Page 149 of With Wing And Claw

She did not pause to see where they had gone.

Down the passageway before her, deeper and deeper into the heart of the castle. Behind her, fae soared into the gallery. Before her … fuck, before her they came pouring from side passages as well, corralling her like cattle for slaughter. She slowed down – she had no choice but to slow down, trying to figure out which doors she had left to flee through…

Something sharp hit her left wing.

Fuck.

She staggered, needing a moment too long to regain her balance. Laughter went up behind her. The first escape she could find, then – could she even still fly?

Problem for later.

She yanked open the door to her right, lunged into the room beyond. Before the windows, the sky was dark with fae.

Fuck.

Red magic filled the doorway.

No choice left but to attack – so she planted her left hand on the ebony table at the centre of the room, unleashed its every spark of red at the fae spilling in through the open door, and leapt back into the corridor in the moment of chaos. A fae male staggered against her. She drove a dagger into his guts, twisting him around to shield herself behind his wing.

A matter of minutes, now.

She gritted her teeth and struggled forward, dragging the dying male along.

Red tore through her boots, hitting her still vulnerable ankle. Red sliced across the back of her neck. With a gasp, she staggered back against the wall, drawing the colour from her own blood to strike, strike, strike … It was no use. They were crowding in on all sides, triumph glinting in their eyes already – the traitor queen of the Crimson Court, about to breathe her final treasonous breath.

Pain slashed her arms. Her chest. She managed to drag enough blue from her paling dress to heal a ragged wound just below her heart but lost a valuable fraction of a second in the process; the rhythm of her charges broken, she was too late, too slow, to respond to the onslaught of magic hurled at her from all sides. A dagger was flung at her, and she jerked her head aside just in time. A fae female stormed towards her on the left in a storm of red, and it took two attempts too many to hit her throat and take her down.

A sword rose to her right.

Thysandra already knew she’d be too slow.

Strange, how time slowed when she needed it to be over quickly – how the details of the world around her sharpened to almost unbearable clarity when she least wanted to see them. The sunlight glinting on the edge of the blade. The metallic tang of blood. Her heart, beating loud enough to drown out the howls and insults around her – as if even her pulse was counting down the seconds …

This was it, then.

She closed her eyes and saw Naxi beaming back at her.

How long had she been running – thirty minutes? Please let it be enough,pleaselet it be—

Steel scraped the wall beside her head.

Besideher head. Notthroughher head – and before she’d regained the presence of mind to process that unexpected development, before she fully realised she was still breathing, still thinking, still moving …

Hell broke loose.

Her eyes flew open.

For a moment, she couldn’t make out anything on the far side of the hall but the tangle of moving bodies and red crackling like lightning around them. Fae attacking fae. More idiots coming to her undeserved rescue? But these newcomers fought too well, too easily, to be clerks who hadn’t seen battles in decades, and only then did she recognise that striking sweep of auburn hair …

Orthea?

No, that did not make sense. Orthea wouldn’t come to her aid unless her own life depended on it, and even then, it might be a close call. Yet itwasthe Master of Ceremony leading that charge, and next to her— Hell, was that Rhias?

The fucking harbour master? Who’d smirked at her so hatefully when she found him having breakfast with—

Oh.

Silas?