Page 75 of With Wing And Claw

None of those reasons told the full story, anyway.

Because sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I could be like you.

Which wasn’t a thought she could simply speak out loud.

‘Look, I’m very grateful for the offer,’ Inga added when Naxi remained silent, unnaturally patient like a mother about to present a hard truth to her child. ‘And I’m sure you didn’t have any intention of eating anyone’s babies just now. But when we already have a few thousand fae to worry about, I’m not going to ask people to invite some fairytale monster into their homes as well, alright?’

But she was trying tohelp.

She wasreallytrying to help.

‘Yes,’ Naxi said, desperately fighting her wobbling bottom lip. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Good.’ Inga gave a curt nod, then stepped around her, added a belated, ‘Take care,’ and strolled back to her waiting townspeople. Those same people who were now emanating waves of hopeful relief dispersed with pangs of expectant dread – as if Naxi would turn around any moment and start chomping on their children anyway.

Some fairytale monster.

She wiped her suddenly watery nose and started running.

It wasn’tfair, damn it – it really,reallywasn’t. She’d risked her own life to defend them in the archives! She clearly hated the fae as much as they did! And babies didn’t even tastethatgood, her father had said, so why would she make the bloody effort to snatch them from their cradles in the first place? They had no right to kick her out like this. They … they …

A blubbery sound escaped her.

She ran faster.

For the first time since she’d arrived at the court, she missed her friends. Not that she’d ever been fully at home with them, nottruly– but at least they had made a heroic attempt to pretend she had been, even if it was always on the condition of her sticking to the rules. Don’t kill. Don’t maim. Don’t gossip about feelings – instructions she’d followed religiously, and in turn, they’d hardly ever inched away from her.

She hadn’t evenwantedto kill or maim them. The downside of killing one’s friends was that one no longer had any friends after the fact.

Like now.

Like here.

Her breath was squeaking through her throat, and still she could not stop running. Away from that cursed village. Away from the cursed castle. A doomed flight to some place that might not even exist anymore …

Home.

If only her mother had still been alive, and her aunts and cousins and nieces … and then she missedthemtoo, a slumbering gap in the bottom of her heart that hadn’t grown any smaller even with all of the sixth regiment in their graves. Not that she had belonged on Mirova, either, of course. Not when Mother had always happily called it her greatest mistake, letting some demon male seduce her; not when it had been so mind-numbingly boring, growing daisies and singing songs all the time. And then she’d flitted off with Father and his demon friends, and when she returned—

Ashes.

The salt of her tears was stinging her cheeks, raw and painful.

She wasn’tlonely, she’d told Emelin weeks ago – demons shouldn’t be capable of the emotion. Yet right now, that very fact seemed like half of the problem, not the solution: one more reason to feel different, one more reason she was always, inevitably, an outsider.

She’d just wanted tohelp.

For selfish reasons, perhaps, for reasons of belonging, but did that make the offer any less genuine?

A wall of grey and dark green loomed between the hills before her, and only then did she realise what call her feet had unthinkingly answered. She slowed as she reached the border of Faewood, sniffing tears away as she stumbled between the twisted trunks – feeling the faint but unmistakable heart of the forest settle over her like the world’s most uncomfortable blanket. It was thorny and raw, the sensation. Threaded with nettles.

A blanket all the same, though.

She found a clearing without any bones or wing shreds in it, not too far from the beach, and sank down between the gnarled roots with a last bone-deep sob. Around her, the shadows rustled in menacing ways. Distant howls mingled with the crashing of the surf. But no one told her to leave, or to be sweeter and less violent, and no one, not even the smallest patch of moss beneath her bare feet, was scared of her.

She buried her face in her arms.

She let the misery wash over her.