Page 138 of With Wing And Claw

Never mind about the torment, then.

‘Alright,’ Silas said, voice grim as he turned away. ‘Over here. Apologies for the distrust – we’ve been trying to figure out your movements for a while now.’

‘What?’ Her voice jumped. ‘Me?’

‘Don’t take it personally,’ Inga said brusquely, waiting for them on the other side of the clearing. Her eyes were red, her fingers and hair covered in mud. ‘But I didn’t tell anyone about the plans to move the humans, and I knew Silas couldn’t be the leak because he wasn’t at the court yet – so we figured it had to be Gadyon or Nicanor or you. We’ve beenmaking visits, these last few days. Tried to get useful information out of everyone.’

Oh.

They’d been sitting in Nicanor’s living room, the two of them, when Thysandra had walked in with the Alliance’s demands – even Inga making unusual attempts to appear amicable in the Lord Protector’s company. They’d been on their way to visit the archives together, too, when they’d found Gadyon’s confession last night.

‘But then there’s no more need to be suspicious of me, is there?’ she stuttered, trying to keep up with Silas’s longer strides.No reason except the gallery attack– but they didn’t know that much, and she had no reason to wince at the thought. She didnotcare. ‘We know it was Gadyon who leaked the information.’

‘Do we?’ Inga said bitterly.

Silas didn’t speak. Just held aside a curtain of vines for Naxi – not realising, apparently, that she could easily have willed them out of the way herself.

‘He wrote that it was him,’ Naxi said sheepishly, following as Inga turned and gestured at her to come along.

‘Yes.’ The girl’s voice was back at its usual level of brewing fury. ‘But that never made sense to me. He may appear messy, but his paperwork is always where it needs to be. Andifhe mislaid his notes …’ She sucked in a sharp breath as they passed between the next row of trees. ‘He wouldn’t have fled and never shown his face again. He would have dealt with the consequences.’

‘So we’ve been searching all night,’ Silas softly said behind them. ‘And then half an hour ago, we found this.’

Inga stood still with a strangled sound – almost a gag.

Before them, half-buried in the soil …

It was unrecognisable, the half-eaten corpse. Wings gone. Face gone. Nothing but bones left of the whole lower body. But around where the leg must have been, someone had meticulously brushed aside the mud and the leaves.

And there, pale and bloody, lay the twisted, misshapen skeleton of a foot.

Chapter 29

‘Thysandra?’

She didn’t want to return to wakefulness.

It hurt too much, the world outside the safe, dark cocoon of her own scarred wings. Here, curled up within herself, she was invisible. Protected. A small, hidden creature that might as well not exist, that no one could reach, that no one could harm.

Outside was the blood.

Outside was the betrayal.

Outside was the game she’d played all her life, the game she no longerwantedto play and yet could never,neverstep away from again – the game she’d forgotten for one stupid, sentimental illusion of love, and look what had come of it?

She’d shattered with the dozens of rulers in whose company she found herself.

‘Thys? Thys, can you hear me?’

A moan slippedover her lips.

‘Oh, thank the gods— I’m so sorry, Thys, but I’m going to need you to wake up, alright?’ The stinging pain in her shoulder dulled. She hadn’t noticed it until it vanished. ‘Wait, let me patch you up a little …’

This time, eyes half-opened, she did catch the flash of blue. Her ankle abruptly felt like an ankle again, rather than a throbbing, swollen weight attached to her equally sore legs.

‘There.’ More blue. More relief. She couldn’t even tell what parts of her body stopped hurting, just that the haze of agony cleared slightly with every burst of colour. ‘Does that help?’

Yes.