Page 113 of With Wing And Claw

‘Fuck,’ she said again.

‘It’s a pretty common poison, unfortunately.’ He grimaced. ‘Of course, if whoever did this hadtrulyknown anything about the subject, they would have picked a slower option to make sure I would be well out of the way by the time the symptoms showed up. Then again, we were only just in time as it was, and if Anaxia hadn’t noticed you feeling odd …’

‘Miserable,’ Naxi shrilly corrected as she poured boiling water over the herbs, then hauled the teapot off the counter and turned around. Her eyes were redder than the petals on her dress. ‘As if you were dying!’

‘Which, it turns out, was quite correct,’ Nicanor added with a sour grin.

Naxi gave a choked sound.

The urge to pull her onto the couch and curl up against that soft, delicate body was almost overwhelming – but Nicanor was still sitting in the same room, and even if he’d just saved her life, snuggling up with demons might be a bridge too far even for the male who loved his bold decisions.

Instead, Thysandra rubbed her eyes and numbly said, ‘So what do we do?’

They were clever enough, the two of them. They could hear what she wasn’t saying, the space between the words –how in hell am I going to survive this?

How do I still win this game?

‘I spent most of dinner trying to calm down the army commanders next to me,’ Nicanor said, taking the teapot from Naxi and pouring three cups of tea. ‘Lots of “no decisions made yet” and “not punishing anyone who did not do anything wrong”. So they should be spreading that as we speak. Then again, all the soothing words in the world aren’t going to help if … well …’

‘If information keeps leaking,’ Thysandra mumbled.

Nicanor grimaced. ‘Yes.’

Naxi scowled at him. ‘Why are you feeling so smug about that?’

‘Oh, gods.’ He gave a joyless laugh, slumping back on his stool. ‘Bloody demon eyes.’

Naxi scowled harder.

‘Alright, alright. Cards on the table.’ His bitter smile slid off his face as he wrapped his hands around his teacup and turned back to Thysandra. ‘I’m sorry. I should have talked about this with you sooner. It’s just … frankly, it always sounded unlikely to me, the idea that someone in the archives just happened to hear our conversation at the worst possible moment. Wouldn’t the other archivists have noticed if one of them stood pressing their ear to the door for minutes, for one thing?’

Yes.

Yes, they would have.

But it had been such a blissfully convenient explanation, no guilty parties, no betrayal from any of the people whose cooperation she needed the most …

‘No apology needed,’ she said blankly, falling back in the couch cushions to stare at the stained ceiling. ‘I should have realised the same thing.’

‘If I were a better person, I would also not feel so damnably satisfied about being right,’ he countered, a sour note of amusement in his voice, ‘so you’re getting the apology anyway. I suppose the best we can do now is introduce someveryspecific bargains around confidential information as long as we don’t know who—’

Fists banged against the living room door.

Thysandra’s fingers already lay on her dagger when a familiar voice followed. ‘Nicanor? Are you here?’

Silas.

Who had not been at the feast.

She swallowed and nodded, not releasing her blade. Only after that swift confirmation did Nicanor jump off his stool and yell, ‘We’re all here!’

Silas’s muffled words were not entirely intelligible through the wood, but sounded suspiciously likethank the fucking gods.

He wasn’t alone, it turned out when Nicanor unlocked his door and swung it open. Inga slipped in before him, in her servant’s uniform again, a folded letter trembling in her hand.

‘We only just heard,’ she erupted before anyone else could get a word in, and for once there was no anger in her voice – just pure, breathless fear. ‘News didn’t make it to the human quarters until some guards told us. If we’d known – if we’d heard sooner …’

She collapsed onto the couch’s armrest, her breath coming in little panicked gasps, and for a long moment of silence, Thysandra had not the faintest idea what to respond. Was the girl afraid to be accused again? It seemed unlikely the mere news of Thysandra’s near-death had her in such a frenzy, and behind her, Silas seemed grave rather than terrified.

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