Page 48 of With Wing And Claw

‘Ten summers or so.’ She hesitated, then staggered to the overstuffed armchair and allowed herself to sink into it – not sure when her righteous rage had morphed into this bone-deep confusion, but unable to revert to her earlier shouting now. At least she could think a little better with her face buried in her hands. ‘No, wait. It was a few months after I’d started my formal education in magic, so I must have been twelve or thirteen.’

‘Hmm.’ Even without seeing the demon’s face, the dissatisfaction was clearly audible in that short, hummed sound. ‘And then as you grew older, no one told you?’

‘I … I suppose they may have wanted to spare me the unpleasantness?’ Thysandra muttered.

A snorted huff. ‘Sparepeople? At the bloody Crimson Court?’

‘I know it may sound a little unlikely,’ she desperately said, jerking up her head again, ‘but the fact is no one even bothered me with the specifics. So …’

‘So the reasonable conclusion is they don’t know either,’ Naxi finished, shaking her pink and blonde curls over her shoulders with the air of someone winning a debate. ‘There’s no way they wouldn’t have used it against you otherwise.’

‘But …’ Fuck, whatwasit, that elusive memory slithering from her grip no matter how hard she tried to pin it down? ‘But that doesn’t makesense. Why in the world wouldn’t the Mother have told the court? Shealwaysdid. As a little warning not to follow the example, you know?’

Naxi shrugged, a sharp-toothed grin spreading over her face out of nowhere. ‘Maybe there wasn’t any treason?’

‘What?’ Thysandra snapped.

Naxi only spread her hands, looking smug.

‘No. No, that’s ridiculous.’ When the Mother framed innocents, at least she always came up with a decent story to tell the world, and besides … ‘Why would she execute him if he hadn’t done anything terribly wrong? He was one of her most powerful mages! He was far too useful to her to just do away with him like that – even Ophion admitted once or twice that it was annoying not to have—’

‘And yetsomethinghere is off, isn’t it?’ Naxi merrily interrupted.

The silence was a useless one, a proud, stubborn refusal to agree. The lack of disagreement said all there was to be said – that something was very, very off indeed. Something so glaringly obvious that it was hard to imagine it had never stood out to her before … Why in the world had she never asked these perfectly simple questions?

Had she beenthatdesperate to forget her father ever even existed?

‘What happened to your mother?’ Naxi cut through her thoughts, leaning forward on the couch, the gleam in her eyes reminiscent of a predator smelling its prey. ‘Do you know?’

‘She … she’s dead.’ As little as she tried to think about her father, somehow she’d spent even fewer thoughts on the memory of her mother – nebulous glimpses from a time when the world had seemed simple and happy. ‘I think she died a while before my father did?’

More narrowing of eyes. ‘How?’

‘What?’

‘How did she die?’

‘I …’ She faltered, a horrible hollowness to her thoughts once again. ‘I … I think …’

‘You don’t know,’ Naxi dryly concluded.

‘Don’t make it sound like I’m some sort of idiot!’ she burst out, her voice cracking with sudden frustration. ‘Fine, I could have asked! And I didn’t! But whatever my father did, it nearly killed me too, and it’s only by the grace of the Mother’s mercy that I survived – so ofcourseI haven’t gone digging in that history!’

‘Sashka.’ A deep sigh. ‘I’m not calling you an idiot.’

She blinked. ‘But—’

‘But you feel like an idiot? That’s an entirely different thing.’ Naxi’s grin was smug and strangely soft at once. ‘It’s all very interesting, don’t you think? These lapses in your memory? I’ll have to look into it.’

‘Intowhat?’ she croaked.

‘Oh, no matter. You need to calm down first. You feel—’

‘Calm down? You’re telling me to fucking calmdown?’ All at once the anger was back, flaring from her confusion like a rekindled flame – stronger now, even, with the weight of those blotted-out memories behind it. ‘When the court is about to come for my head? When the Alliance could sweep in any moment to deal the finishing blow? How the fuck am I supposed to—’

Naxi fell back into the couch, her expression a hair’s breadth removed from an eyeroll. ‘They won’t.’

She scoffed. ‘How would you know—’