Chapter 12

Beneath her, Naxi’s eyes widened abruptly, the bright blue of her irises darkening with what might be shock or understanding or hurt.

Thysandra did not fucking care.

‘You knew .’ The words spilled from her lips like burning acid. ‘You knew where I was coming from – you knew what I’d survived at this court – and you still decided to hook your cursed little claws into me? Could have captured fucking anyone and tortured them until they talked, and instead you had to pick—’

‘Oh,’ Naxi said breathlessly. ‘Oh, but that’s not true. We needed someone who knew about the bindings.’

‘—the traitor’s daughter, of all people?’ she seethed, unwilling or unable to deal with such unwelcome reason right now. ‘They didn’t trust me already! Not really! And then you and your fucking friends had to mess with my head until I caved, and then you threw this fucking court into my lap to make everything worse . Of course they’ll think I’m just like him! Of course they’ll think it’s just history repeating itself, just—’

‘Thysandra,’ Naxi muttered .

Nothing else.

No arguments, no Sashka … and yet her tirade faltered, tongue and lips stifled by nothing but a wordless look.

That definitely was understanding in those blue demon eyes – understanding and an odd, resigned calm, the very opposite of the guilt-ridden despair that should have appeared in their place. And Naxi didn’t cower in the cushions. Didn’t send her tangled vines to attack. She just sat there, small and unyielding, and …

And far too close, now that Thysandra had a moment of silence to fully notice the distance between them. Close enough to distinguish every lash and freckle. Close enough that the tips of her own dark hair brushed the thin shoulders she was still clutching with such desperate force.

She hastily loosened her fingers a fraction and snapped, ‘What?’

‘You’re upset,’ Naxi informed her.

‘Oh, really?’ Her voice soared again. ‘How very fucking useful to have a demon around! I hadn’t noticed yet! Listen, someone just tried to fucking kill me – of course I’m—’

‘Haven’t people tried to kill you for centuries?’ Naxi interrupted, brows drawing into a slight frown. The small tilt of her head brought their faces even closer together – five inches at most between their noses. ‘I thought that was just life at the Crimson Court. Were you in such a state over every single one of those attempts?’

‘No,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘because most of them didn’t accuse me of becoming like my gods-damned father .’

Naxi blinked.

Just a single blink, but a clear-enough sign that even those all-seeing demon eyes could be surprised. ‘And that’s all?’

Thysandra bit out a cutting laugh. ‘Is it not enough?’

‘Nobody died? No one else was terribly wounded?’ Naxi’s gaze shot down to the blood on her dress. ‘You weren’t harmed beyond repair? It’s just—’

‘Who cares about my wounds?’ she exploded, yanking back her hands for the sole purpose of flinging them towards the ceiling. ‘Do you understand this might kill me if it spreads? Getting this court would have been a bad enough look for someone without a treasonous family history! But with them knowing what my father did …’

She fell silent, not daring to finish that sentence – to make the consequences real by speaking them aloud.

Naxi didn’t move. She just sat there in the golden sunlight, staring up with that small furrow between her brows and something in those cornflower eyes that was nowhere near penance and guilt, and far, far too close to thoughtful interest.

‘So what exactly did he do?’ she finally asked, unusually slowly.

Thysandra stiffened. ‘Beg your pardon?’

‘Your father.’ Naxi shoved forward on the couch so that she was able to perch on the edge of the seat, her feet touching the ground for the first time. Her thin elbows settled on her thighs. ‘I know he was executed, but—’

‘He betrayed the Mother.’ Too brusque. Too sharp. She couldn’t help it – not as the sight of those snarling hounds rose in her memory again. ‘As they’ll all accuse me of doing, if that wasn’t abundantly clear.’

‘Yes, yes, very dangerous, very troublesome – but how did he betray her, exactly?’ That dangerous little head-tilt was a sure sign of trouble. ‘We all heard about his death on the other side of the archipelago, but the details never reached me. What did his treason entail?’

The silence lasted just a heartbeat too long.

The space on Thysandra’s parted lips felt just a little too hollow.

‘He …’ she stammered, because surely it would come to her if she gave herself a moment, wouldn’t it? Surely this was just another of those things she’d buried deep, deep in her memory, another little fact she’d rather never look at again? ‘He … well …’

‘You don’t know ?’ Naxi said, eyes narrowing to slits.

Again that treacherous silence.

It still didn’t come to her.

It should have. Everything in her memory felt like there ought to be something in the place of that odd blank spot – a lack of knowledge that wasn’t a gap , exactly. She would have noticed a gap. She would have wondered, asked questions. This … this was rather as though an existing memory had been blotted out, leaving everything else in her mind unaffected.

Was this what trauma did, shielding off the parts of her that were too painful to remember? But then, she’d never forgotten those snarling hounds …

‘I was very young when it happened,’ she said weakly. ‘I never asked for details.’

The suspicion on Naxi’s face didn’t soften. ‘How old were you?’

‘Ten summers or so.’ She hesitated, then staggered to the overstuffed armchair and allowed herself to sink into it – not sure when her righteous rage had morphed into this bone-deep confusion, but unable to revert to her earlier shouting now. At least she could think a little better with her face buried in her hands. ‘No, wait. It was a few months after I’d started my formal education in magic, so I must have been twelve or thirteen.’

‘Hmm.’ Even without seeing the demon’s face, the dissatisfaction was clearly audible in that short, hummed sound. ‘And then as you grew older, no one told you?’

‘I … I suppose they may have wanted to spare me the unpleasantness?’ Thysandra muttered.

A snorted huff. ‘ Spare people? At the bloody Crimson Court?’

‘I know it may sound a little unlikely,’ she desperately said, jerking up her head again, ‘but the fact is no one even bothered me with the specifics. So …’

‘So the reasonable conclusion is they don’t know either,’ Naxi finished, shaking her pink and blonde curls over her shoulders with the air of someone winning a debate. ‘There’s no way they wouldn’t have used it against you otherwise.’

‘But …’ Fuck, what was it, that elusive memory slithering from her grip no matter how hard she tried to pin it down? ‘But that doesn’t make sense . Why in the world wouldn’t the Mother have told the court? She always did. As a little warning not to follow the example, you know?’

Naxi shrugged, a sharp-toothed grin spreading over her face out of nowhere. ‘Maybe there wasn’ t any treason?’

‘What?’ Thysandra snapped.

Naxi only spread her hands, looking smug.

‘No. No, that’s ridiculous.’ When the Mother framed innocents, at least she always came up with a decent story to tell the world, and besides … ‘Why would she execute him if he hadn’t done anything terribly wrong? He was one of her most powerful mages! He was far too useful to her to just do away with him like that – even Ophion admitted once or twice that it was annoying not to have—’

‘And yet something here is off, isn’t it?’ Naxi merrily interrupted.

The silence was a useless one, a proud, stubborn refusal to agree. The lack of disagreement said all there was to be said – that something was very, very off indeed. Something so glaringly obvious that it was hard to imagine it had never stood out to her before … Why in the world had she never asked these perfectly simple questions?

Had she been that desperate to forget her father ever even existed?

‘What happened to your mother?’ Naxi cut through her thoughts, leaning forward on the couch, the gleam in her eyes reminiscent of a predator smelling its prey. ‘Do you know?’

‘She … she’s dead.’ As little as she tried to think about her father, somehow she’d spent even fewer thoughts on the memory of her mother – nebulous glimpses from a time when the world had seemed simple and happy. ‘I think she died a while before my father did?’

More narrowing of eyes. ‘How?’

‘What?’

‘How did she die?’

‘I …’ She faltered, a horrible hollowness to her thoughts once again. ‘I … I think …’

‘You don’t know,’ Naxi dryly concluded.

‘Don’t make it sound like I’m some sort of idiot!’ she burst out, her voice cracking with sudden frustration. ‘Fine, I could have asked! And I didn’t! But whatever my father did, it nearly killed me too, and it’s only by the grace of the Mother’s mercy that I survived – so of course I haven’t gone digging in that history!’

‘Sashka.’ A deep sigh. ‘I’m not calling you an idiot. ’

She blinked. ‘But—’

‘But you feel like an idiot? That’s an entirely different thing.’ Naxi’s grin was smug and strangely soft at once. ‘It’s all very interesting, don’t you think? These lapses in your memory? I’ll have to look into it.’

‘Into what ?’ she croaked.

‘Oh, no matter. You need to calm down first. You feel—’

‘Calm down? You’re telling me to fucking calm down ?’ All at once the anger was back, flaring from her confusion like a rekindled flame – stronger now, even, with the weight of those blotted-out memories behind it. ‘When the court is about to come for my head? When the Alliance could sweep in any moment to deal the finishing blow? How the fuck am I supposed to—’

Naxi fell back into the couch, her expression a hair’s breadth removed from an eyeroll. ‘They won’t.’

She scoffed. ‘How would you know—’

‘Oh, I told you.’ A shrug. ‘I’ll protect you.’

‘You can’t .’ Her voice went shrill again. ‘There’ll be hundreds of mages hunting me down! And even if you could stop them, why the hell would you? You’re a demon! You don’t feel loyalty! You’ll get bored and leave, and—’

Something clanked against glass behind her.

She shot to her feet.

There they are , her thoughts screamed, the first fae pounding against the windows, cutting off your last escape – and then she turned, and there was not a single pair of wings to be seen outside. All that moved were the monstrous plants, their vines and leaves braiding together faster than her eyes could follow …

Shaping a wall over the glass.

She whirled around, heart leaping into her throat. They were moving over the door, too, a tangle of greenery sealing the only exit from her rooms. The deafening rustle from the bedroom suggested those windows were receiving the same treatment. Around her, leaves and flowers were changing shapes, growing sharp and elongated – petals like razorblades curling from the clivias and begonias as if searching for skin to slice open.

Naxi hadn’t even moved yet, a sprawled-out vision of pink and ivory against the couch cushions.

‘What are you doing ?’ Thysandra sputtered.

‘Protecting you.’ A heart-stopping, blood-curdling smile turned that rosy face into a riveting mask of shadows in the darkening room. ‘Want to see what happens when those mages of yours try to reach you? I’m sure we can persuade a few of them to try, just by way of experimenting.’

‘I … No !’ She staggered back, away from the overgrown windows. ‘And you still haven’t given me a single good reason why you wouldn’t abandon—’

‘Because you’re mine,’ Naxi said, blue eyes wide as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘And I hate, hate, hate it when people ruin what’s mine.’

Thysandra stared at her.

Around her the vines continued to slide over the windows, shutting out all but the last rays of sunlight. The begonias continued to sharpen their petals. Still her eyes wouldn’t focus on anything but that small demon figure on the couch, pink and soft and gorgeous and utterly, stunningly lethal …

Her heart slowed as if by command.

Her shoulders cautiously unclenched.

And then she noticed – catching up with her body’s unthinking reflexes a moment too late – and her heart leapt back into a dizzying rattle all at once, because what in the world was she doing ? Allowing herself to be lured into some twisted parody of safety by the very creature that had already used and discarded her twice before? Lies, all of it. Pretty, deadly lies. She should know so, so much better.

‘I’m not yours,’ she choked out. ‘I’ve never—'

‘Oh, that’s irrelevant,’ Naxi brightly informed her, jumping from the couch with swift, dainty grace. The flowers turned as she moved, following her path as though she were the sun itself. ‘Just go along with it for now, Sashka. We’ll talk about the details later.’

‘These aren’t details !’ She couldn’t inch away fast enough, the room a blur to her eyes as her heartbeat soared out of control. Just go along with it . And then what would happen when she wouldn’t? When even Naxi finally had to admit there was nothing here for her to gain? ‘If you’re helping me for the sake of my non-existent feelings—’

‘Oh, no,’ Naxi dryly said. ‘Existing feelings only.’

Fuck.

What even was she feeling?

Panic – that was the brunt of it – pure, undiluted fright buzzing through her veins. Because Naxi was going to abandon her. Like the Mother had. Like Orthea had, and all those others she’d naively called her friends before she learned the ways of the world. Everyone left in the end, and demons most of all; it was a simple fact of life that no amount of pretty promises could ever change.

But if it was that inevitable prospect that was paralysing her with such utter dread …

Gods help her. Did that mean she wanted the little menace to stay ?

That couldn’t be right – that couldn’t possibly be right – and yet her spinning, spiralling mind could no longer figure out just why it was such an impossible conclusion. The court would tear her to shreds over fraternising with demons … but the court had been fed a perfectly acceptable reason for this particular demon’s presence now. She didn’t even like Naxi … but then again, she’d been perfectly, stupidly comfortable eating pastries and rolls yesterday. And those damningly pretty lips …

She could not stop looking.

She could not stop wanting.

The vines were swaying on the edge of her sight.

‘You could make this so much easier for yourself, you know,’ Naxi murmured from the other side of the room, a flawless sympathetic sadness to her melodious voice. ‘You could simply be honest, for a start. Just because you’re a warrior doesn’t mean you need to fight yourself all the time.’

Honest.

Honesty was weakness, too.

‘I can’t,’ she heard herself breathe, feeling dizzy, light-headed. ‘I … I don’t know how. ’

‘Oh, I’m well aware.’ Swift steps padded forward, and at once Naxi stood before her – eyes glinting in the dim light, two or three blood-red petals caught in her rebellious curls. ‘Do you need my help?’

No , she ought to say, no, of course I don’t need anyone, and you least of all. Needing help was dangerous, for the gods’ sakes. And giving in to a demon’s temptation was exactly what had landed her in this spot in the first place, a captive at her own court, a traitor about to be discovered; she’d be mad to make the same mistake again. She’d be—

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

All of a sudden, she was so fucking tired of fighting.

‘Oh, very good.’ Naxi’s voice was little more than a content purr – but her finger , good gods, her finger came up and found Thysandra’s cheek, drawing an agonisingly slow line down her jaw, her chin. ‘What do you need from me, Sashka?’

That touch.

That blissful, impossible touch.

She tried to part her lips and couldn’t – tried to draw in a breath and found her lungs equally paralysed. Soft, feathery fingertips moved down the skin of her throat. A pleasure she didn’t deserve, couldn’t afford. Even if that gossamer caress was the last thing left in the world, her very own body wouldn’t allow her to admit it.

‘Can’t stop, can you?’ Naxi whispered, the words mingling like a spring breeze with the rustling leaves around them. ‘Can’t lay down the armour for even a minute?’

Because people were trying to kill her. Because outside this room, the court was plotting her imminent demise, and how, how was she supposed to lose herself in mindless lust when—

Something nudged her shoulder.

She hadn’t realised her eyes had fluttered shut until they flew open.

It took about the time of a single gasp for the first vines to sweep around her upper arms – those same sinewy bonds again, crawling from the walls and ceiling to slither around her limbs, yanking at her legs until she had no choice but to stumble back. Her wings and spine thudded against the green quartz surface. Plants crept over her stomach, her chest, her throat the next moment, almost eagerly so, plastering her flush against the wall.

They slid around her wrists last, smooth yet rope-like against her skin as they swiftly pulled her arms to her sides.

Naxi was still smiling innocently.

‘What are you doing ?’ Too numb to struggle, she’d thought a moment before, but her limbs struggled all the same now, straining against the unflinching bonds. ‘Stop this! Why are you—’

‘I’m just helping, Sashka.’ That sweet, sing-song voice was much, much too amused for the panic flooding her veins again. ‘I’m just … taking the fight away from you.’

Sweat was breaking out on her lower back, between her wings. ‘What the hell?’

‘It’s really very simple,’ Naxi announced, stepping closer – two small, gingerly steps, as if she was balancing on some invisible tightrope. Against the background of vine-covered windows, she looked slight and fragile, more nymph than Thysandra had seen her in a long time. ‘You can’t feel guilty this way, can you? You can’t feel like you ought to know better. If some evil demon is forcing you, it’s really not your fault you’re getting what you want.’

Oh.

Oh .

She forgot to fight, just for a moment, forgot to be furious or frightened as billowing relief swept over her. Only her lips moved, out of habit rather than driven by any conscious thought. ‘But—’

‘Hush, Sashka.’ A slender finger settled over her lips, the touch searing through her like a brand. ‘I feel what you feel, remember?’

Her gods-damned relief.

Worse, her skin waking up in the embrace of her bonds, aching and craving, begging for more … Plump, pouty lips, far too close to her own. Willowy limbs, nimble hands, fingertips she’d felt in her feverish daydreams for decades upon decades. A sight that smouldered all the way down, anticipation sinking like molten fire beneath her navel … and Naxi would know about it.

Naxi would always know .

‘I … I told you to stop,’ she whispered, slumping against the wall. Only the vines kept her knees from buckling. Her breath came in shallow gasps. ‘I really did.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Naxi agreed, coming up on her toes, her finger sliding to the edge of Thysandra’s jaw. ‘You told me. Very convincingly. Multiple times.’

She parted her lips to say, Good .

Naxi’s mouth was already on hers.

Wet and warm and sweet like honey – a kiss smothering all words of objection, tasting of stolen moments and deadly secrets. She melted into it before she could stop herself. Shameful surrender, but there was no resisting the lure of those demon lips kissing her as if they knew her, taking possession of her as if they’d done so a hundred times before …

And perhaps they had.

In dreams, they just might have.

Naxi kissed like she smiled – unrestrained, unapologetic, a slight thrill of danger just beneath the surface. One of her small hands fisted in Thysandra’s hair. The other roamed down across her body, brushing and pinching in all the right places, drawing a tantalising line over her throat, her chest, her stomach … There was no resisting that touch. Even without the vines tying her against the wall, she would have been unable to pull away now, to stop this cresting wave.

Traitor’s daughter.

But how could she help it when treason tasted so, so good?

A mewl escaped her, swallowed by their kiss.

Naxi’s fingers in her hair drew tighter. A perfect sting of pain, accompanying the perfect sting of pleasure as those clever little fingers slid beneath Thysandra’s dress and – gods have mercy – up over the inside of her thigh. Every muscle in her body tensed as she arched into that forbidden caress, pride and shame forgotten. Vines dug into her skin, and she barely felt them anymore – felt nothing but those delicate fingertips, skimming closer and closer to where she so desperately needed them.

‘Please,’ she heard herself moan. ‘ Please …’

Naxi abruptly broke their kiss – lips flushed and wet, something frenzied in her large blue eyes. Her fingers continued their frantic circling, up, down, and never close enough as she whispered, ‘Did you miss me, Sashka?’

Fuck.

‘No,’ she gasped. ‘Of course I didn’t—’

‘ Don’t lie to me.’ That sweet voice turned to razor-edged steel in an instant. Naxi’s cornflower irises seemed almost aglow in the darkened room, piercing and ravenous, nymph eyes gleaming with a demon’s hunger. ‘I’m done with playing games. Did you miss me?’

Thysandra hesitated, just for a moment.

Fingers pinched the flesh of her inner thigh, hard and vicious.

‘ Fuck .’ It was half gasp, half shriek as her back came away from the wall again, limbs straining towards that merciless touch. ‘I didn’t miss you torturing me, damn you!’

A ruthless, breathless giggle. ‘Are you saying you did miss the rest?’

She knew the truth she wasn’t speaking out loud. Any other truth was safer. ‘I once let Emelin escape just to pass you a message, for fuck’s sake – wasn’t that enough?’

‘To let me know you should have killed me when you had the chance, yes.’ The unholy glee in Naxi’s voice should have scared her, should have chilled her to the bone. Instead, it merely sent another feverish shiver down her spine, towards the heat gathering at her core. ‘So I did haunt you, then?’

Thysandra could no longer think.

She just wanted to be free of this.

‘Haunting is too gentle a word,’ she ground out, slumping against the wall, her fists clenching in their fetters. ‘You’re a gods-damned plague, if you want the truth. A … a grievous affliction. You turned my greatest triumph into a fucking nightmare – is that what you want to hear, then? That I spent a century wishing I’d never laid eyes on you in the first place?’

Naxi laughed, the sound sensual and spine-chillingly harsh in equal measure. ‘Because you couldn’t stop missing me?’

She was beyond lying .

‘ Yes ,’ she snarled. ‘And go to hell, you—’

A finger flicked up between her legs.

Stars exploded behind her eyelids as finally, finally that taunting caress found the heart of her pleasure, relief and torment at once. There was no cautious exploration, no fumbling to learn the shape of her body. Naxi’s first strike was a ruthlessly perfect one, as if she, too, had spent that same century committing every detail to memory – a single slide of finger against flesh, igniting a thousand brand new hungers.

Thysandra cried out.

Another bruising kiss smothered the sound of her pleasure.

A second fingertip joined the first, slipped beneath the drenched linen of her underwear. She closed her eyes and allowed her knees to buckle at last, surrendering her body to the vines that bound her; she barely felt the bonds anymore, biting into skin and muscle. Not as Naxi plunged two digits inside her at once. Not as those fingers began to move , a maddening rhythm both slow and relentless – reducing her to a gasping, writhing mess, pulling her closer and closer to the edge.

‘Look at you,’ Naxi murmured, her breath a heated whisper. The words barely even registered through the storm of sensations. ‘So pretty. So needy. Do you want more, Sashka?’

‘ Please ,’ she whimpered, trying in vain to tilt her hips towards that breathtaking friction. The last of her pride had become a distant memory. ‘I’ll do anything – anything —’

‘Oh, there’s no need for that.’ Sharp teeth nipped her bottom lip, making her gasp again. ‘I’ll happily fuck you for free every day of the week. Consider it my humble tribute to the crown, if you will.’

The crown.

Oh, gods, the crown .

For half a moment, she jolted out of her pleasure-drunk haze … and then Naxi pressed a third finger into her without warning, and every thought of dignity and court intrigue shattered like glass against rocks. She bent away from the wall, wings flaring helplessly against the merciless vines. Deeper and deeper they filled her, those clever nymph fingers, pistoning back and forth, stretching her open wide …

And then they curled .

In the same moment, Naxi’s thumb slid beneath her linens, swirling over the little bud between her lips – and Thysandra broke.

Fractured.

A thousand little pieces, each of them another shard of heartbreak, fright, bitterness … and for a single blissful moment she was no longer any of them, the little girl hiding beneath her blankets, the false queen glancing over her shoulder at every step. For a single instant, she was nothing but this raw, bare, empty vessel. No shields left to hide behind. No secrets left to keep. Just pleasure pulsing through her veins and vines lowering her gently to the floor as she trembled and shuddered, soft hands running tenderly through her tangled hair …

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ Naxi muttered, and for once, Thysandra could do nothing but lean stupidly, hopefully, into that perfectly convincing note of tenderness. ‘You needed that, didn’t you?’

She had.

She’d needed it for decades.

The feeling stealing over her was a strange one, so rare its name only dawned on her after what felt like minutes – quiet, boneless peace . As if the court had ceased to exist entirely and taken all its murders and schemers with it. Which it hadn’t – she knew it hadn’t – and yet sitting here on the floor of her overgrown living room, her muscles unclenched, her thighs slick with pleasure … she had trouble remembering why it had ever been such a problem.

‘There,’ Naxi murmured, disentangling the last vines from her slumping wings. ‘Now let’s get you something to eat, alright?’

That shook her awake with almost dizzying abruptness. ‘Don’t you want—'

‘Oh, don’t you worry about me, Sashka.’ There was nothing but wicked knowing in that shark’s grin. ‘I’m not going to let you think I’m doing this for my own pleasure. By the time you’re begging for it, there’ll be plenty of opportunities for me to sit on your face.’

Thysandra managed to scrape a hoarse scoff from the bottom of her heart. ‘Assuming no one kills me in the meantime.’

An obligatory jab, lacking the bite of true fear. Judging by Naxi’s blithe shrug, she’d noticed it, too. ‘No one’s going to kill you, silly. ’

For once, it was strangely easy to believe it.

‘Here’s how we’ll keep you alive,’ Naxi merrily continued as she straightened and made for the kitchen corner, flitting through the room like a little sunbeam in the flesh. Around her, plants slid away from the windows, letting the light back in. ‘You’re going to continue your preparations for treaties and legal changes – we just won’t tell anyone about it yet. We’re going to figure out what happened to your father, too. And in the meantime, you’re going to blather about the grandness of the court whenever you need to show your face in public, alright? No one needs to know you’re not planning to start another war next week.’

Thysandra gave a feeble laugh. ‘You make it sound easy.’

‘Perhaps it is?’ Another grin, dazzling as spring mornings. ‘Oh, and one more thing, Sashka. You’re going to sleep in your own bed again.’

She stiffened.

‘No, we won’t tell anyone,’ Naxi added, pulling a face as she swatted the unspoken objection aside. ‘I promise I’ll complain about my sore spine and those horrible couch cushions to Nicanor whenever he shows his face. But you need your night’s rest, and what’s the worst that could happen? You get to come screaming a few more times?’

It didn’t matter how hard Thysandra tried to keep her face straight; her lips insisted on trembling all the same. ‘Some evil demon might sit on my face.’

‘Oh, that wouldn’t be too bad,’ Naxi airily informed her, whirling around to reach for the linen-wrapped rolls on the top shelf. ‘I’m delicious.’

There probably wasn’t much use in feigning disagreement.

But this was madness – reckless, foolish madness. Already she was surrendering much too easily. Already she was inching much too close to liking the little terror, her eyes clinging to those swift, dainty feet rushing around her living room. The months after the Last Battle had been bad, so very bad, and this …

This had the potential to be a thousand times worse.

It was weakness to even admit it. She would end up twice as weak if she ignored the fact, though.

‘I’m serious,’ she ground out, wishing it sounded more convincing. Wishing she was more convinced. It would be the beginning of the end, she knew, letting this grow into more than mere ill-advised infatuation … but staring at the small creature spinning through her room, dancing on that thin line between charm and threat, the end seemed a glorious destination. ‘Just sleeping. No fucking. I’ll agree under those conditions.’

‘Oh, sure, Sashka. Tell yourself that.’ Naxi rolled her eyes at her, then turned away and fluttered towards the kitchen counter, all blushing innocence again. ‘Anyway, lunch?’