Page 159 of With Wing And Claw

Two golden rings, one golden necklace, and she finally forced herself to turn away from the mirror. If she didn’t give herself a stern talking to, she might dither until nightfall.

Out onto the balcony. Fresh air brushed her face. Chirping birds sang in the trees below.

She let herself drop into the briny sea breeze.

Only by flying over it did she realise just how much destruction the Labyrinth had caused in the Mother’s bone hall. At the heart of the castle, a stretch of the roof had been torn away, edges curling likeburned parchment. The single glimpse she caught of the interior was as black as that light had been white, every inch of the hall burned to charcoal by the force of the mountain’s fury.

She remembered how her own skin had felt, open and raw, and shivered as she swerved away from the charred ruins.

Soon, she’d have that last reminder of the Mother’s court torn down. Hell, she might smash the walls to pieces with her own damn hands.

Soon.

But first …

She pressed away the cowardly urge to take a detour, making straight for the south of the island instead.

Creon’s pavilion stood a little to the west of Faewood, where the trees were straighter and lighter and didn’t whisper tales of murder to each other. The silvery roof gleamed blindingly in the sunlight as she descended. The roses curling around the stained-glass windows looked even redder than they usually did – nymph magic, perhaps, or else the flowers were simply reacting eagerly to Naxi’s vicinity.

Which Thysandra quite understood.

It was bloody hard not to feel like a better, stronger, morealiveversion of herself with this particular half nymph around.

She stepped up onto the low porch and knocked lightly on the pale green window. Straightening her back was a useless gesture when every single person inside could read the nervousness directly from her heart, but she did it anyway – a fae had her pride, for hell’s sake.

‘Come in!’

Creon’s voice.

For perhaps the first time in a century, her magic threatened to slip from her control as she drew just enough red from her wing to make the window vanish. Only a hurried addition of just the smallest drop of blue kept the shards from erupting into the home beyond.

She’d visited the place plenty of times in her life, yet it was rare for her to actually step inside – see the light birchwood floor, the intricate wood carvings around the windows, the plush blue couch and ready-made bed. It had always felt dangerous. Like stepping into enemyterritory. Only now, the hate and the rivalry gone, did she recognise the pavilion for what it was: another safe refuge, another place to hide.

Creon still didn’t look quite like the Creon she knew, peeling onions at the kitchen table with the ease of a man who knew his way around a knife.

Naxi, on the other hand, looked so very much like herself that it was hard to fathom she was real.

She was sitting at the short side of the table, rosy and golden, a half-finished flower wreath between her petal-stained fingers. A moment ago, she must have been chattering cheerfully. Now, her eyes had gone wide like saucers, her lips parted in a never-uttered squeal – as if she might have hidden beneath the bed if Creon had been just a heartbeat slower to reply to that cautious knock.

On the edge of Thysandra’s sight, the bastard was looking very fucking content with himself. She couldn’t be bothered to waste any thoughts on that observation.

Because Naxi washere.She shouldn’t have been anywhere near the court anymore, shouldn’t have wasted a single minute more in a place she hated to the very core of her demon soul – yet here she was sitting, radiant like sunlight, beautiful like the first rosy blossoms of spring, and even if it was silly and reckless to hope …

Thysandra couldn’t help it.

Just a tiny little sparkle of it, but enough to get her through the empty window frame. Enough to clear her throat, clear her throat again, and say, ‘Morning?’

You gave your family every reason to trust you, she’d snapped at that dainty, delicate face.Didn’t you?

She heard it again in the small beat of silence.

‘More like afternoon, actually,’ Creon helpfully pointed out, chucking his onion into an oven dish with the others and plucking another one from the unpeeled pile.

That was enough reason to avert her eyes and send him a blistering glare. He returned a smile that was a little too pale for the breezy carelessness in his voice – a smile that saidI know, andI’m sorry, and mostof all,let’s talk about that mother of mine later, when you’re done sorting things out with the demon about to explode beside me.

They must have heard she was awake.

He might have been the only person capable of keeping Naxi here in the time that had since passed.