Page 146 of With Wing And Claw

‘Marvelous,’ Thysandra said, clinging to her ice-cold smile as she took another step back. No need to rush this. Time was all she needed, and every second might make the difference – so she leaned back against the red wall, deliberately languid, before adding, ‘I suppose that makes us enemies, then?’

He shrugged, but it was no longer an indifferent gesture. Rather, the slow, calculating calm of a male waiting for the first strike. ‘I suppose it makes you a traitor like your father, mostly.’

Once upon a time, she would have winced.

But the hounds did not howl in the back of her mind now. Her wings didn’t itch to curl into a shield around her. Poison and wounds and exhaustion be damned, her bruised, bone-weary body was coming back to life again – the anticipation of battle breathing fire into every soldier’s fibre of her.

If she had to be a traitor, at least she’d do it well.

She’d do it loud enough for all the court to hear.

‘To you, maybe,’ she said, and it felt like breaking out of a cage to finally speak the words aloud. A wild, reckless grin spread on her face. ‘But not to my heart.’

And before he could move, she drew a burst of red from the wall and slammed the walkway beneath their feet to splinters.

Chapter 30

Naxi was running harderthan she ever had in her life.

Thorns and pebbles stung her feet. Brambles lashed her face. The gnarled trees of Faewood shot by in a blur of green and grey and brown on either side, their branches reaching out to her at every step – as if to snatch her hair and clothes. As if to stop her before she could do something hopelessly, monumentally stupid.

Like going back.

She did now slow down.

She should not be doing this. Even now, the voices were there in the back of her mind, reminding her that she was a demon, that she lacked compassion, that shedid not care. She might die if she kept running. She might get grievously hurt. She had every bloody reason in the world to stand still and rethink her choices in life, and yet she … didn’t.

Standing still meant giving up on Thysandra.

And selfishness lost its meaning in the face of that thought.

Past the swords and arrows. Past the graveyard clearings. Up, up, up the hill, to where the mountain slope rose sharply from the earth. Herbreath came in ragged gasps, her legs burned with the effort, and still she did not slow down.

How long would it take Nicanor to act?

The image of that mauled corpse wouldn’t leave her mind’s eye. She didn’t feel sorry for Gadyon, or at least not in the way Inga or Silas did – that deep, nauseous sorrow, as if they needed to feel the dead male’s pain on his behalf. But the archivist had been kind. He’d cared. Even if she couldn’t share in whatever his feelings must have been, she rationally, intellectually knew that he shouldnothave died – and much, much more importantly, that no one else could follow him into hell.

She did not think she would survive it, finding Thysandra in that same spot, the hounds gnawing at her lifeless face.

Why, whyhad she left?

Hadn’t Mirova taught her what happened when she left?

It was the same old song all over again, a cruel, discordant tune that made her head spin. She walked, and behind her back, the world collapsed. Or not the world, even, but—

Home.

Where was that fucking mountain?

Be quick, Silas had told her, his face betraying the turmoil within him for once.He may already have set his plans in motion. We may already be too late.

Sheshouldhave bitten off the bastard’s fingers when he’d looked at Thysandra with those greedy eyes.

Thysandra.Thysandra. With her stupid sense of duty and her stupid distrust. With her stupidly stunning smile. With her locks and her daggers and her ever-ready supply of red – with her fiercely guarded heart thathadbegun to open up at last … Perhaps it was selfishness, going back. Perhaps it was not that she wanted to spare Thysandra the pain but that she would hurt just as much herself, having to live in a world in which Thysandra was not happy.

Was that empathy?

Naxi no longer cared whether it was or not.