Chapter 15

An hour was not nearly enough to get her thoughts back in line.

Which was a problem, because her thoughts had to be in line – there was no facing the Crimson Court with a spinning mind and a stutter in her voice, not if she wanted to make it to the next sunrise. But Silas’s resolute wingbeats beside her did not help. Nor did the knowledge of what was waiting for her upon her return, the court she’d somehow have to protect from itself even as it clamoured for war and killed its own …

So that’s your plan for the place ?

It itched, that question. It chafed.

Far too soon, the familiar maze of pointy spires rose on the horizon; minutes later, they were descending to the court itself, sprawled beneath them in red marble and gleaming gold. Silas’s expression never changed beside her, his hard-set jaw the only evidence of old memories returning – a whole life he’d led in the place until it all collapsed from one day to the next. She didn’t doubt he’d see the echoes of it in every hall and doorway .

‘Where did you use to have your rooms?’ she shouted against the wind, belatedly realising she should probably house him somewhere.

He scoffed. ‘Put me in the stables for all I care, as long as you don’t make me return to my old rooms.’

Fair enough.

‘My own tower, then.’ She swerved left, over the training grounds below – which were strangely empty, she noted with half a glance. Something to ask Nicanor about. ‘It has quite a few empty floors at the moment. I’m sure we can—’

Shouts reached her from the castle.

Or rather … a chorus of shouting.

It was too far away to make out individual words, that faint racket in the distance. She could distinguish that unmistakable rhythmic cadence of a clamouring mob, though. The layered sound of dozens, if not hundreds of voices.

What in the world?

Some impromptu duel happening somewhere? But fights usually took place on the training fields, yet the courtyards below them were still suspiciously deserted. And at once, that odd but innocent fact took on an entirely different meaning – because if her warriors weren’t there , training where they usually were …

Then what were the bastards doing?

‘Anything wrong?’ Silas asked sharply as she swivelled around mid-air.

‘Possibly.’ Hell take her. Three hours she’d been gone, after five days of blissful peace, and this was the moment the court decided to start stirring trouble again? ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll look into it. See you in the eastern cliff tower in a bit – fifth floor.’

She shot away before he could object and try to follow her. Bad enough if the court was collapsing around her – he didn't need to know just how badly it was doing so. He'd probably turn back around and run for his life if he found out.

The yelling voices grew louder and louder as she flew over the bone hall at breakneck speed, past the symmetrical towers to its right, past the dining halls and the bathhouses. It seemed the noise was coming from the direction of the academy galleries – no, from the archives – which didn’t make sense. Gadyon was about the last person to cause trouble, and why for the gods’ sakes would anyone feel tempted to attack a hall full of paperwork?

And yet it was before the steel entrance doors that she finally found the source of the uproar.

A crowd of a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty fae had gathered in a corridor far too narrow to hold them, carrying weapons, ropes, torches. Fists were raised. Red flashes burst from the throng. Chanting voices reverberated off the high marble ceiling, rendering the hollered words themselves unintelligible – but more than a few of the assailants had donned the grisly skull masks that were only ever worn at Korok’s festivals, and she didn’t need words to know the meaning of those.

Gods help her.

What had they done ?

Only as she landed in a high, open window did she catch a glimpse of the dead fae near the doors, their blood smeared across the corridor in hundreds of bright red footprints. The first two she could make out seemed to have died from a simple blow of magic to the throat, but the third …

Hands around the knife in her chest. Face contorted in that tell-tale agony of demon magic.

Naxi.

For a single moment, she forgot to be cautious.

‘What in hell is going on here?’ she snapped, and although her voice didn’t rise above the clamour, the first few fae who whisked around to see her alerted their neighbours well enough. Within seconds a sudden silence spread through the corridor. Eyes turned towards her; fists ceased their furious pumping. Just a moment of stalemate, and then—

‘Oh, there you are,’ a familiar voice sneered.

Bereas came elbowing through the mob, his long red hair swept across his brow in a particularly dramatic fashion; a trail of blood, as red as his wings, trickled down his biceps and his sleeveless shirt. He was grinning, though, a wild, violent grin – the look of a tiger finally released from its cage .

Where the hell was Nicanor?

Where was the rest of her army, for that matter?

‘As moving as it is that you missed me,’ she bit out, ‘what is the meaning of this bloody—’

‘When were you going to tell us?’ Bereas interrupted with a broad, theatrical swing of his hand – a gesture that was no doubt intended for his audience rather than her. Cheers went up behind him. ‘While you were kicking us out of our houses, perhaps? Or were you at least planning to give us a warning a few minutes beforehand?’

She blinked at him.

Weakness, to let herself be stunned into silence for the whole world to see – but what in the gods’ names was he talking about? Kicking him out ? Why would she kick anyone out of—

‘The humans ,’ Bereas snarled. ‘Did you really think we wouldn’t find out? Your plans to force us out of our homes to let the fucking servants live there instead?’

A chorus of hissed curses and yelled agreements rose from the crowd behind him. Someone flung a blistering ray of red at the archive doors, merely to make a point, it seemed; the steel grew back in place a moment later.

Mages on the other side. Was that where Nicanor had gone?

‘My … my plans?’ She forced her attention back to the broad-chested, beefy-necked male before her, wrestling to stitch the clues together. Was this about the promise she’d made to Inga, decent living quarters for the remaining humans at the court? But she had said in that meeting she wouldn’t be relocating any fae, hadn’t she? ‘There are no plans to—'

He scoffed. ‘Well, then, tell your pet demon to step aside and let us remind the servants of their proper place at the court, because they sure as hell seem to think there are.’

Remind them .

Fae encounters.

‘You’ll do no such thing.’ Her voice cracked. Damn it. ‘You’ll get the hell out of here and—’

Bereas shrugged, turning his back on her without another word and swinging up his butcher’s knife. ‘Let’s get on with it, friends!’

More loud cheering rose as the crowd returned its attention to the archive doors. Torches flickered. Red magic crackled through the air, shooting from a dozen hands at once; the thick steel splintered to nothingness, and she caught a single glimpse of Nicanor’s people behind it before a storm of blue restored the entrance again.

A couple of yards away, a smaller group was starting to break through the walls, where no such defences would be present.

Gods have mercy.

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 actively against her 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 attack her , 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 to die here ?

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 was Silas .

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.

‘It’s the Bargainer,’ someone breathed behind her, and the unmistakable shuffling of footsteps suggested that more than mere surprise had halted their attack .

Silas didn’t move. Didn’t attack. Just swept his gaze over the battlefield once, lingering briefly on the corpses strewn about, then calmly said, ‘Bereas?’

Through the haze of agonising pain, Thysandra suddenly understood why the bastard had paled so abruptly.

‘I’m calling in the first of the favours you owe me,’ her uncle continued in that same flat, low voice. ‘If anyone hasn’t left this corridor before one minute is over, you will kill them. If anyone attacks my niece in the meantime, you will kill them. Thank you.’

There was a single moment of paralysed deadlock.

Then Bereas’s voice, suddenly shrill, shouted, ‘Get out , you fools!’

Footsteps thundered around her. She tried to turn her head and found her vision swimming so violently she almost collapsed where she half-stood, half-sagged against the wall. Fuck. Blue for healing – she needed to find a coloured surface, right now, before she bled out on the floor …

A firm hand gripped her shoulder, and the pain in her left side softened.

‘Steady, Thys.’ This time she saw the flash of bright azure before it hit; the mind-numbing agony in her wing dulled to a faint, manageable ache. Silas didn’t release her as he grimly added, ‘Don’t move. Keep breathing. You’re not going anywhere until I have you stitched up.’

She would have made some retort if her tongue hadn’t felt so impossibly heavy, and if a door hadn’t slammed open in the same moment.

Naxi’s voice cried, ‘ Sashka !’

So much for the public illusion of respect.

But Bereas was no longer anywhere near, and none of the others spilling out of the archive doors seemed to care what anyone called her. Nicanor’s face was as pale as his silver braid. A handful of other mages followed in his wake, all blue drawn from their wings and clothes. And Naxi – Naxi – who shouldn’t care about anyone but herself, who shouldn’t be involved in any fights but those for her own sake, came flitting towards her in an endless stream of questions – ‘Where were you, what happened , what did you do —’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Nicanor muttered in the same moment, striding from the doorway with his hands still on his knife. ‘ Silas ?’

A curt nod was the only greeting he received in return. ‘Commander.’

‘Lord Protector, these days,’ Nicanor wryly corrected, casting a glance at the twenty, thirty bodies of the fae Thysandra had taken down. ‘Not that the current situation is a glowing recommendation of my skills, admittedly, but—’

‘Where were you?’ Naxi squealed again, her voice twice as high as usual.

‘Finding some family,’ Thysandra managed, making a valiant attempt to drag herself back to her feet. Silas’s hand on her shoulder didn’t loosen. ‘Where the hell did any of these people get the idea we’re planning to force fae out of their homes?’

‘Not a bloody clue.’ Nicanor threw a swift glance over his damask-covered shoulder. ‘Need me to find a couple of them and have a word?’

She almost collapsed in relief. ‘Yes, please.’

He gave half a salute, finger to temple, then snapped around on his heel and swept out in a flash of icy blue wings. The remaining fae seemed to doubt for a heartbeat, then hurriedly followed him through the open windows – looking, more than anything, relieved to have an excuse to get out of Naxi’s vicinity.

Naxi herself had gone alarmingly quiet.

‘Alright,’ Thysandra ground out as she made another attempt to stand. This time she succeeded, even managing not to stumble over the nearest fae corpse as she took two cautious steps forward. ‘Now would anyone care to tell me what in the world happened ?’

***

It turned out nobody else quite knew what in the world had happened, either.

The most recent events were clear enough. Someone had heard Bereas preach bloody revenge on the training fields. The archives, with their sizeable human staff, had presumably seemed a good first target. Nicanor had tried to dispel the mob, and when a considerable part of his army refused to come to the humans’ aid, he had pivoted to defensive measures instead; Naxi, who had also run afoul of the group, had been left little choice but to join him.

But what no one could tell her was the most important part: how the so-called news had spread in the first place.

News that had only been discussed in an explicitly private meeting. News that had not just leaked to the worst possible ears but had leaked incorrectly , too – so much so that the source had to have known what the consequences would be. One of the humans? Bereas had mentioned that the servants seemed to think something was going to happen, and Inga had been the only one at that meeting who hadn’t made a bargain … but then, what did any of them have to gain by enflaming the fae populace against themselves?

Thysandra didn’t want to think anymore.

She just wanted to hide, hide, hide.

But the court was still there, and so she had no choice. She somehow gathered the composure to send Silas and Nicanor’s remaining people to escort the human archivists home. She ordered Gadyon to find them a safer place to stay. Then suddenly the hall was almost empty and only Inga and Naxi were left by the writing tables – the first looking even more furious than usual, the latter still oddly quiet.

A terrible moment to burst out crying, and yet Thysandra was sorely tempted.

She could have been dead.

She was ruling a court of murderers.

The game she’d played for four hundred years had turned itself against her, and all of a sudden, she was being trounced at every step. Which meant she had to make plans, that she had to be strong and stubborn and show the bastards … and yet all she could do was sit in silence, aching and numb, until at long last the archive doors were thrown open again and Nicanor hauled the shackled, bloodied shape of a fae male into the hall.

Progress, in theory.

She couldn’t force up the energy to be glad about it.

‘Bereas is nowhere to be found,’ her Lord Protector grimly reported as he dragged his cursing captive into the nearest chair. The male’s hands were bound and wrapped in white cloth – a simple but effective measure to stop him from drawing magic. ‘Most of his friends seem to have made themselves scarce, too. We found this one as he was packing his stuff to flee.’

‘ Bitch ,’ the fae male spat, wrestling with his chains. ‘Filthy, traitorous—’

Then he gasped.

His face contorted.

An agonised howl emerged from his throat as he bent back against his chair, wings cramping to the point of shrivelling. His voice shot up an octave and a half as he let out another screech, then a garbled, ‘No, no, please, please , I—’

‘Naxi,’ Thysandra said, rubbing her eyes. ‘I think that’s enough.’

The screaming died away at once, leaving only quiet sobs behind. Naxi huffed from her edge of the writing table, feet dangling a few inches above the floor as she glowered at the captive and grumbled, ‘Manners, arsehole.’

The male let out a quiet whimper.

‘Efficient,’ Nicanor said, looking mildly disturbed yet deeply intrigued as he folded his arms and cast the slumping fae a contemplative look. ‘More inclined to talk now, Lyron?’

Another pained moan.

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ He cast Thysandra a sideways glance. ‘I’ll leave the questions to you, Your Majesty.’

Asking questions was the last thing she wanted to do. They might lead to her discovering more, and she had already discovered far, far too much.

She drew in a deep breath all the same and said, ‘Who told you that fae would have to move over for humans?’

Lyron’s bloodshot gaze swerved towards Naxi, then towards Inga beside her. His lips moved soundlessly for a moment before he ground out, ‘Bereas.’

‘And who told Bereas?’

Again that moment of silence. Then, even more quietly, he mumbled ‘ Iaris.’

Nicanor let out an uncharacteristic string of curses.

‘What?’ Thysandra said sharply, snapping around in her chair. Unexpected news, perhaps, but not that unexpected, given the dressmaker’s unfortunate tendency to blather endlessly about every crumb of gossip she caught. ‘Could you tell one of your people to—’

‘That’s not the point,’ Nicanor interrupted, upper lip twitching into a sneer she knew to be a sign of the greatest distress. His long fingers were fidgeting with the lace ends of his sleeves. ‘We found Iaris with her throat slit a few hours ago.’

Thysandra gaped at him.

He grimaced, blue eyes apologetic. ‘I know.’

‘ Iaris ?’ She didn’t even care that her voice was breaking. ‘Are you saying someone might have killed her—’

‘So she couldn’t tell us who her source was?’ Nicanor finished tightly. ‘You’ve got to admit it bloody well looks like it, don’t you?’

Gods help her.

Lyron had gone very quiet in his chair, eyes darting back and forth between each member of the company as if looking for an escape. Inga was stiffly, furiously silent. Naxi sat with her chin in her palm, fingers tapping her chin, as if she was contemplating how much trouble it would cause her if she were to torture their witness for a few more minutes.

Thysandra didn’t even care about torture anymore.

All she wanted was to get out of this ever-deepening nightmare.

‘That’ll be all,’ she heard herself say. ‘Unless anyone else has any questions for our guest …’

‘Now that you mention it,’ Inga brusquely cut in, ‘I do. I’d like to know what exactly you were planning to do with me and the others once you’d broken into the archives and found us, if you’d care to elaborate?’

Naxi was the only one in the room who didn’t seem surprised. Even Nicanor gave a single blink that could almost be described as owlish before he pulled his face back into its usual sly, polished mask.

‘Kill a few of you, probably?’ Lyron sneered, his glare making a good effort to achieve the same effect now. ‘The fucking nerve, to—’

Naxi rolled her eyes.

He let out another blood-curdling scream.

‘Oh, don’t bother,’ Inga said testily, flicking her hand at Naxi without glancing at her. ‘I need him able to answer my questions. Could you clarify why exactly you want us dead? Because we would prefer not to live in leaking hovels? Is that a crime worth killing for?’

Lyron slumped in his chair again, gasping for breath as the demon magic subsided. ‘You mortals die anyway. Who cares about a few years more or less?’

Thysandra felt her mouth sag open.

Inga’s nostrils flared, but somehow she didn’t shout, didn’t argue. All she said, curt and cold, was a simple, ‘Thank you.’

And why was no one else looking even remotely shocked?

‘Get him out of here,’ Thysandra choked, her breath quickening. The red of her dress itched beneath her fingertips, begging for release. ‘Take him away and make sure I never, never have to see his face again, will you?’

Nicanor nodded, hauling the chained male off his chair with elegant ease.

It was not enough, not nearly enough, to soothe the restless rage heating to explosion point under her skin. You mortals die anyway . And even if this particular bastard would soon breathe his last breath with a blade through his throat … how many others like him were walking around at this cursed court? On the other fae isles?

Inga was looking tired and unsurprised. Naxi was looking furious and unsurprised.

Way too many of them, then.

How fucking blind had she been, if this was what she’d overlooked for the full four centuries of her life? And then she was still supposed to call the court hers – was supposed to serve and defend it even after it had tried to end her?

She couldn’t save this place.

Not because she couldn’t try, but because she no longer wanted to try.

The realisation felt distant like a dream, and yet it fell into place so very easily, no shock or surprise as it settled in her mind. It didn’t seem to belong to the version of herself she’d known for all her life. Old, dutiful Thysandra, always at the world’s beck and call, would have died before she let these thoughts see the light, would have tucked them far away in the deepest pits of her memory and never looked at them again.

New Thysandra had no one left to serve.

Decisions took shape as if they’d always existed.

‘I’ll be gone for a few more hours.’ The words slipped from her lips as if spoken by someone else; her feet moved her to the window as if obeying some other mind entirely. ‘Please let Silas and Nicanor know. And keep yourself safe until I’m back, will you?’

It was that easy to escape again.

Within minutes, the castle lay miles behind her. Just as soon, she was soaring over the open sea once more, the brightest azure as far as the eye could see – leaving nothing but time, wind, and water between her and her destination.

Emelin.

Creon.

The gods-damned Cobalt Court.