Page 59 of With Wing And Claw

She sat in silence until he pushed a mug into her hand and sank down on the edge of his bed. His expression had gone from dazed to grim, a look that said he definitely hadn’t invited her to cosily muse on the good old days together.

‘So,’ he finally said, savouring that one word, his eyes trained on the floor between them. ‘Why are you here, if the Mother didn’t send you?’

Again there was that tug of a force that wasn’t her own, a pull her lips and tongue couldn’t help but obey. ‘I’m trying to figure out what happened to my parents.’

He crooked up an eyebrow. ‘After all this time.’

‘What?’ she blurted, realising only a fraction of a second later that that might just count as a question … but her uncle took a sip of piping hot tea without showing any hurry to answer, so she dared to believe she hadn’t wasted one of her three precious truths. ‘I mean, I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘They’ve been dead for a while.’ The sharp set of his jaw didn’t fit the cold bluntness of the words. ‘So one wonders what has happened to suddenly rouse your curiosity, after four full centuries without them.’

He didn’t trust her.

The realisation should not have been such a slap in the face, and yet she almost winced at the impact – because ofcoursehe didn’t. She was the one who’d remained loyally at the Mother’s side for all those centuries, wasn’t she? The one who’d fought and killed for the sake of her tyranny? While he had hidden in this ghastly place and feared for his life – feared that people likehermight discover him …

‘She cast me out,’ she said quietly. ‘The Mother.’

He remained motionless, head tilted – eyes demanding better.

What more was there to say?I’m a fucking mess– that was the simple truth.I no longer know who or what to believe in. The court she’d thought she’d loved, the people she’d thought she knew, they’d all abandoned her – moved over for a brand new world in which she lacked all the security of known danger, in which she was a little fledgling all over again.

And who was to take her by the hand and teach her to navigate it, now the Mother was no longer there to do so?

If he’d spoken the question out loud, she’d have been forced to tell him. She could only be grateful that – knowingly or unknowingly – he’d at least spared her that humiliation.

‘I’mstarting to realise I’ve been lied to for most of my life,’ she muttered instead – still a confession that reeked of weakness, but at least one she could restrain, regulate. ‘About … almost everything, it seems. It’s making me doubt everything else I took as a given while the Mother was still alive.’

His face was hard, stony, in the dusty light. ‘I see.’

‘So I would very much like to know …’ No, wait. This was not the moment for noncommittal requests – not when she had far better means at hand to make sure she received the answer she needed. ‘What did my father do, exactly, that got him killed?’

For a single suspended moment, her uncle sat motionless.

Then, averting his face, he said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘What?’ It burst from her lips with too much force. ‘What do you mean, you—’

‘I only ever heard bits and pieces.’ He drew in a slow breath, mug balancing in one gem-covered hand as he ran the other through the half-inch of his dark hair. ‘What Echion told me was, “I did something entirely ill-advised, it may well be the end of me, and I won’t regret it for a moment.” He wouldn’t give me any details. Said I’d insist on butting in and making things worse if I knew the rest.’

‘He knew he was going to die,’ Thysandra said breathlessly.

‘He was prepared for the possibility, at least. He was also determined to get Cy and you out before he took you down with him.’ Again that hand through his shorn hair – jerky, agitated motions. ‘That was the plan, you see. I was to wait here for the two of you. You were supposed to join me in the middle of the night, and Cy would explain everything as we got the hell away from the court.’

You and your mother are going on a little trip tomorrow …

Her throat clenched suddenly and violently. ‘So shewasalive at that point. My mother.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Silas said grimly. ‘Up until the night before Echion died, she most certainly was alive.’

‘And … and then …’

‘Then I don’t know what happened.’ His breath was strained. ‘She never showed up here at the time she was supposed to. Neither did you,for that matter. There was no mention of her in any of the accounts I’ve ever heard of the day that followed, so I can only assume she somehow died during the course of that night. And Echion—’

Something glass-like shattered within her. ‘Yes. I … I know.’

‘Yes,’ he said tightly, returning his mug to his nightstand with a thud that was almost a bang. ‘I don’t suppose you forgot.’

And for a moment the silence had a different quality to it, not sharp and distrustful as before, but almost like a truce – because he might still be a stranger, but she knew that darkness on his face. She knew who his heart was bleeding for. No matter the years between them, they had lost the same male – friend, father – and there was something strangely comforting about grieving thesameperson for once in her life …