Page 73 of With Wing And Claw

She could leave the court, yes – but would the court ever truly leaveher?

‘Youbastard,’ she whispered, the realisation locking around her heart like ice-cold chains. ‘You … you …’

He just sighed.

No gloating. No mockery. Not a trace of that insufferable smug smirk he would have sent her any day of the past three-and-something centuries, and somehow that genuine sympathy made everything much, much worse.

‘This is all pretty damn convenient for the two of you, isn’t it?’ she added, desperation lending an uncomfortable shrillness to her voice. Lashing out was easier. Safer. ‘Is this just another way to keep me tied to the place, now that your threats are no longer working? Did Emelin tell you to—’

‘Em didn’t tell me a single thing,’ he said, looking inexplicably amused by the suggestion. ‘I was the one who asked if she could leave us alone for a bit. Why do you think she was needling Thorir so much during dinner?’

Thysandra was not aware the needling had been unusual. ‘I … I didn’t see you exchange a single private word with her.’

He quirked up that gods-damned eyebrow again. ‘Should have kept an eye on our hands.’

Oh.

Right.

She slumped on her bench, fighting the sudden urge to close her eyes and give up entirely on making sense of the male sitting before her. Cruelty and consideration. Scheming and sincerity. Threats, and then this advice that somehow seemed unusually genuine and perhaps even … well-intentioned?

The very notion of thinking about the Mother’s son aswell-intentionedrequired the sort of mental strain that could knock a person out for a day.

‘And why,’ she muttered, eyes on the tea in her lap, ‘did you want a word with me, exactly?’

‘Told you.’ He paused a moment. ‘I’ve been there.’

Hero, villain. Winner of a game that suddenly was no longer a game at all.And then?he’d said, and only now did she fully understand thevicious weight behind that question – a question he must have asked himself a thousand times as well.

‘Is that why you decided to come live here, of all places?’ she managed, looking up at the mossy, time-worn walls around them. ‘Because it would allow you to try and build things for once, rather than destroying them?’

There was no hesitation in his voice. ‘Yes.’

That shapeless, dusty green sweater. The lack of knives on him. The strange calm in his eyes, no more deadly glowers, no more menacing darkness – as if by doing something else, the male she’d thought she knew hadbecomesomeone else entirely.

‘Does it help?’ she whispered.

His hands cramped around his mug for a moment. ‘More than I ever thought it would.’

And perhaps for the first time in their long, quarrelling lives, she trusted him.

Chapter 17

Since there was noone else left in the archives to do it, Naxi took it upon herself to walk Inga home.

It was not a pleasant walk. The Crimson Court was soaked in fear once again, and this time there was no triumph to the heated, humid sensation – not when Naxi had done nothing to cause it and was almost equally scared herself. Thysandra had almostdied, for hell’s sake. Right before her bloody nose! And now she’d vanished again, leaving the court and its leaked secrets in the hands of a bunch of potential traitors – while no one knew when she’d return from wherever she had gone to.

Ifshe’d even return.

Accompanying Inga home wasn’t an act of charity. More than anything, it was a most welcome excuse to get out of the gods-damned castle.

Neither of them spoke as they descended the path that zig-zagged down the slope of the mountain, into the valley that cut through the hills at the heart of the island. To their right, glittering fae abodes stretched along the azure-and-ivory coastline. The human village, incontrast, was dusty and colourless, nestled in a narrow crevice between two hills as if it had crept away from the eyes of the world.

It was also crawling with fae at the present moment.

‘Welcome to Rustvale,’ Inga muttered as they approached – the first words she’d spoken since leaving the castle behind. Her anger was so sharp Naxi could almost taste it. Sour and pungent, a flavour that had spent a lifetime brewing and fermenting. ‘Where our winged masters like to keep the cattle.’

‘I like most cattle better than most fae?’ Naxi helpfully offered.