Page 16 of With Wing And Claw

‘I don’t want anyone to hearher,’ Thysandra said, which was true, although he was admittedly not wrong, either. But her own words she could control, at least. Gods knew what Naxi would blurt out, and with a castle poised to turn against her, she didn’t need any true accounts of the Last Battle to leak. ‘I would like to understand her motives here, and she’ll speak more freely if she can’t sense anyone near.’

‘I see.’ If he was suspicious, he hid it well – but then again, ofcoursehe would hide it well. Yet another factor to worry about at a later time. ‘I’ll keep them away from the hall, then. If she does attack you, though …’

‘If she does attack me,’ Thysandra wryly said, ‘all of you put together wouldn’t be able to save me. Best to stay far away and send a message to Creon if you hear me scream.’

The expression on his pointy face could not have been unhappier if she’d pushed a rotting fish under his nose. But he nodded once again, tapping a slender finger against his temple in a swift mock-salute, and sourly said, ‘As Your Majesty commands.’

Chapter 5

The bone hall wasunrecognisable.

She’d thought it unrecognisable yesterday, too, with the walls stripped bare and the Mother’s throne gone – but it turned out she’d underestimated Emelin’s threat to bring the entire place down, or perhaps miscalculated the lingering fury of the crowd she’d left behind. The entrance door was half-collapsed. Soot-black scorch marks covered the walls. The hole in the floor had grown and took up at least half of the hall now, leaving nothing but a narrow strip of marble around the perimeter.

Beneath it, the hollow of the Labyrinth gaped. An eerie pink glow emanated from the bowels of the mountain, shrouding the ruined hall in a dusky light.

It was on the other side of that jagged hole that Naxi was sitting in her flowery dress, bare feet dangling over the edge of the crater, dried blood covering her hands and forearms up to her elbows. She was humming some monotonous song as Thysandra slipped through the crumbling doorway, but she interrupted herself the moment their gazes met – jolting up with a smile so bright and delighted thatone might think the corpses littered around the castle were just a good-natured joke.

‘Sashka!Finally!’

Gods have mercy.

But there was no turning back now, not unless she wished to face a demon’s wrathandthe mistrust of her own court; she cautiously ventured two steps into the hall, nudged the door as close to shut as the skewed frame allowed, and began unfolding her wings. The remaining floor looked beyond unreliable. If she could just fly to the other side—

‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that,’ Naxi merrily said, her voice unnaturally loud in the ghastly, corpse-pink glow. ‘A couple of fae tried to reach me by flying, and the Labyrinth took them all down as they crossed. Poor dear is still a little grumpy from all the time the Mother kept it locked away, you see, so best not to vex it.’

Poor dear.

What in the bloody world?

‘It’s sentient, of course,’ Naxi added, cocking her head like a clever little bird – the tone of her voice suggesting they were discussing nothing more shocking than the care a particular houseplant required. ‘Didn’t Emelin tell you? Its emotions are slightly different from humanoid feelings, of course, so I can see why Creon didn’t pick up on it right away – but once you know what to look for …’ She grinned, baring her sharp teeth, each of them a tiny, ivory weapon in its own right. ‘It’s unmistakable. Intriguing, isn’t it?’

Thysandra stared at her.

Intriguing? She was supposed to accept that there was a sentient fucking mountain slumbering beneath her castle – a sentient mountainmurderingpeople, if the rumours about the Labyrinth were true – and this was the first response this madwoman could come up with? To call the matterintriguing?

Who in hell had given a mountain consciousness in the first place?

More importantly, how in hell’s name was she going to explain this insanity to the rest of her court? Had the Mother known? Most likely she’d at least had a suspicion, and the fact thatshehad never told anyone elsesuggested—

‘You don’t seem to be particularly enchanted by the magical mysteries of our world,’ Naxi dryly added, swinging her legs back and forth so that her pink skirt billowed up around her knees. ‘A shame. Let’s talk about something else, then. I presume you had a good night? Your head is feeling much better.’

For fuck’s sake.

She kicked herself into motion, damn the crumbling marble edges and the gaping cave below – because the hall may be ruined beyond recognition, but it was stillherhall, and she wasn’t going to stand here on the doorstep for however long this conversation would take. What did the little murderess think – that a steady string of pleasantries would somehow make her forget about the several dozen corpses sprinkled across her castle right now?

‘We need to talk,’ she bit out.

‘Which is what I told you yesterday,’ Naxi reminded her, her fluttering lashes and wide blue eyes somehow distracting from the blood stains on her dress and arms. How did she manage to lookharmlessin this light, like a fragile pink flower rather than the monster that lurked beneath her almost translucent skin? ‘And then you forced me out of your rooms, if you recall.’

‘Yes, of course I kicked you out!’ Heat was stirring in her gut – anger, or at leastmostlyanger, hands itching with the feverish potential of violence. It took four centuries of self-control to slow her steps instead. ‘I wasn’t looking for your bloody company. I’mstillnot looking for your bloody company. If you hadn’t killed half a regiment to get my attention, I wouldn’t be here at—’

A scoff. ‘You know that’s not why I killed them.’

‘No, but—’

‘Although I’m happy to kill a few more of them, if it helps?’ Her blinding smile returned, the blushing light from the Labyrinth below lending a disconcerting gleam to those pearly white teeth. ‘A small sacrifice, if it means I get to tell you—’

‘You’re getting to tell me now!’ Thysandra snapped, control slipping through her fingers with disconcerting ease. Gods help her. How in the world was she supposed to lead the entire bloody Crimson Court ifshe could barely handle a single infuriating demon on her own? ‘I’m just asking you to stop beating around the bush, for hell’s sake. What do you want?’

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