Creon had not torn her down for the cruel pleasure of it …

Soft hands prodded her knees. ‘Move over, Sashka.’

Only then did she realise she’d closed her eyes.

Naxi was already climbing into the tub when she opened them, her small, delicate body moving with swift grace as she lowered herself opposite Thysandra. Water sloshed over her small breasts, her shoulders, turning her pale skin pink. Their knees slid together for a moment, a gentle, fleeting touch. No seduction, still – no giggling propositions, no challenges, no skilful hands sliding up Thysandra’s thighs …

Nothing that could make this worth a demon’s while.

And yet.

They lay in comfortable stillness for a few minutes, nothing but the lapping of the water and the rhythm of their slowing breaths to break the silence. Steam curled around the glowing faelights. Warmth misted the mirrors. The ripples of the water sent flecks of reflected light dancing across the ceiling, and Thysandra stared at them until she no longer saw anything else, too mesmerised by the dizzying patterns to remember to worry.

An eternity had passed when Naxi sighed, not lifting her head from the rim of the tub. Her voice was quiet, almost drowsy, as she murmured, ‘My mother was scared of me, you know.’

There was a weight to that sudden statement. A sense of meaning – as if this was the answer to a question Thysandra had asked mere moments before.

In the soothing heat of the bath, it took her a few blinks to realise that in a sense, she had. That she had been wildly and helplessly confused. That she still was, really.

Why are you still here?

Demon senses. She had not needed to speak the words out loud.

‘Your … mother?’ she stammered, belatedly.

‘I didn’t know it at first, of course. Before my demon powers developed.’ Naxi’s voice remained distant. Monotone. Her unseeing eyes were aimed at the wall. ‘And then when they did, I didn’t know what that feeling meant for a while, because my family members weren’tscared of much else around me. Not until the war came. That was when I realised that what they felt for me was not unlike what they felt for the fae warships passing by our shores.’

Understanding rose – slowly and horribly.

‘And they never told me just what my father did to my mother before he left.’ A small, joyless smile curled around those soft, pink lips – a smile of resignation. Of a wound that would never fully heal. ‘They still loved me, you see. In all the ways I could never love them. So they tried not to let me notice what I reminded them of … but of course I knew damn well that there wasn’t a pretty ending to that story.’