Chapter 14

It wasn’t the blade that paralysed her.

She’d felt and dealt with daggers to the throat before. As unpleasant as they might be, they were rarely the end of a fight; if it had been only the knife, she would have raised her hands in surrender, talked her way out of things, then taken down her assailant in a swift and efficient storm of magic as soon as she’d been released from his hold.

But the sight of the arm holding the weapon …

She could feel the blood draw from her face just looking at it.

Every visible inch of it was covered in bargain marks. Dozens upon dozens of gem shards in every colour of the rainbow, scattered across a skin as dark as her own – the resulting pattern strangely reminiscent of the Labyrinth’s gem-studded walls. And again, age-old, long-buried memories stirred in dusty, spider-webbed corners of her mind …

She hadn’t even known , back then, how dangerous it was to stack bargains. How great the risk of incompatible obligations and inevitable death. She’d just sat in that familiar lap and counted marks. Picked a new favourite colour every single time. Asked for the stories behind them and giggled at the more and more ridiculous fabrications .

The Bargainer , they’d called him.

Now she remembered.

‘Uncle Silas?’ she whispered, voice choked. ‘Is … is that you?’

He froze behind her.

‘Oh, gods.’ She almost forgot about the knife against her throat, remembering only at the last moment not to whip around. ‘It’s me. Thysandra. I—'

The hand on her throat loosened. ‘ Thys ?’

‘Oh gods.’ Now she fully recognised his voice, the sound hitting her like the scent of an old home one hadn’t visited in decades. ‘Oh, gods . You actually are —’

He let go of her, and she spun around so fast her wing missed him by inches, her heart a drum against her ribs. There he stood, the male she only remembered as a giant towering over her, now suddenly a mere half head taller. Black hair shorn short. Golden wings drawn tense. And those bargain marks, gleaming like the world’s most menacing jewellery beneath the collar of his off-white shirt …

‘Oh,’ she breathed again, staggering backward to find the support of the wall.

‘How in hell—’ he started, then abruptly interrupted himself, gaze shooting to the nearest entrance with the vigilance of a hunting falcon. Gone was the moment of dazed bewilderment, the mutual paralysis; his voice went tight, urgent in the blink of an eye. ‘Never mind. Who else is with you? Who else knows you’re here?’

‘I— No. No one.’ The words fell from her lips like mindless babble. ‘I’m alone. I—’

His golden eyes narrowed – distrust and disbelief thick as storm clouds. ‘Really? Did she send you here?’

She .

It took a moment to figure out who he was talking about.

‘No!’ she blurted, breathless and rushed. ‘No, you don’t understand— She’s dead . The Mother is dead . I’m the only one—’

He stiffened. ‘ What?’

‘There was a battle.’ Gods, where was she even supposed to start? ‘Almost two weeks ago now. She challenged the other magical peoples. At the White City. Then she lost, and … and they killed her.’

The words echoed through the deserted corridor, quiet and hollow.

Silas didn’t sheathe his knife as he slowly turned the full bulk of his body back towards her, a small muscle working in his broad jaw. It was the only outward sign of his agitation. The rest of him was still, almost ominously so, as he looked her up and down twice as if he might be able to read the truth from the scars on her wings and her sandy boots.

When he finally jerked forward, it was almost a relief. His hand came up and extended towards her, a simple, wordless gesture that required no further explanation.

She placed her hand in his. Even the back of his fingers showed the occasional bargain mark; gleaming, colourful reminders that she didn’t stand a chance trying to trick this particular male into any half-truths or false promises.

‘You’ll answer the first three questions I ask you after we close this bargain,’ he said, his voice as tight as his grip. ‘Honest answers, full truth and nothing but the truth, and no attempts to goad me into misinterpreting your words. I’ll answer your first three questions in turn, under the same conditions.’

She swallowed. ‘We have a deal.’

The magic blazed and died away swiftly. By the time the small, ocean-green gemstone had appeared next to Naxi’s, Nicanor’s, and Gadyon’s marks on the inside of her wrist, she still hadn’t figured out what would be the best way to use her three guaranteed answers.

Silas clearly had no such trouble. She’d barely let go of his hand before he sharply said, ‘Is the Mother dead?’

‘Yes,’ she blurted out, the magical obligation moving her lips before she could decide to herself. ‘She is, and I’m certain of it, too.’

He stared at her for another moment, then cursed and turned away, rubbing his palm over his face once and a second time as if he might press the fact into his mind with sheer physical force. She waited in the desolate silence until finally he gave a sharp shake of his head, glanced at his own forearm, and muttered, ‘I did wonder what happened to all of them.’

‘Oh,’ she said numbly. ‘The battle.’

‘Yes. Lost a few dozen marks over the course of a couple of hours – Arion, Thyestes, Anysia …’ His left finger thoughtlessly pointed out the spots where the marks had been, nothing but smooth dark skin to be seen now. ‘Was planning to ask about it at the next food delivery. I’d like to hear who killed her.’

Emphatically not a question. Which meant there was no magic forcing her to answer, let alone to answer truthfully … but then again, there was little reason to lie about this.

‘Emelin,’ she said flatly. ‘Agenor’s daughter.’

Silas blinked. ‘I wasn’t aware Agenor had a daughter.’

‘Neither was anyone else, until recently.’ She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘She’s half human. Unbound. Agenor left the court and joined the Alliance a while ago.’

‘Smart fucking bastard,’ Silas muttered, moving back until he bumped wing-first into the opposite wall. There he sank into a crouch, elbows on his thighs, and stayed quiet for a moment, blinking into nothingness. ‘More sense than I’d given him credit for, honestly.’

‘Creon also deserted. Turned out he’d been working against her for decades.’ Again the note of spite in her voice was painfully obvious. ‘Ophion was found charred from the wrist up, I’ve been told – death by bargain. Seems to have been Emelin’s work, again.’

‘Girl’s been busy,’ Silas mumbled, casting a last glance down the corridor before groaning, rising to his feet, and grabbing a key from his pocket. A mirthless laugh slipped from his lips as he met her gaze. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea, then.’

For a single moment, she faltered.

Was this a bad idea? She didn’t actually know him. He was family, yes. Her parents seemed to have trusted him. But that had been a lifetime ago, and no one had seen any sign of him in the meantime; gods knew what he might have been up to in the meantime, what unholy ideas might have festered after four centuries in this desolate place.

Then again …

He might just have all the answers she was looking for.

She cautiously followed him as he unlocked the room she’d tried to break into minutes ago, unsure where to start, and settled for, ‘You mentioned food deliveries.’

‘Oh, yes.’ He shrugged and held the door for her. ‘Couple of people who were unwise enough to bargain with me for unnamed favours. Made them repay me with secrecy and supplies. Come in.’

The space beyond was an old bedroom as she’d expected, looking only slightly more inhabitable than the rest of the house she’d just explored – cracked tiles on the floor, the curtains little more than old, sun-bleached blankets tied between pillars. The bed was narrow and austere. A makeshift stove had been installed by the wall; bags of flour, root vegetables, cheese, and eggs lay piled up beside it.

The room of a male who’d spent four centuries doing nothing but surviving … but then there was the desk.

Handwritten notes covered most of the wide wooden surface. Colour guides, the sort used by dressmakers, had been thrown haphazardly in between, and small stacks of leather-bound books balanced precariously on the edges. At the centre of the chaos, a single notebook lay open to show two meticulously ordered pages: tables and lists, in a far neater hand than the surrounding writing.

‘Only upside of the whole cursed business,’ Silas’s low voice said behind her before she could ask. ‘I finally have time for my research. Take the chair – it only wobbles a little.’

It was the only chair in the room, but she did not have the composure left to politely protest. He shut the door behind them, then strode to the hearth without looking at her; she didn’t speak as he lifted his kettle from the glowing embers and filled two antique mugs with a dark brown brew that smelled grassy and bitter. Acacia, perhaps? It seemed like a shrub that might grow even on this dead, desolate island.

She sat in silence until he pushed a mug into her hand and sank down on the edge of his bed. His expression had gone from dazed to grim, a look that said he definitely hadn’t invited her to cosily muse on the good old days together .

‘So,’ he finally said, savouring that one word, his eyes trained on the floor between them. ‘Why are you here, if the Mother didn’t send you?’

Again there was that tug of a force that wasn’t her own, a pull her lips and tongue couldn’t help but obey. ‘I’m trying to figure out what happened to my parents.’

He crooked up an eyebrow. ‘After all this time.’

‘What?’ she blurted, realising only a fraction of a second later that that might just count as a question … but her uncle took a sip of piping hot tea without showing any hurry to answer, so she dared to believe she hadn’t wasted one of her three precious truths. ‘I mean, I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘They’ve been dead for a while.’ The sharp set of his jaw didn’t fit the cold bluntness of the words. ‘So one wonders what has happened to suddenly rouse your curiosity, after four full centuries without them.’

He didn’t trust her.

The realisation should not have been such a slap in the face, and yet she almost winced at the impact – because of course he didn’t. She was the one who’d remained loyally at the Mother’s side for all those centuries, wasn’t she? The one who’d fought and killed for the sake of her tyranny? While he had hidden in this ghastly place and feared for his life – feared that people like her might discover him …

‘She cast me out,’ she said quietly. ‘The Mother.’

He remained motionless, head tilted – eyes demanding better.

What more was there to say? I’m a fucking mess – that was the simple truth. I no longer know who or what to believe in . The court she’d thought she’d loved, the people she’d thought she knew, they’d all abandoned her – moved over for a brand new world in which she lacked all the security of known danger, in which she was a little fledgling all over again.

And who was to take her by the hand and teach her to navigate it, now the Mother was no longer there to do so?

If he’d spoken the question out loud, she’d have been forced to tell him. She could only be grateful that – knowingly or unknowingly – he’d at least spared her that humiliation.

‘I’m starting to realise I’ve been lied to for most of my life,’ she muttered instead – still a confession that reeked of weakness, but at least one she could restrain, regulate. ‘About … almost everything, it seems. It’s making me doubt everything else I took as a given while the Mother was still alive.’

His face was hard, stony, in the dusty light. ‘I see.’

‘So I would very much like to know …’ No, wait. This was not the moment for noncommittal requests – not when she had far better means at hand to make sure she received the answer she needed. ‘What did my father do, exactly, that got him killed?’

For a single suspended moment, her uncle sat motionless.

Then, averting his face, he said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘What?’ It burst from her lips with too much force. ‘What do you mean, you—’

‘I only ever heard bits and pieces.’ He drew in a slow breath, mug balancing in one gem-covered hand as he ran the other through the half-inch of his dark hair. ‘What Echion told me was, “I did something entirely ill-advised, it may well be the end of me, and I won’t regret it for a moment.” He wouldn’t give me any details. Said I’d insist on butting in and making things worse if I knew the rest.’

‘He knew he was going to die,’ Thysandra said breathlessly.

‘He was prepared for the possibility, at least. He was also determined to get Cy and you out before he took you down with him.’ Again that hand through his shorn hair – jerky, agitated motions. ‘That was the plan, you see. I was to wait here for the two of you. You were supposed to join me in the middle of the night, and Cy would explain everything as we got the hell away from the court.’

You and your mother are going on a little trip tomorrow …

Her throat clenched suddenly and violently. ‘So she was alive at that point. My mother.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Silas said grimly. ‘Up until the night before Echion died, she most certainly was alive.’

‘And … and then …’

‘Then I don’t know what happened.’ His breath was strained. ‘She never showed up here at the time she was supposed to. Neither did you, for that matter. There was no mention of her in any of the accounts I’ve ever heard of the day that followed, so I can only assume she somehow died during the course of that night. And Echion—’

Something glass-like shattered within her. ‘Yes. I … I know.’

‘Yes,’ he said tightly, returning his mug to his nightstand with a thud that was almost a bang. ‘I don’t suppose you forgot.’

And for a moment the silence had a different quality to it, not sharp and distrustful as before, but almost like a truce – because he might still be a stranger, but she knew that darkness on his face. She knew who his heart was bleeding for. No matter the years between them, they had lost the same male – friend, father – and there was something strangely comforting about grieving the same person for once in her life …

No one had ever mourned her father with her.

Even if they’d cared, she’d never known it.

‘And then you stayed here,’ she finally whispered, cautious, all too aware a single wrong word may just shatter that fragile understanding between them. ‘All this time, while they were looking for you.’

‘Oh, not immediately.’ Again that tightening of his lips. ‘I tried to get you out of that place in those first days. Figured the alves or the vampires might at least be willing to take in a child, even if they slit my throat the next moment. Didn’t manage to get through to you, though.’

She blinked. ‘What?'

‘She kept a bloody sharp eye on you. The Mother.’ His knuckles tightened at the mention of the title; the marks on the backs of his hands glittered dangerously. ‘You shouldn’t underestimate what an asset you’ve been to her from the very start. Cy and Echion were two of the strongest mages of their generation – of course the old bitch wasn’t going to let such a promising young talent slip away.’

She had never thought of herself as an asset.

Or perhaps the reality was rather that she’d never been treated as one, as some valuable treasure to be cherished and won over. She’d just been … there. No one had even doubted that. She had never doubted it. Assets were people like Creon, who had been fussed over and flaunted for all the world to see.

And yet …

You’ll be guarded well , the Mother had said, smile sweet as honey. There’s no need to be afraid anymore, sweetheart. We’ll make sure our most trusted people stay close to you for as long as you want.

Not to protect her.

To contain her.

‘I had no idea,’ she whispered – hollow, woefully inadequate words for the memories tilting upside down inside her mind. ‘I …’

‘You were a child,’ Silas said, his tone bitter. ‘Of course you believed what you were told. It’s what children do.’

A biting laugh slipped past her lips. ‘I haven’t been a child for a while.’

‘Trust me.’ He rose from the bed to pour himself another cup of tea. ‘I’m well aware.’

Four centuries of unquestioning loyalty. Four centuries of obeying the Mother’s every wish and whim – the High Lady who’d spared her from the hounds, perhaps, but why had she never in all those years realised that her saviour had also been the one to put her in danger in the first place?

But I did take her down in the end , she almost blurted, a strange, desperate plea for that tightness in her uncle’s jaw to soften. I helped, at least. I told them how to break the bindings . But she should know better than to angle so eagerly for anyone’s approval, and this very secret was the last thing she should share with anyone …

A traitor’s daughter .

Far, far too many people knew already.

‘And then after those first days …’ she forced herself to say instead, trying to hold back the confusion, the shame, the weakness cracking through her shields. ‘Some people thought you’d sought refuge with the other magical peoples.’

‘I never even tried.’ The shadows deepened on his face. ‘Made myself a little too useful during the wars the Mother waged against them. They had no reason to risk her wrath for the sake of my sorry neck.’

She could see that.

‘And I didn’t have many other options.’ He sank down on the foot of the bed again, golden wings splaying out behind his broad shoulders. ‘Your father was the best friend I ever had. Cy was like a little sister to me. The Mother damn well knew I wouldn’t sit back quietly after the way she destroyed them, and half the court owed me favours at the time – I was far too influential for her to risk any public defiance from my side.’

‘You didn’t try to …’ She hesitated, hearing the hollow naivety in her own words but unable to stop all the same. ‘You didn’t try to change the place.’

He gave a short, sharp laugh. ‘There is no changing the Crimson Court.’

‘But you had all your bargains! You said so yourself!’ Her voice had no business sounding so shrill all of a sudden – the past bleeding into the future, into the viper’s nest she’d left behind a mere hour ago. ‘If the Mother tried to stop you, that means she thought there was something to stop, so—’

‘The Mother was only half of the problem, Thys.’ He leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, mug loosely clasped between his hands as his gaze narrowed on her. ‘No one spoke a word of protest as she fed one of her most loyal followers to the fucking hounds. No one even asked a single bloody question. They happily went on feasting and fucking to their heart’s content, as if nothing had ever happened. So you can change rulers, you can put a new face at the top of it all, but you won’t change what’s festering beneath. The rot is in every fibre of that place.’

‘No,’ she said, breathlessly – not even sure what she was denying anymore but unable to do anything else, to accept the perfect sense he was making. ‘No, that can’t be right. There has to be a way. There always is. I …’

Fae encounters.

Her breath hitched.

And the people she’d thought her enemies … Tared, waiting patiently outside her door. Agenor, offering his help. Naxi …

Naxi.

All of a sudden she was fighting the urge to hunch over, hide her face in her arms. Her voice was almost pleading, now – ‘There has to be something we can do. ’

‘ We ?’ His broad jaw twitched. ‘I’m not going to be the one trying, thank you very much. If you like impossible tasks, maybe settle for something slightly more manageable? Try draining the ocean with a teaspoon, or—'

‘They named me High Lady of it,’ she muttered.

He stiffened with his teacup halfway to his lips.

‘So … so I don’t particularly have a choice.’ Her chest constricted. ‘I just need to—’

‘Wait,’ he brusquely cut in, wings tensing as he rose half an inch from the thin mattress. ‘Wait a moment, Thys, I’m going to need a little more context here. What in the fucking world? Who named you anything?’

His third question, and he did not even seem to realise it even as her lips burst into motion. ‘Emelin, again.’

‘She didn’t take the place for herself?’

‘No,’ Thysandra said, putting her untouched tea aside so she could bend over and hide her face in her hands. ‘She split the empire in three, ran off with Creon to the Cobalt Court, and left the mess to me.’

Silas cursed under his breath. ‘Who took the Golden Court?’

‘Agenor.’

‘Ah. Of course.’ He dragged in an audible breath. ‘Well, that … explains a couple of things. And that’s your plan for the place, then? Fixing it? Turning it into a pleasant, peaceful environment where no one ever stabs their friends in the back for a small promotion?’

Was that her plan?

It was then, in the wordless silence that followed, that she realised not a single other person had asked her that question since the Mother’s death – not really , at least. What was her plan? Much had been assumed about her intentions, certainly. Forced upon her. She had feigned opinions too, had talked around them for diplomatic reasons, had pushed her thoughts aside for the sake of peace, law, and order …

But at the heart of her, everything felt weak and unsettled, nothing like the safe, hard shell of her old convictions. Like wet clay that just wouldn’t harden, shaped by everyone’s fingerprints but her own.

And wasn’t that true of everything about her?

Save the court. Protect the court. Those were her duties, she knew they were – so why did they suddenly seem so gods-damned nebulous, so jarringly unlike herself? That list of mortal deaths shouldn’t matter. The army’s thirst for war, Symeon’s knife diving at her, even the mystery of her parents’ deaths … none of that should change a damn thing about the responsibility that had been placed upon her shoulders, the responsibility she’d chosen to accept.

And yet …

‘Yes,’ she said tersely, because the alternative was to let herself follow that train of thought, and she couldn’t, couldn’t give in to these treacherous doubts. Her life depended on this, for the gods’ sakes. Emelin’s threats were still hanging over her, and weakness would kill her, fixed court or not. ‘Yes, that is my plan. Bind the right people to me and make sure everyone else behaves.’

He was silent for so long that she almost asked her second question just to make him talk – sitting on the edge of that unhospitable bed, watching her with narrowed eyes and lips set in hard, straight lines. The bargain marks on his neck and corded forearms glinted in the dusty light. Dozens upon dozens of them, many-coloured relics of a past she could barely remember.

It seemed like half a century passed by before he finally drew in a deep breath and said, ‘Alright.’

His tone suggested some sort of conclusion had been reached. She blinked and began, ‘What—’

‘Time to go, then.’ He downed the rest of his tea in a single gulp, thumped his cup onto the bedside table, and rose with the air of a male bracing himself for war. ‘Give me a few minutes to pack the most important stuff. We can send someone over for the rest later.’

‘We— What?’ She gaped at him. ‘Are you joking ?’

A question; she realised it only as he stiffened for a fraction of a moment. ‘Not at all.’

‘But you said— I thought you never wanted—'

‘Of course I don’t want to return.’ He crouched by the bed, pulled a worn bag from beneath it, and flicked a spark of blue at the canvas to heal a tattered hole in the bottom. ‘The damn place eats souls for breakfast and spits them out again by lunchtime. But I promised Cy and Echion I’d keep an eye on you, and it does sound like you could use a hand over there.’

Fuck. ‘I’m doing fine .’

He threw her a look, eyebrows arched up.

‘I don’t need help,’ she weakly added – because she didn’t , did she? She was strong. If she wasn’t strong, at least she had to seem strong. And how was she to know he was even joining her with good intentions, this male who’d spent an entire lifetime studying bargains? Even if she made him vouch for his loyalty, he’d know all the tricks to render his word effectively meaningless, and then—

‘Ask me,’ he said, not even looking up as he chucked two books into his bag.

Oh.

One question left.

‘Are you …’ She cleared her throat, feeling infuriatingly young on his wobbling desk chair. ‘Are you planning to harm me or cause me trouble in any possible way?’

‘I’d rather tear off my own wings,’ he said, voice flat.

She parted her lips.

No words came out.

Out of nowhere, she felt shamefully close to crying.