Page 101 of With Wing And Claw

Would they be?

Thysandra had to admit, in the slightly baffled silence that fell, that she’d never thoughtthatmuch about the thousands of court members who weren’t either in the army or part of the Mother’s inner circle of courtiers. They had never been a danger to her, and so they had never been worth considering. But of course they were here all the same: the cooks, the teachers, the traders and craftspeople …

Did they care?

Theirnames surely weren’t on the Alliance’s list.

‘The problem,’ Nicanor said, fingers digging into the poison-stained table surface, ‘is that the archivists aren’t going to be the ones feeding Thysandra to the hounds, alright?’

Every other thought fell away.

For a single, night-black moment, there was nothing in her mind but snarling.

‘Nicanor,’ Silas snapped somewhere far, far away, his voice sharper than she’d ever heard it. Her Lord Protector’s answer, unwillingly apologetic, barely reached her conscious mind. Not trying to dredge up bad memories … just making sure the stakes are clear …

Thysandra!her father had screamed as jaws sank into his chest, snapping his ribs like dry twigs.

And only then did it hit her – that the Mother hadliedall those years ago, claiming Echion had never had her best interests in mind. That her fatherhadtried to save her. That he had done everything he could not to drag her down with him, and then he’d died his torturous death while watching her stand on that precipice, the Mother’s hand a heavy claim on her shoulder – then he’d diedknowing—

A vicious twinge of pain shot throughher arm.

She jolted from the pits of her memories with almost physical effort, barely suppressing a yelp of shock. Had someone pinched her? But no one was even looking at her, the attention focused instead on the fervent discussion before her, and the pain had vanished far too soon for physical touch …

Her eyes met Naxi’s across the table.

The demon gave a small, cunning wink.

‘All I’m trying to say,’ Nicanor was saying to her left, sounding like he was repeating himself for the fifth time, ‘is that we’re not going to make friends by handing fae over to the same Alliance that caused our trouble in the first place. That—’

Inga snorted. ‘I’d argue the court mostly caused its own trouble.’

‘Yes, but that’s not howtheywill take it, is it?’ Nicanor shot back. ‘All they’re going to see is—’

A traitor.

Thysandra knew what he’d been about to say even as he snapped his mouth shut just in time, casting a wary look at Silas’s widening nostrils.

‘So …’ Her voice was too hoarse. ‘What do you propose we do, then?’

‘Tell the Alliance you can’t do this,’ Nicanor said in exasperation, before either of the others could speak up. ‘Ask them for another way to pay for that food.’

‘Oh, that’s not going to work,’ Naxi piped up. ‘Tared told me when he delivered the letter that they wouldn’t negotiate on their proposal.’

Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.

‘So let me get this straight,’ Thysandra managed to grind out. Her chest was constricting, her sight blurring a little on the edges. ‘Our choices are to either start raiding islands for food, start another war, likely lose it after wasting a few thousand lives on both sides, and be punished even more severely …orto let a few hundred people suffer the consequences of their own cruelty and allow the rest of the court to prosper. Do I have that right?’

Nicanor groaned. ‘Yes, assuming that for the second option the rest of the court doesn’t unite against you and cause you to die a senseless death.’

By hound.

They were still snarling in the back of her mind.

It would be so very easy to retreat. To try and find compromise, to let herself be cowed into supporting the goals of others … but she was New Thysandra now, and New Thysandra did better than that. Sheknewwhat the right decision was, didn’t she?

So if she didn’t want to die …

She could still be a traitor. She just had to do it quietly.

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