Page 69 of With Wing And Claw

‘It doesn’t sound like you at all,’ Emelin informed her, entirely unruffled, turning back to her sketches as if nothing had happened. ‘Giving up so easily, I mean. Anyway, I’m just thinking … if we put these windows on the east side …’

‘I’mserious!’ Thysandra spat, staggering two steps forward, then thinking better of it as the little bird let out a shrill protest. ‘And your blackmail isn’t going to make a difference either, because they’re trying to kill me anyway, so—’

‘Oh, Thys?’ an even more unwelcome voice interrupted behind her, and this time itwasCreon, sauntering into the room in an equally dusty, slightly misshapen sweater. His leisurely grin at her looked only a fraction forced. ‘To what do we owe the honour?’

‘She says she’s quitting,’ Emelin said in her place.

Creon raised an eyebrow as he settled himself on the edge of the table, looking as undisturbed as his lover had. ‘That sounds thoroughly unlikely to me, frankly.’

Emelin shrugged. ‘Exactly what I said.’

‘Well, then it must be true,’ he dryly agreed, only then looking back at Thysandra again. ‘Are you staying for dinner? Assuming you don’t hate barley stew, that is.’

She gaped at the both of them.

‘I don’t think she hates barley stew,’ Emelin said as she grabbed a coat from a chair and flung it over her shoulders. ‘And even if she hates barley stew in general, I don’t think anyone could hateyours.’

He threw her a grin. ‘In that case, we should probably get moving, before the alves scarf down all of it. Coming, Thys?’

She really didn’t have a choice.

Bluntly refusing to join them would make her look childish rather than principled. Demanding they stay and have a conversation with her would only make her look powerless, given that there wasn’t a chance in the world they would actually obey. And so she found herself trudging after them like an unwilling youth at a family gathering, unable to keep the bewilderment from her voice as she stammered, ‘Alves?’

‘They’re helping us figure out the building plans,’ Creon said over his shoulder, one hand on the small of his High Lady’s back. ‘Very helpful, even if you factor in the cost of their breakfast. Watch the hole there – we still need to get it fixed.’

An alarmingly considerate warning: in the vine-covered corridor, nothing but a few last sunrays spilling in through the gaps in the wall, she wouldn’t have seen the crack in the floor until she had already broken her ankle. Now she just managed to circumvent it before stepping into the next room. Here was the fire she had already spotted from above, burning beneath a ceiling that was half-gone – the resulting gap offering a stunning view of the darkening sky above, streaks of pink and purple in the west and the first stars appearing in the east.

Three alves were sitting around the fireplace, loud as all members of their kind, plates already in their lap. They glanced up briefly at her arrival, gave some half-hearted waves, then resumed their raucous yet cordial discussion on acceptable ways to win an argument without committing any murders. Emelin mentioned something about breaking noses as she plopped down next to them. This was, apparently, hilarious.

Creon pressed a plate into Thysandra’s hands. The stew smelled annoyingly delicious.

She sat and ate in dazed silence, the chatter around her evolving from alvish argumentation theory to card strategies to something to do with Creon and numbers. One alf, who went by the name of Thorir, seemed to know a thing or two about architecture. The other two were clearly incapable of telling a door from a window, but seemed more than happy to fade chunks of stone back and forth all day. No one bothered with titles. No one threw wary glances at the flickering shadows even once. Towards the end of the meal, Thorir found an excuse to challenge Emelin to a duel, which she merrily accepted without any visible fear for her life.

It was utterly bewildering.

She still hadn’t pulled herself together by the time everyone had emptied their plates and Emelin and the alves had bounced off in search of a more suitable location for recreational violence. Creon wasquiet as he cleared the table and filled a kettle – an oddly snug, content silence, so different from his usual menacing stillness that Thysandra had trouble imagining it as belonging to the same person at all.

He wasn’t even wearing black, she realised belatedly. She hadneverseen him in anything but black, and yet in the firelight, there was no denying his sweater was rather a peaceful dark green beneath the dust.

Perhaps New Thysandra wasn’t the only innovation of the past few weeks.

By the time he’d finished his cleaning, the sky was inky black above them and the kettle was steaming. Which seemed about the moment he’d send her on her way home with a pat on the head and a few well-aimed threats … but all he did was chuck his dish towel into a corner, pull two mugs from a wooden crate, and sink down onto the opposite bench, staring pensively into the sparkling fire.

For a moment, nothing could be heard but the waves crashing against the cliffs and a shred of alvish shouting in the background.

Then Creon dragged in a breath, eyes not lifting from the flickering flames, and said, ‘Want to talk?’

She almost choked on her own tongue.

A joyless grin grew around his lips as he lowered his elbows to his thighs, wings folding in behind his shoulders. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’

‘Since when do youtalk?’ she sputtered.

He gave a shrug. ‘Since when do you quit?’

A fair point, and a bloody unpleasant one too, coming fromhimof all people. It came too close to all those centuries of gloating, that endless competition between them in which she’d never stood a chance. Even before the years he’d spent robbed of his voice, the beloved prince of the Crimson Court had nevertalked– just swaggered and blustered and relished the triumph of his own existence, at the cost of everything she’d ever held dear.

And here he was. Happy. Loved. At home.