Page 167 of With Wing And Claw

Naxi’s squint turned into a glare. ‘I don’t know why you keep bringing up that ratty clerk. It was just once! And he deserved it for—’

‘—helping to trap Gadyon – I know.’ Thysandra gave a grimace that looked more like a grin in disguise. ‘All the same, I didn’t necessarily need his severed head on my dinner table. Are you going to come with me, or do you need to argue a little longer?’

A good question. Upon reflection, perhaps this was not the moment to defend that moving gesture of demonic devotion in any more detail.

‘Fine,’ Naxi said, dramatically yet happily, and hopped off her chair to follow.

Their path through the castle was uneventful, murder attempts having become increasingly rare after some public demonstrations of what could happen if one really,reallypissed off a demon. Naxi had vaguely expected they would be making for some unusual location, like the bathhouses or the gardens – but Thysandra led them straight up the usual stairs, towards the tower by the Faewood cliffs and the rooms she’d stubbornly refused to move out of no matter how many luxury apartments had been suggested as more suitable replacements.

There was nothing particularly surprising to be seen in the stairwell. Nothing on the landing either, save for the familiar redwood door with its familiar flower carvings and the invisible magic shields it contained.

Naxi bounced up the last steps and paused, waiting for Thysandra to open the lock only she – and admittedly Creon – could open.

Thysandra did not open it.

Instead, she stood and studied the door for a moment, the emotion within her a hard-to-parse mixture of curiosity, nervousness, and an unmistakable whiff of smugness.

‘Shouldn’t we’ – Naxi cleared her throat – ‘go inside and see the surprise?’

‘Oh, we should.’ But Thysandra steppedback– wings folding in, green dress pooling around her feet as she sat down on the winding stairs leading to the next floor. ‘So why don’t you open the door?’

Naxi blinked. ‘Because Ican’t—’

She faltered.

Thysandra tilted her head, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips, and Naxi blinked again.

Open the door.

Which was impossible. Because only three people in the world knew how that lock worked, an ingenious magic invention that turned at the spark of red magic in the right place; two of them were fae, and the third was Naxi, who did not have colour magic to operate it. There was no other way to get in. The Mother had made the door immune to the workings of magic in all other spots, and to physical attacks as well – a shield tested thoroughly by dozens, if not hundreds, of attacks over the course of the centuries.

But there was one other fae mage with godsworn magic in the world, and that same mage had just been suspiciously absent from dinner for hours. As had the one other person able to operate these locks.

Rather an ideal combination if, hypothetically, one wanted to … well,alterthe mechanism.

It felt dangerously hopeful to even think it. More dangerous still to look at the door, look back at the stairs, and say, ‘Did you …’

Thysandra’s expression didn’t shift. ‘Mm-hmm.’

‘You changed thelock?’

‘Just an idea I had.’ The minuscule twitch upward of those sweet, sweet lips was nothing compared to the ocean of brimming satisfaction that lay beyond. ‘It’s wood, you see. I figured your nymph magic should be able to manipulate it. So I asked Emelin to modify the protections a little, and shethinks…’

Naxi blinked again, at the door this time.

It was a bit of a challenge, finding the soul of the wood. It had been cut off from its living tree for such a long time, cut into shapes, subjected to all sorts of strange magic. But it was stillthere, and the moment she grasped it—

She found the hollow within it.

Most of the wood was touching the cold, hard, lifeless iron of the lock. One small patch was left free, however, and she whispered at it to grow just alittlebit bigger, just for a very short moment…

A click.

A sense of movement.

Naxi barely dared to touch the doorknob. But she did, and itturned, and the door to Thysandra’s rooms – no, totheirrooms, damn it – opened without a creak of the hinges.

‘Oh,’ she breathed.

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