Page 66 of With Wing And Claw

But the court was still there, and so she had no choice. She somehow gathered the composure to send Silas and Nicanor’s remaining people to escort the human archivists home. She ordered Gadyon to find them a safer place to stay. Then suddenly the hall was almost empty and only Inga and Naxi were left by the writing tables – the first looking even more furious than usual, the latter still oddly quiet.

A terrible moment to burst out crying, and yet Thysandra was sorely tempted.

She could have been dead.

She was ruling a court of murderers.

The game she’d played for four hundred years had turned itself against her, and all of a sudden, she was being trounced at every step. Which meant she had to make plans, that she had to be strong and stubborn and show the bastards … and yet all she could do was sit in silence, aching and numb, until at long last the archive doors were thrown open again and Nicanor hauled the shackled, bloodied shape of a fae male into the hall.

Progress, in theory.

She couldn’t force up the energy to be glad about it.

‘Bereas is nowhere to be found,’ her Lord Protector grimly reported as he dragged his cursing captive into the nearest chair. The male’shands were bound and wrapped in white cloth – a simple but effective measure to stop him from drawing magic. ‘Most of his friends seem to have made themselves scarce, too. We found this one as he was packing his stuff to flee.’

‘Bitch,’ the fae male spat, wrestling with his chains. ‘Filthy, traitorous—’

Then he gasped.

His face contorted.

An agonised howl emerged from his throat as he bent back against his chair, wings cramping to the point of shrivelling. His voice shot up an octave and a half as he let out another screech, then a garbled, ‘No, no, please,please, I—’

‘Naxi,’ Thysandra said, rubbing her eyes. ‘I think that’s enough.’

The screaming died away at once, leaving only quiet sobs behind. Naxi huffed from her edge of the writing table, feet dangling a few inches above the floor as she glowered at the captive and grumbled, ‘Manners, arsehole.’

The male let out a quiet whimper.

‘Efficient,’ Nicanor said, looking mildly disturbed yet deeply intrigued as he folded his arms and cast the slumping fae a contemplative look. ‘More inclined to talk now, Lyron?’

Another pained moan.

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ He cast Thysandra a sideways glance. ‘I’ll leave the questions to you, Your Majesty.’

Asking questions was the last thing she wanted to do. They might lead to her discovering more, and she had already discovered far, far too much.

She drew in a deep breath all the same and said, ‘Who told you that fae would have to move over for humans?’

Lyron’s bloodshot gaze swerved towards Naxi, then towards Inga beside her. His lips moved soundlessly for a moment before he ground out, ‘Bereas.’

‘And who told Bereas?’

Again that moment of silence. Then, even more quietly, he mumbled ‘Iaris.’

Nicanor let out an uncharacteristic string of curses.

‘What?’ Thysandra said sharply, snapping around in her chair. Unexpected news, perhaps, but notthatunexpected, given the dressmaker’s unfortunate tendency to blather endlessly about every crumb of gossip she caught. ‘Could you tell one of your people to—’

‘That’s not the point,’ Nicanor interrupted, upper lip twitching into a sneer she knew to be a sign of the greatest distress. His long fingers were fidgeting with the lace ends of his sleeves. ‘We found Iaris with her throat slit a few hours ago.’

Thysandra gaped at him.

He grimaced, blue eyes apologetic. ‘I know.’

‘Iaris?’ She didn’t even care that her voice was breaking. ‘Are you saying someone might have killed her—’

‘So she couldn’t tell us who her source was?’ Nicanor finished tightly. ‘You’ve got to admit it bloody well looks like it, don’t you?’