Page 119 of With Wing And Claw

Thysandra swallowed. A painful lump had settled in her throat. ‘I … I’m sorry.’

Naxi just gave another wistful sigh, sinking deeper into the fragrant water until only her head still rose above the surface.

‘I don’t think I want to be like him,’ she said then, suddenly.

Thysandra blinked. ‘Like your father?’

‘Yes. Old bastard.’ In a surge of wet skin and soaked pink curls, she sat straighter again, wiping strands of hair off her shoulders with quick, impatient hands. ‘I thought for a while that I wanted to be like him, because clearly I wasn’t like anyone else. But when I found him …’

She was silent for a moment, steam whirling around her, lips twitching with unspoken words.

There was something eerily unguarded about the look in her wide blue eyes – something that lay worlds away from her usual breezy cheer. That was innocence wielded as a weapon. This, on the other hand, the quiet, almost mournful contemplation in her gaze …

An invitation. An unveiling.

Thysandra was suddenly – inexplicably, yet unshakably – sure that these thoughts had never been spoken out loud to any other soul.

‘He didn’t really care about anything,’ Naxi whispered, finally. ‘None of his friends did. AndIdon’t really care about anything half of the time, either, but sometimes … sometimes …’

It hung heavy in the air for an infinitesimal moment, her faltering voice.

Then she pulled her bony knees to her chest, her small, mirthless huff abruptly self-aware again, and mumbled, ‘Sometimes I wish I did.’

It was in that very moment that Thysandra realised she was in love.

A surprise, and at the same time, the opposite of it – not the abrupt emergence of brand new feelings in her heart but rather the sudden awareness of what was already there, lurking in the shadows, waiting for her to finally discover what was right in front of her. Not lust. Not the thrill of newness. She didn’t care about the pleasure or the power or even the distraction from the deadly turning of the court.

She just …

She stared at the little demon curled up in her bathtub, frail, delicate, yet stronger than tempered steel, and wanted nothing but …her.

Naxi, who could support without subservience. Naxi, who could feel joy without weakness. A creature of opposites, of thrilling, terrifying unpredictability, and gods help her, Thysandra cravedallof it – the bright colours, the infectious laughter, and every shard of unexpected hurt hiding behind that façade. A want so great it hardly left room for breath in her lungs. So great that it should have felt dangerous, that it should have been a betrayal of every lesson life had ever taught her …

And instead, it felt like the safest thing in the world – a sanctuary welcoming her with open arms.

She was in love.

Gods help her. She was inlove.

With a demon who was by her very nature incapable of reciprocating the feeling, with a demon who should by all laws of her kind vanish one day and never look back … but also, with a demon who wished she cared.

It had to be fatigue, soreness, the poison still playing tricks with her mind, that all of a sudden it did not seem such a bad idea at all.

‘You …’ she started, grasping for words as the world rearranged itself around her. A whole new world, yet it felt startlingly familiar – a shock that felt rather like a relief. ‘You still … can’t feel love, can you?’

‘No,’ Naxi admitted, chewing on her bottom lip as she thoughtfully canted her head. The question didn’t appear to surprise her ‘No, I don’tthink I can. But on the other hand … I can’t juggle either, and Edored insists he could teach me if I just took the time to learn.’

Thysandra hadn’t thought herself capable of laughter just now.

A chortle escaped her all the same.

Naxi sank back into the water with a small grin flickering around her lips, as if even that short burst of laughter had been a victory in itself.

Again they were both quiet for a while – a more hopeful silence, somehow, even though Thysandra’s thoughts were still flailing like fledgling birds. She ought to feel more bewildered, shouldn’t she? Or at leastNaxiought to, picking up on these bewildering feelings? Something, most of all, should havechanged… and yet, against all rational thought, it rather seemed the world had more firmly established what had already been, as if reality had finally settled where it belonged.

She was in love. The question was just …

‘What do we do now?’ she muttered out loud, barely louder than the rippling water.