Page 15 of With Wing And Claw

Soldiers.

Oh, gods help her – how could she have beenthisfucking blind?

‘None of them were very young,were they?’ she choked out through the roar of her thoughts spiralling into more and more alarming conjectures. ‘Old enough to have been in the army three centuries ago, at least?’

Nicanor frowned. ‘Now that you mention it, I think so? But—'

‘And do you know’ – she had to fight the urge to close her eyes and crawl away into the nearest dark, dusty corner – ‘whether any of them were members of the sixth regiment around that period?’

He stared at her.

‘Nicanor.’ Her voice cracked.

‘I’m not sure—’ He interrupted himself with an impatient, agitated headshake and started again, eyes narrowing in frustration. ‘Well, Theone was, of course. And Cercyon, now that I think of it, and—’

She cursed, resuming their descent twice as fast.

‘What the hell is the matter with the sixth?’ Unusual, for impassive, calculating Nicanor to let so much of his frustration show as he hurried after her. The ugly sight of demon deaths hadn’t been enough to throw him off-balance. Ignorance, on the other hand, was doing the trick flawlessly. ‘What do you know that I don’t—’

‘Mirova,’ she said through gritted teeth.

‘What?’ He caught up with her with two agitated slaps of his icy blue wings. ‘The island?’

‘Yes. The sixth was the regiment that destroyed it during that retaliation attack three hundred years ago.’ An infuriating sign of weakness, to admit she’d looked up every detail she could find after Naxi’s accusations during the Last Battle – but then, the male beside her didn’t need to know why she’d gathered the information. ‘I suppose she must have looked up their names in our archives while the Alliance was here and then simply … worked down the list.’

‘But why in the world would a demon care about some nymph isle that—Oh.’ The last word came out breathless. ‘Oh, fuck. Anymphisle?’

Thysandra didn’t even bother to answer.

They had reached the foot of the stairs, finally, and hurried into the frescoed corridor that lay beyond. Wild, violent, chalk paintings on the walls, images she knew too wellto even glance at them … and on the black marble of the floor, as if to mirror the artist’s vision, the carnage Naxi had left behind.

Uglydidn’t begin to cover the sight.

There were six bodies in this corridor alone, lying curled up on the red-veined marble, their blood smeared across the tiles. Most had been killed by blades, their own dead hands clutching the hilts of their swords and daggers. One seemed to have ripped out her own throat in her hurry to escape the agony of demon torture, and one had apparently bashed his own head against the wall until he died. Their faces, no matter how different their features, were all the same: lips wrenched open in soundless screams, wide eyes gaping unseeingly into the pits of hell.

Demon victims. No doubt.

She’d seen so many of them over the years of her research. She’d read every book in existence about demon magic, the manipulation of emotions that could reduce the bravest of warriors to a wreck pleading for death within a matter of seconds.

Gall welled in her throat all the same.

Other fae were standing around the victims, their hunched postures and haunted glances a jarring contrast to their sparkling clothes and decadent jewels. The looks they gave her as she passed … Caution. Envy. Distrust. Resentment. Nothing she hadn’t expected from the scheming courtiers who’d still been her peers yesterday, and yet she suspected this hadn’t helped – the explosion of violence under what was technically her rule and protection.

When.

To think that, ten minutes ago, she’d believed food stores would be her greatest problem.

She kept her expression stony as she strode down the halls and staircases, a shield against every accusing glare, every muffled curse. No one spoke up – not yet. It was a test, of course, all of this. An assessment, even through the shock and the dismay, of just how well she would deal with this unprecedented threat, and how much of a threat that madeherin turn, whether she’d be best approached with violence or flattery. If she made the mistake of coming across as weak or helpless…

It would be a matter of days before the vultures descended.

‘Could you do me a favour?’ she muttered to Nicanor.

She’d pay for it later. Former lover or no, he was too savvy to ignore a promising opportunity like this, the obligations that came with services rendered to the crown. But for now he nodded without hesitation, his expression cool and composed again – the usual haughty, elegant indifference, as if they weren’t walking past a handful of corpses with their own nails in their eyes.

‘Please keep everyone away from the bone hall,’ she said, taking care not to move her lips for the benefit of the gathered fae around her. ‘Out of hearing distance, at the very least. Tell them it’s to protect them from her demon influence, if necessary.’

His quick side-glance was proof enough he’d noticed the half-heartedness of that explanation. ‘You don’t want anyone to hear you?’