Chapter 16

The sight of those crumbling walls and towers on the horizon came with a very particular flavour of bittersweet.

The Cobalt Court was where the Mother had stored her bindings – those little cornerstones of her reign, preventing all individuals under her rule from using magic against her. A secret that Thysandra, and only Thysandra, had been entrusted with. The only key to the magic shield of the ruins had been hers; the catalogue book of those thousands of trinkets had been written in her hand. Not too long ago, she’d believed it proof that her High Lady at least saw and valued some of her loyalty.

Then the Alliance had captured her in the very same spot.

And now, as she flew towards those razor-sharp cliffs in the gold and purple autumn sunset, she couldn’t help but wonder whether the Mother had simply picked her because she’d been too blind, too clueless, to ever be a danger.

Very little had changed about the castle ruins in these last few weeks. The same overgrown gardens, the same pointed window arches with not a shard of glass left in them. The same lone, almost skeletal tower rising from the rocky earth. But at the heart of the castle, in the last few rooms that still had their roofs, the glow of a fire was lighting up the walls, and two or three figures moved in the rapidly lengthening shadows of the ruins.

She circled down, wary of defences or alarms. No one stopped her as she landed in a deserted courtyard, though; nothing but the sound of voices a few walls away disturbed the never-ending cadence of waves crashing against the cliffs below.

Cautiously, she began to walk.

As much of a mess as the Crimson Court might be, it was hard to believe anyone would choose to voluntarily live here instead, weeds and debris wherever she looked. It would take years to build something resembling a castle from this devastation. Decades, maybe. If one could claim every single fae isle in the archipelago, why—

A loud squeak interrupted her musings.

Something loud, white, and fluffy shot from an open doorway to her left, fast enough to almost hit her on the temple.

Thysandra staggered two steps backward, realising only then that she was fleeing a bird small enough to fit in the palm of her hand – a tiny, white-and-grey falcon, screeching and fluttering as it hovered in the air before her. The effect might have been somewhat like a swan protecting her young, except that this little monster rather lacked the necessary dimensions to back up the threat.

All the same, she hesitated to walk on. What if anyone thought she’d attacked the damn bird?

‘Alyra?’ a familiar voice yelled from close-by. ‘What are you—’

Silence.

And then, with such sudden cheer it had to be feigned, ‘Oh, Thysandra!’

The High Lady of the Cobalt Court herself emerged from the low doorway the next moment, dressed in slippers and a knee-length tunic so dusty it was hard to say what its original colour might have been. Her brown hair had been bound into a messy braid. In her hands lay what appeared to be a pile of maps and sketches, all bleached sheets of parchment, not a fleck of colour on them – an informality, a vulnerability , that seemed utterly irreconcilable with the woman who’d featured in Thysandra’s nightmares for weeks.

Which Emelin had to know or at least suspect, and yet all she said was, ‘Would you like to come in? You must have been flying a while.’

She’d vanished into the half-collapsed room before Thysandra could gather the wits to inform her she would in fact prefer to stay as far away from the castle as possible.

Damn it. She could hardly start shouting about her important decisions with walls and an angry bird between them; she’d look even more ridiculous than she already felt. With a muffled curse, she shook her wings, folded them, and ducked under the low door jamb, bracing herself for whatever awaited in the dusky space beyond. Traps? Collapsing ceilings? Creon fucking Hytherion?

But the room looked disconcertingly harmless – almost like a command post of sorts. Large central table. A mismatched collection of mugs and glasses. Paperwork, most of all, so much paperwork, maps and sketches on the wall and the table and even the floor …

‘We’re working out our exact building plans,’ Emelin cheerfully clarified, rummaging through a pile of notebooks without looking up. The fact that she was in the company of a possible enemy didn’t appear to be bothering her in the slightest. ‘Seeing as you’re here, would you say it’s better to have a bedroom balcony on the east or the west? There’s something to be said for waking up with the sunlight in your room, but—'

‘I’m resigning,’ Thysandra said.

It echoed a little in the silence that fell – a hollow, dusty sound.

Emelin blinked once. Nothing else, nothing more, as she let go of the notebooks and lifted her gaze, a look of mild concern crossing her dust-streaked face. There and gone again – her smile grew back in place almost immediately.

‘Of course you aren’t,’ she said.

It didn’t even sound like a threat. If anything, it had that amiable, ribbing undertone of friends who have gotten used to each other’s nonsense after a few centuries in each other’s company – Don’t be silly, Thys, you always say that and haven’t meant it even once …

‘What?’ Thysandra said.

‘It doesn’t sound like you at all,’ Emelin informed her, entirely unruffled, turning back to her sketches as if nothing had happened. ‘Giving up so easily, I mean. Anyway, I’m just thinking … if we put these windows on the east side …’

‘I’m serious !’ Thysandra spat, staggering two steps forward, then thinking better of it as the little bird let out a shrill protest. ‘And your blackmail isn’t going to make a difference either, because they’re trying to kill me anyway, so—’

‘Oh, Thys?’ an even more unwelcome voice interrupted behind her, and this time it was Creon, sauntering into the room in an equally dusty, slightly misshapen sweater. His leisurely grin at her looked only a fraction forced. ‘To what do we owe the honour?’

‘She says she’s quitting,’ Emelin said in her place.

Creon raised an eyebrow as he settled himself on the edge of the table, looking as undisturbed as his lover had. ‘That sounds thoroughly unlikely to me, frankly.’

Emelin shrugged. ‘Exactly what I said.’

‘Well, then it must be true,’ he dryly agreed, only then looking back at Thysandra again. ‘Are you staying for dinner? Assuming you don’t hate barley stew, that is.’

She gaped at the both of them.

‘I don’t think she hates barley stew,’ Emelin said as she grabbed a coat from a chair and flung it over her shoulders. ‘And even if she hates barley stew in general, I don’t think anyone could hate yours .’

He threw her a grin. ‘In that case, we should probably get moving, before the alves scarf down all of it. Coming, Thys?’

She really didn’t have a choice.

Bluntly refusing to join them would make her look childish rather than principled. Demanding they stay and have a conversation with her would only make her look powerless, given that there wasn’t a chance in the world they would actually obey. And so she found herself trudging after them like an unwilling youth at a family gathering, unable to keep the bewilderment from her voice as she stammered, ‘Alves? ’

‘They’re helping us figure out the building plans,’ Creon said over his shoulder, one hand on the small of his High Lady’s back. ‘Very helpful, even if you factor in the cost of their breakfast. Watch the hole there – we still need to get it fixed.’

An alarmingly considerate warning: in the vine-covered corridor, nothing but a few last sunrays spilling in through the gaps in the wall, she wouldn’t have seen the crack in the floor until she had already broken her ankle. Now she just managed to circumvent it before stepping into the next room. Here was the fire she had already spotted from above, burning beneath a ceiling that was half-gone – the resulting gap offering a stunning view of the darkening sky above, streaks of pink and purple in the west and the first stars appearing in the east.

Three alves were sitting around the fireplace, loud as all members of their kind, plates already in their lap. They glanced up briefly at her arrival, gave some half-hearted waves, then resumed their raucous yet cordial discussion on acceptable ways to win an argument without committing any murders. Emelin mentioned something about breaking noses as she plopped down next to them. This was, apparently, hilarious.

Creon pressed a plate into Thysandra’s hands. The stew smelled annoyingly delicious.

She sat and ate in dazed silence, the chatter around her evolving from alvish argumentation theory to card strategies to something to do with Creon and numbers. One alf, who went by the name of Thorir, seemed to know a thing or two about architecture. The other two were clearly incapable of telling a door from a window, but seemed more than happy to fade chunks of stone back and forth all day. No one bothered with titles. No one threw wary glances at the flickering shadows even once. Towards the end of the meal, Thorir found an excuse to challenge Emelin to a duel, which she merrily accepted without any visible fear for her life.

It was utterly bewildering.

She still hadn’t pulled herself together by the time everyone had emptied their plates and Emelin and the alves had bounced off in search of a more suitable location for recreational violence. Creon was quiet as he cleared the table and filled a kettle – an oddly snug, content silence, so different from his usual menacing stillness that Thysandra had trouble imagining it as belonging to the same person at all.

He wasn’t even wearing black, she realised belatedly. She had never seen him in anything but black, and yet in the firelight, there was no denying his sweater was rather a peaceful dark green beneath the dust.

Perhaps New Thysandra wasn’t the only innovation of the past few weeks.

By the time he’d finished his cleaning, the sky was inky black above them and the kettle was steaming. Which seemed about the moment he’d send her on her way home with a pat on the head and a few well-aimed threats … but all he did was chuck his dish towel into a corner, pull two mugs from a wooden crate, and sink down onto the opposite bench, staring pensively into the sparkling fire.

For a moment, nothing could be heard but the waves crashing against the cliffs and a shred of alvish shouting in the background.

Then Creon dragged in a breath, eyes not lifting from the flickering flames, and said, ‘Want to talk?’

She almost choked on her own tongue.

A joyless grin grew around his lips as he lowered his elbows to his thighs, wings folding in behind his shoulders. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’

‘Since when do you talk ?’ she sputtered.

He gave a shrug. ‘Since when do you quit?’

A fair point, and a bloody unpleasant one too, coming from him of all people. It came too close to all those centuries of gloating, that endless competition between them in which she’d never stood a chance. Even before the years he’d spent robbed of his voice, the beloved prince of the Crimson Court had never talked – just swaggered and blustered and relished the triumph of his own existence, at the cost of everything she’d ever held dear.

And here he was. Happy. Loved. At home.

Watching her lose yet again.

‘Congratulating yourself?’ she muttered, averting her eyes before he could see the sudden gleam in them. Useless defiance. It wouldn’t shield her from his all-knowing demon senses. ‘If you’re here to tell me you’d have done everything better in my place, I’d rather you leave me alone.’

He sighed. ‘I’m not.’

There was a tiredness in those two words. Old and dark and bone-deep, the sort of exhaustion he truly had no right to feel.

‘Then what do you want?’ she bit out, sharpness the only way to cover up the tremble in her voice.

Again he was silent for a moment. Between them, the fire danced quietly in the night breeze, the kettle forgotten amongst the embers. In the distance, the shriek of steel against steel suggested the alves had found their battlefield.

‘I just wanted to say I know what it feels like,’ Creon finally said, slowly, quietly, his gaze still trained on the flames. ‘To wake up one day and realise the game is not the game you thought it was, your allies are not the people you thought they were, and the rest of the world has every right to see you as a villain. I’ve been there. So feel free to ignore that, but if you’re looking for thoughts …’

His voice died away again, melting into the quiet of the night.

She sat frozen on her bench.

Danger , her mind was screaming, an overwhelming, paralysing reflex. Get out of here. This is a trap. It had to be, because the alternative explanation was that Creon Hytherion himself was being vulnerable , and the gods would sooner return to life. Except …

Except he was here, in this crumbling, rotting ruin.

Miles and miles away from the court and the game he’d once played to perfection. Miles away from the crown he could so easily have placed upon his own head, the ultimate victory in the scheme of backstabbing and strategic treason she’d vaguely assumed had been beyond every one of his decisions in the past few decades.

The Cobalt Court was a senselessly humble abode for the most powerful fae mage the world had ever known, and the Creon she knew would have agreed with her on that.

‘Who are you?’ she weakly said.

He gave a joyless laugh. ‘An idiot. ’

Which had to be even more devious trickery, because of course the Mother’s son would never describe himself as anything less than the epitome of cunning and glory. But the look on his face was one she’d never seen before – a hollowness in his dark eyes far emptier than the black sky above.

If it was a lie, it was a strange one. She’d only ever seen him lie to make himself seem stronger, braver, fiercer.

‘Did I have the right, then?’ she tried, watching him closely, waiting for the mask to crack. ‘To see you as a villain?’

He hesitated.

‘Or does the penance end there?’ Her voice grew thorns again. ‘All well and good to accept the ire of the rest of the world, but not that of the one person sitting—’

‘Thys.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I could ask you the same thing.’

A shrill laugh escaped her. ‘What in the world have I ever done to become a villain in your eyes? Failed to prostrate myself at your feet whenever you entered a room? Offered insufficient praise for every fucking blink of your eyes?’

‘You don’t remember?’ he said, and now he was the one to look away. ‘That time you found me in the barracks where I was hiding? Trying not to get dragged back onto the training field for the fifteenth time that day?’

She faltered.

The memory arrived in shreds, rapidly stitching themselves together – wooden walls, narrow beds, the pungent stench of sweat and bile. He’d been young. Very young. A bleeding gash in his shoulder, a puddle of vomit on the floor – the Mother’s ruthless training, that same training that had him fussed over and fawned over at every turn of his stupid little feet.

Stop whining , she’d snapped, hauling him from under the bed.

You have no idea how many people would kill to be in your place , she’d snapped, pushing him out of the door.

She stared at him now – fully grown, predator-sized, the inked scars of his training crude lines against the bronze of his skin – and felt the horror rise in her .

‘You do remember,’ he flatly concluded.

‘I haven’t thought about that day in decades,’ she whispered. ‘We … we were both so very young, weren’t we?’

‘I was.’ His smile was joyless as the grave. ‘You a little less so.’

‘I was nowhere near an adult!’ Sickening heat stole over her, shame as much as anger. ‘And it had barely been years since you—'

‘Thys, I’m not attacking you.’ He rubbed a hand over his face, then faltered, not meeting her gaze as he lowered his arm again. ‘I’m trying to stop hating you. And to explain why it’s taking somewhat of an effort, as rational or irrational as it may be.’

She stared at him, stunned.

He hated her?

It was clear enough that he’d never liked her, of course. She hadn’t thought him capable of liking anyone in the first place, and she’d never made the slightest effort to form an exception to that rule. But disdain, disinterest, a careless delight in her suffering … None of that came anywhere close to hate , did it?

She’d never thought herself powerful enough to hold that much sway over him.

‘I was trying to justify it to Em,’ he added, a wry, self-deprecating smile twitching the corners of his lips. ‘My dislike of you, I mean. And she made the mindboggling point that this might be exactly what my darling mother aimed to achieve in the first place – us blaming each other for all that was wrong in our lives. Imagine two of the most powerful mages at her court realising she was fucking both of them over.’

Thysandra swallowed. ‘Well, you did —’

‘I was born , Thys.’ She’d never heard anything so close to despair in his voice. ‘I promise you I didn’t ask for her to kick you into the dirt the next day.’

‘No,’ she said numbly. ‘No, I suppose you didn’t, but …’

But what?

But he’d been an insufferable little shit for three and a half centuries since? Undeniably true, and then again …

She too had been playing the game .

‘Fuck,’ she muttered.

‘I know,’ he said, throat bobbing, and then again, ‘I know.’

‘Is that why Emelin gave me that cursed court, then?’ The crumbling walls and broken arches were tilting around her. ‘Revenge on your behalf for the way I’ve been treating you?’

‘No.’ He paused, then slowly added, ‘I think she mostly picked you because you offered her your help once. That night after the Mother took me captive.’

For a moment, Thysandra could do nothing but blink at him.

That strange, violent night when everything had shifted … Creon, dangling from the ceiling of the bone hall with hooks through his wings. Emelin, small and human-looking and seeming so very lost on the pavilion’s doorstep.

Come see me if you need help.

Mere hours before the girl had escaped. Mere hours before Thysandra had let her.

‘That …’ She swallowed. ‘That was stupid of me.’

‘Maybe,’ he said dryly, some of the usual careless arrogance returning to his expression as he stretched his legs towards the fire and tilted his head at her. ‘But I wouldn’t have invited you for dinner if you hadn’t done it, so I would argue it won you at least something . Speaking of which – tea?’

‘As long as you don’t poison it,’ she numbly said.

His grin held a faint edge of that familiar wickedness. ‘Happy to switch cups.’

Which would have been an obvious double-bluff if they’d been at home – but they weren’t at home, no one else was serving them the drinks, and she watched him retrieve the kettle from the fire and pour two mugs of tea without a single suspicious twitch of his fingers. It smelled a damn sight better than whatever brew Silas had served her this morning. Mint. Chamomile. Something like … cinnamon?

By the time she wrapped her fingers around the warm, smooth earthenware, the conversation hadn’t started making even a fraction more sense .

‘So are you trying to imply …’ She paused, breathing in the fragrant steam. ‘Are you suggesting this was supposed to be some sort of reward , then? Blackmailing me into taking on a role that would most likely kill me?’

Creon sank back onto the bench, raking his long hair out of his face before he slowly said, ‘More of an … opportunity, I’d say.’

‘Oh, that sounds promising.’ She gave a sharp chuckle. ‘To see how I do without any High Ladies holding my hand?’

‘No.’ His face looked tired again in the flickering light. ‘Just … just to do better.’

It took several moments for that to land.

Do better.

Better than Old Thysandra, who hadn’t asked questions, who had refused over and over to see what was right in front of her. Who had been so desperate to reach the top that she hadn’t cared who she might be trampling on her way up – who had dragged a crying child back into the hands of his tormenters and felt like the sensible one in the situation, too.

Better.

The world fractured. Shifted. Glued itself together into a picture so different it was practically unrecognisable.

‘Wait.’ It came out breathless. ‘You’re saying … you didn’t put me there for the sake of the court at all? For the fae? You—’

His scarred eyebrow arched up. ‘Oh, no. Not in the slightest.’

‘It’s … it’s the humans I’m supposed to protect?’

‘And the rest of the world. Yes.’ He took a sip of tea, then sent her a mirthless grin. ‘Well done. I expected that to take you a few more months, to tell you the truth.’

‘A few— You bastard !’ Her voice hitched. ‘You could have fucking told me that! You—’

‘Could have,’ he wryly admitted, ‘but would you have understood?’

Before the attempt on her life.

Before Bereas’s cocky cruelty. Before Inga’s weary rage. Before the fae encounters , before the mystery of her father’s death, before those unforgivable words – they die anyway.

‘No,’ she said, dazed.

Creon merely shrugged.

‘All the same …’ A desperate laugh fell from her lips. ‘What if I don’t want to save the world? Or the bloody humans? Did you even consider that possibility at all?’

‘Well,’ he said, face deadpan, ‘you could quit, of course.’

‘Except that your bloody threats—’

‘Oh, those.’ He threw her another joyless smile. ‘Just a little nudge to motivate you. I suppose we could take them back if you really wanted out of there.’

‘If I— Have you even been listening , Hytherion?’ It was a feat of monumental self-restraint, really, that she managed not to fling her half-boiling tea into his smirking face. ‘Of course I want out! I never wanted that crown in the first place! In how many different ways do I need to spell it out for you before you understand I don’t wish to lay eyes on the entire cursed place for the rest of my life?’

He nodded slowly, looking suspiciously unaffected by the declaration. ‘And then?’

‘What?’ she snapped.

‘Then what will you do once you’re out?’ The look of guileless interest on his face was about as convincing as a bargain-less promise. ‘Live a peaceful life on some backwater island and try to forget?’

She had already parted her lips for a retort before she realised she didn’t have one.

Forget .

While the humans were still suffering and dying. While the rest of the court no doubt happily resumed the war that had cost so many lives already, throwing the rest of the archipelago back into years of carnage, spilling gallons of blood for nothing but the sake of pride and arrogance.

Old Thysandra wouldn’t have cared. Wouldn’t even have realised. But now that she knew, now that she’d opened her eyes …

What would be the sense of fleeing?

She could leave the court, yes – but would the court ever truly leave her ?

‘You bastard ,’ she whispered, the realisation locking around her heart like ice-cold chains. ‘You … you …’

He just sighed.

No gloating. No mockery. Not a trace of that insufferable smug smirk he would have sent her any day of the past three-and-something centuries, and somehow that genuine sympathy made everything much, much worse.

‘This is all pretty damn convenient for the two of you, isn’t it?’ she added, desperation lending an uncomfortable shrillness to her voice. Lashing out was easier. Safer. ‘Is this just another way to keep me tied to the place, now that your threats are no longer working? Did Emelin tell you to—’

‘Em didn’t tell me a single thing,’ he said, looking inexplicably amused by the suggestion. ‘I was the one who asked if she could leave us alone for a bit. Why do you think she was needling Thorir so much during dinner?’

Thysandra was not aware the needling had been unusual. ‘I … I didn’t see you exchange a single private word with her.’

He quirked up that gods-damned eyebrow again. ‘Should have kept an eye on our hands.’

Oh.

Right.

She slumped on her bench, fighting the sudden urge to close her eyes and give up entirely on making sense of the male sitting before her. Cruelty and consideration. Scheming and sincerity. Threats, and then this advice that somehow seemed unusually genuine and perhaps even … well-intentioned?

The very notion of thinking about the Mother’s son as well-intentioned required the sort of mental strain that could knock a person out for a day.

‘And why,’ she muttered, eyes on the tea in her lap, ‘did you want a word with me, exactly?’

‘Told you.’ He paused a moment. ‘I’ve been there.’

Hero, villain. Winner of a game that suddenly was no longer a game at all. And then? he’d said, and only now did she fully understand the vicious weight behind that question – a question he must have asked himself a thousand times as well.

‘Is that why you decided to come live here, of all places?’ she managed, looking up at the mossy, time-worn walls around them. ‘Because it would allow you to try and build things for once, rather than destroying them?’

There was no hesitation in his voice. ‘Yes.’

That shapeless, dusty green sweater. The lack of knives on him. The strange calm in his eyes, no more deadly glowers, no more menacing darkness – as if by doing something else, the male she’d thought she knew had become someone else entirely.

‘Does it help?’ she whispered.

His hands cramped around his mug for a moment. ‘More than I ever thought it would.’

And perhaps for the first time in their long, quarrelling lives, she trusted him.