What could she do? She threw a glance over her shoulder – no army, no reinforcements. Just a court keeping very, very quiet as a hundred of its strongest members set out to torture the weakest of them in the name of pride. Greed. Cruelty. The Mother would have been able to stop this, would have been frightening enough to send even these savages fleeing to cower beneath their beds … but Thysandra wasn’t frightening.
Just frightened.
If she stepped into the fray, if she tried to stop them, what would they do? Call her a traitor and kill her too? Sweat was breaking out between her wings – no, she couldn’t take that risk, couldn’t waste her last little bit of authority by turning activelyagainsther subjects. She’d have to find another way to stop this. Fly to the archive windows and evacuate the humans before the walls were broken down? A better plan, surely, than—
‘Don’t let her get away!’ Bereas yelled from the middle of the crowd.
Before she could wonder who he was talking about, rays of red splintered the window-frame inches away from her unfurling wings.
No.No. She ducked just in time to avoid another barrage – but they couldn’t in all seriousness be planning to attackher, could they? She was the High Lady of this court, for fuck’s sake! She had a bloody army! Except that same army was nowhere to be seen right now, and more and more members of the crowd were turning towards her, knives drawn from sheaths wherever she looked …
Fuck.
Could she flee? But fighting mid-air would just give them more dimensions to attack from, and if they were truly looking for blood—
Red magic shot past her face, ripping through the rim of her ear.
Her reflexes took over.
Even as her stomach clenched in shock, battlefield habits were stronger. They’d expect her to retreat, and so she made a desperate dive forward – into the lines of shouting fae, taking down three of them with a first wild swing of red before she’d even landed on her feet. A sting of pain exploded in her left shoulder. She swivelled around, instinctively putting her attacker’s wing between herself and his companions; her dagger lay in her hand before she’d decided to draw it. Neck, swing, gurgle of blood. The male before her collapsed.
She barely dodged the next burst of red exploding towards her.
Traitor’s daughter. The world was spinning around her. Even as her body went through the motions, none of it seemed truly, fully real, a nightmare from which she could wake at any moment. Five calm days, and what had she done to deserve—
‘To her left!’ Bereas was shouting on the other side of the corridor, and she blindly spun in the opposite direction, having heard these tricks before. Her dagger sank below the ribcage of the female sneaking up on her just in time.
Magic bit the back of her knees, vicious enough to nearly send her to the ground.
She staggered, the rush of panic sharpening her focus as her remaining opponents closed in on her. A swift volley of red took down perhaps five of them. There were several dozen left around her, teeth bared and daggers drawn. Far too many to shield herself from. She barely avoided another crackle of magic at her face, then dodged the knife thrown at her wing so that it only tore through the outer edge of the vulnerable membrane; the pain blinded her for a moment and a half, and she only just managed to take down the two males who lunged towards her in that instant of weakness.
No help to be seen. No army sweeping in to save her.
Gods have mercy. Was she going todiehere?
Fury kept her going through the haze of crippling pain, red magic spilling from her hands like the blood spilling from her wounds. Fae collapsed before her. Magic hit her in the side, just below her liver. She bent over, suppressing a scream, and above her head, the wall exploded into fragments that peppered her neck, her shoulders.
This was the end.
She knew it as she staggered back, firing a last, hopeless charge at the horde of fae prowling closer. Her wings thudded into the wall. Nowhere left to go but down, and it was a matter of seconds now. So what would it be? A blade to the heart? A ray of red to the throat? Or would it be the hounds after all, the blood-soaked death in Faewood from which she’d been running all her life …
And it was only then, grossly delayed by the fear pulsating through her veins, that she realised the storm of red had sizzled out.
That the crowd was no longer moving.
Odder still … when she looked up, blinking away the humiliating tears, eyes were widening all around her, gaping at the window above her head. Lips were parting into gasps; feet were staggering back. It looked like a trap, some sly attempt to distract her – but she was way too far gone to require distraction, and a few yards away, even Bereas had gone white as a sheet.
She risked a glance over her shoulder – and froze.
Silas.
It wasSilas.
Standing in the window through which she’d arrived. Golden wings spread wide behind his shoulders. Where he’d left his worn, dusty shirt, she hadn’t the faintest clue – but he was now dressed in a magnificent blood-red, the colour a weapon and a warning at once. In the sunlight, his bargain marks glowed like many-coloured cat’s eyes against his burnt-umber skin.
He did not look like he was about to run.
Rather, he looked about to bite someone’s head clean off.