Page 128 of With Wing And Claw

‘Oh, and Thysandra?’ Tared’s brief smile was joyless as the grave. ‘Better keep Naxi alive, if you ever want to see a single kernel of that grain.’

And just like that, the five of them were gone.

Dissolved into thin air like wisps of smoke … and armed fae were still pouring in through the windows.

She didn’t even havetimeto think about that last thinly veiled threat – about grain, about peace, about her hopes and plans shattering like the flagstone tiles beneath her feet. Magic was raining down upon her. She had nowhere to take shelter, and what little red had been mixed into the blue of her dress was gone. And Naxi …

A bloodcurdling cry rose from the other side of the hall.

Naxi.

The world stopped turning.

Because it turned out her decisions were so very straightforward after all, instinctive enough to pass for reflexes – damn the trade and the politics, the secrets she hadn’t been able to keep. None of them mattered right now. What mattered was the simple fact that Naxi was there, and she was here, and if she didn’t move rightnow, they would both be dead within minutes.

Her wings had already swept out wide.

With no other options left, attack was her only defence.

She shot towards the vaulted ceiling with such speed the maze of statues blurred beneath her, streaks of red whooshing past her like crimson lightning. Something sharp slashed her shoulder. She did not slow down, and above her, a white-haired fae male got out of the way a fraction too late; she smacked into him with the force of a sledgehammer, feeling the air rush from his lungs in an audibleoof.

Her dagger dug into his wing as she spun around at breakneck speed, using their combined momentum to fling him sideways through the air. He slammed into a unit of other fae hurtling towards her, sending their attack scattering.

Temporary relief. A dozen others were already rushing closer on her right.

She dove to avoid their magic, eyes feverishly scanning the ground below. Cracked limestone and shattered marble. The occasional fae corpse sprawled across the rubble. Endless stretches of white and grey and crimson-stained stone, and …

There.

A single fleck of pale eggshell blue.

In the northern corner off the hall, surrounded by a sea of broken glass, Naxi cowered between a pedestal and a knocked-down marble wing. A handful of dead fae lay strewn across the floor around her. None of them had been able to reach her, then …

But a pool of blood was spreading around her bare feet.

Thysandra was already diving.

A sculpture of a sword-bearing fae queen blew to pieces beneath her, and lumps of marble hit her on the chest, the hip. She barely felt the pain. Down and farther down, a descent so swift she was practically plummeting – wings sweeping out in the fraction of a moment before she crashed like a comet into the floor, braking just enough not to break her legs. Her foot caught on a piece of debris all the same as she landed, and her ankle twisted sharply as the rest of her weight slammed down upon it.

Her muffled curse coincided with Naxi’s ‘Sashka!’

The piercing pain in her ankle vanished the next moment.

‘Don’t youdare,’ she ground out, ducking as a flare of red shot by her face, then turning to face Naxi in her blood-smeared hiding place. The demon’s skin was even paler than usual – the wrong sort of pale, greyish rather than blushing pink. ‘You’ve got enough pain of your own to take mine, too. Where are you bleeding?’

The throb in her ankle did not return as Naxi choked out, ‘Soles. Glass.’

Fuck.

‘Alright.’ That was a lie. Already their attackers were descending again. ‘Give me your feet. At least I’ve got plenty of blue in this useless thing.’

Naxi let out a little sob as she stretched out one slender leg. ‘You do look very nice in it.’

‘That’ssomething,’ Thysandra rasped, cursing again as she caught her first glimpse of Naxi’s wounds. At least a dozen small shards of glass were lodged in her calloused skin, some of them embedded so deeply she could only deduce their existence by the cuts they’d caused. ‘Please go torture some fae to feel better. This is going to hurt.’

Eyes squeezed shut, Naxi obliged. Above their heads, one or two individuals who’d strayed too close began screaming; the rest hurriedly swept back, allowing the sunlight in again.

Thysandra gritted her teeth, dipped her left hand into the pool of blood, and drew out the red she needed to evaporate the glass shards. Just enough for the wounds. Too much for thehealthyparts of Naxi’s foot, though: where the glass hadn’t been to absorb the magic, the red had torn open skin and callouses, blood pouring free from a dozen new places now. Untidy work, and if she’d had time, she could have done better – but in this case, by the time she’d have taken out even half these shards, they’d both be dead.