Page 139 of With Wing And Claw

No.

Without the physical pain, nothing was left to distract her from the vast and desolate void that had opened within her chest – the feelings she did not want to feel, because she might never emerge from them again.

She’dbelievedit. For one night of blissful insanity, she had really, truly believed the Mother may have been wrong, the court may have been wrong, the rules she’d bled to instil in her bones had been lies from the very start. That something like loyalty may just have existed for her after all. Sacrifice. Love, even.

And now she was back at the bottom of that pit.

That was the problem with taking off your armour. The blades of life cut so much deeper.

‘Thysandra, listen to me.’ Still no one touched her. ‘I need you to sit up and talk to me. We might be in danger.’

Dangerwas a word she knew in every fibre of her body. Even now, it hardened something she hadn’t even known was still there inside her; her muscles moved themselves.

Wings down. Head up. Spine straight.

Nicanor knelt before her.

‘That’s more like it.’ His smile was strained with worry. ‘Glad you’re back, Thys. We need to have a word.’

Why was he even still here?

She’d lost. He had to know she’d lost. If he had any sense in that cunning fae mind of his, he’d already be miles away from the court – so what in the world was he doing here, tending to her wounds,worrying?

‘What happened?’ she managed to croak, reeling where she sat.

‘That’s what I wanted to ask you.’ He sank down on the floor opposite her and crossed his ankles – his coat and trousers strangely unbloodied for a male who’d charged into battle minutes ago. Perhaps he’d changed before he came to find her. Honestly, she wouldn’t put it past him. ‘I understand that you killed Bereas?’

Bereas.

The window.

You’re fucking the wrong person …

‘Yes,’ she said hollowly, staring at her own dress with unseeing eyes. The first red was already seeping back into its dyed surface, turning pale blue into pale purple. She must have been out for a while. ‘I … I did.’

‘Did you get anything out of him?’

There was a tension to the question – an urgency. The same desperate drive for answers she’d felt, until she heard the answers and realised she would much, much rather not have known.

‘Naxi,’ she breathed.

She saw him lean forward on the edge of her sight. ‘Say that again?’

‘Naxi— Anaxia, I mean.’ Fuck. Too much familiarity. Then again, what did it matter now? ‘She betrayed us. This meeting.’

My heart.

Nicanor’s breath escaped in a rush … of disappointment? An unspokenof course, perhaps? ‘And where is she now, Thys? Anaxia?’

Gone.

It seemed the only answer that could even begin to explain. The empty spot on her wrist. The sight of a slender back moving away, away, away. That simple, deadly word –no.

That answer was all she’d needed, and she so desperately wished she’d never heard it.

‘She has left?’ Nicanor asked softly, and when she lifted her head, she found his gaze aimed at her wrist as well.

Thysandra nodded.

---