Page 12 of With Wing And Claw

Willing herself to become invisible.

She shouldn’t have been able to sleep as the hubbub grew louder around her tower. Centuries and centuries of training, of habitual alertness, should not have allowed her to. But she’d spent too many nights on that hard, narrow bench bed in the Alliance’s hideaway, and even her heart had grown exhausted of its own rattling and pounding. Now, hidden between the warm, downy blankets of her own familiar bed, her body pulled her into slumber within minutes, forcing her into a semblance of rest that her mind could not find.

The world had gone dark and quiet when she woke up, the fists and voices vanished. No holes in the walls and doors. No knives against her throat. No demons by her bedside, smiling sweet smiles and spinning tempting fairytales of commitments that she could never,neverafford to believe in.

Her thoughts, miraculously, had gone equally still.

She felt as if she was still dreaming when she slipped out of bed and made her way back to the living room through the eerie, mournful silence, the floorboards cold beneath her bare feet. But her damp towel was there, proof she truly had taken that much-needed bath. Her tangled, black-and-gold hairs still stuck in her hairbrush. Her dagger still lay where she’d chucked it away after chasing Naxi out of her rooms.

Which meant the rest of it still had to be true as well.

High Lady of the Crimson Court.

There was no more disbelief left inside her. No more anger and grief. She sank into the plush velvet of her couch, hollow and cold, and let the words play through her mind again and again, breathing them, exploring their ragged edges under her fingertips.

Thysandra Thenessa. Traitor’s daughter. Demonbane. High Lady ofthe Crimson Court.

In the world she knew and understood, there was not a single way for that sequence of titles to make sense. But the world she knew and understood was gone … and soon, very soon, the consequences would arrive at this court, not nearly as heroic as bloody battles or trials for traitors, but potentially far more deadly. No more human tributes delivering food. No more servants working to clean, to build, to organise. If no one took up the reins, the court would descend into violent chaos within weeks – and the rest of the archipelago would be all too glad for an excuse to sweep in again and burn the whole place to the ground.

So if the island she called her home was to be saved,someonewould have to step up and save it.

Could she do it?

It seemed unlikely, when, for all her cunning and godsworn magic, even the Mother had lost the battle in the end. Yet the fear wouldn’t stir, even as she rose and padded quietly to the arched windows – the wary movements of her limbs not enough to ripple the flat, almost lifeless surface of her emotions.

The island stretched out below her when she nudged aside the curtains, the familiar landscape serene and strangely unchanged in the silvery moonlight. There was the rugged mountain range at the heart of the territory, running westward from the castle. The spiderwebs of light on the north coast, drawing the outlines of fae and human settlements. The darkness of Faewood in the south and the single brighter blot of Creon’s home. She knew every single inch of the view like the palm of her hand, yet tonight, it looked as still and lifeless as the void inside her – as if even the cliffs and the trees were holding their breath, waiting for the world to finish shifting around them.

She could make it stop.

All she had to do was accept it.

It might kill her within weeks, taking the throne … but then, what alternative did she have? If she ran, the revelation of her treason would end her just as quickly. Falling on her sword to avoid the choice would merely be a swifter path to the same outcome. So if she had no better option either way, she might as well try. She might as well fight.

And if she did…

The glass was pleasantly cold against her skin as she rested her forehead against the window, drawing in the crisp air of the night – deeper and deeper, until she felt her lungs might explode with it. If she was going to try …

Damn it all, then she was going to do itwell.

Because she might be a traitor's daughter, she might be a turncoat set up to fail – but shedidknow how to play this game. She had never played anything else. So she would forge the right alliances and make the right bargains and fight the right battles … and who knew? Perhaps that would save her for a while.

If she was careful, if she stayed far away from meddling demons and their pretty promises, she might even make it to the end of the year alive.

It was as if her thoughts had been in shackles, too, and hadn’t been unchained until this moment – until finally,finally, the mist and the noise lifted from around her. For the very first time since Agenor had pulled her from her cell, the pieces were moving across her mind again. Not yet playing the game but finding their places on the board – getting ready to strike and strategize.

Tonight, she would think.

Tonight, she would rest.

And tomorrow …

Damn it all. Tomorrow, she’d be Thysandra Demonbane, High Lady of the Crimson Court, and reap the fruits of her treason.

Chapter 4

Dawn arrived in shadesof orange and ruby-red, as if even the sky itself wished to celebrate her wretched rise to power. By the time the sun came peeking over the horizon, Thysandra was out of bed and fully awake – her spine and wings still sore from her prison stay below the earth but her mind almostpeaceful, and infinitely clearer with concrete goals to focus on.

Save the court.