Chapter 25

It was a miracle she even made it to her rooms.

Every step was a battle, every turn a deadly gamble. Her hands barely remembered how to open her locks. She crashed into her couch without remembering to wipe the heartleaf vines aside first; they slithered out from beneath her as she lay panting in the cushions, their cool caresses all that kept her from slipping into sleep within moments after her head finally hit the worn green velvet.

And it was Naxi, now, who checked her defences.

The lock on the door. The lock on the windows. Every single dagger in the room, and then the door and the windows again – Thysandra’s own routine, and she had not realised just how painfully excessive it was until she saw someone else go through the motions in her place. Naxi was never fearful. It made it all the more unsettling to watch her now, moving around the room with a stillness that didn’t seem her own, either – no fidgety fingers, no fluttering locks, her usual air of mischief replaced by a dejection that bordered on dread.

Like a wilted flower, having folded in its petals for the night.

She did not meet Thysandra’s gaze .

Even when she finished her meticulous examination of every corner of the room, she didn’t smile, didn’t speak, didn’t drape herself over the nearest chair with all of her usual breezy confidence. Instead, she scurried into the bedroom like some nocturnal creature fleeing the light, returning a moment later in one of Thysandra’s bathrobes, clutching a pile of towels in her silk-clad arms.

Still without a word, she vanished into the bathroom. The sound of running water emerged a moment later.

Only then did she reappear and make for the couch, finally … but she still did not look up even as she knelt and began to quietly unlace Thysandra’s short boots. Her fingers were her own, and yet they weren’t – small and rosy and nimble, but the vigour seemed to have seeped from their motions. She worked as if her life depended on it, not as if every twitch and pull was born from nothing but utter joy and excitement.

Thysandra hadn’t realised until this moment just how much of that exuberance had seeped into the rhythm of her own heart.

The void it left behind … it was more painful than even the lingering traces of poison.

‘Naxi?’ she tried, voice hoarse.

Those dull blue eyes stubbornly avoided hers. ‘I’m running you a bath.’

‘I … I heard that.’ Fuck. She’d rather deal with five more poison attempts than this – the stiffness on Naxi’s face, the eerie flatness of her melodious voice. Was this about their last conversation before the feast? No love or loyalty … but hell, an angry demon wouldn’t be kneeling at her feet to strip off her shoes, would she? ‘I can do that myself, if you—’

Naxi scowled and clasped her hands around the heel of the first shoe without another word, wrenching it off with swift, short movements.

‘Look,’ Thysandra said, fighting to feign an amusement she did not feel, ‘this is a really bad moment to do me any favours, you know. I’m not exactly in a position to bribe anyone with—’

‘Oh, shut up, Sashka,’ Naxi bit out, yanking off boot number one.

It was the tone, more than the words themselves, that made her accidentally obey.

She watched in numb silence as those little demon hands took care of her second boot as well, then of her stockings. Naxi’s face hadn’t brightened, nor had her voice lightened, by the time she finally rose to her feet and curtly informed her, ‘Your bath is almost ready.’

Without waiting for an answer, she marched into the bathroom.

Thysandra didn’t move – from anxiety more than exhaustion now, the sensation crawling into her limbs like an army of ants. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong, and she no longer had the faintest clue of how to solve it – because demons lived for fun and pleasure, didn’t they? For nothing but selfish desires?

So how in hell was she to placate this particular demon, if the little menace refused to selfishly desire anything?

And if she couldn’t figure that out …

Her pulse quickened to a sickening speed.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake ,’ Naxi grumbled from the bathroom, her voice echoing against the tiles. The sound of running water abruptly cut off. ‘ What is it this time, Sashka?’

She shouldn’t answer that truthfully.

It would be pathetic to answer that truthfully.

But she was sore down to the marrow of her bones. Her brain felt like it might drip out of her skull at any moment. Shields had crumbled that she hadn’t even known she was wearing, and the world might crumble with them tomorrow.

And she was frightened.

Numbingly, sickeningly frightened.

‘I just don’t want you to leave,’ she choked out.

It felt wrong, saying the words out loud. It felt right. It felt like spitting out her own unguarded heart for all the world to see, waiting for the first blows to smash it to pieces.

No answer came from the bathroom.

Then the door creaked open a few more inches, and Naxi reappeared in a whirl of steam, the golden bathroom light clinging like dew to her delicate features. Her robe hung half-open. Smooth black silk against flushed skin – like night brushing over the pale blush of dusk.

Her eyes were darker than Thysandra had ever seen them before, as blue as the iciest depths of the ocean.

‘I know,’ she said, weary voice excessively patient, as if talking to a whiny toddler throwing a tantrum. ‘Which is why I’m not leaving. Now get into the bath, will you?’

‘You— What?’ What sort of response was that , to a confession that could have broken her? ‘But I didn’t even offer you any—’

‘Oh, for hell’s bloody sake, Sashka – stop talking about the gods-damned bribes!’ A flash of fury flared in that melodious voice. Something that wasn’t in any shape or form sweet or bright or playful – something heated and hard as steel. ‘Isn’t it clear enough by now that I’m not going anywhere? I’ve never been going anywhere! If you stop trying to bribe me, I still won’t be going anywhere!’

Thysandra blinked at her.

‘Which you should have known, frankly,’ Naxi testily added before she could regain her good sense, turning to retreat into the bathroom. ‘Notice how I stuck around for a century and a half while you weren’t even around to offer me anything? Now—’

‘Then why did you accept it?’ Thysandra interrupted, voice too shrill, her words tripping over each other on the way out. Her thoughts were more jumbled still, struggling to keep up with every nonsensical twist of this night. ‘The deal we made – why did you even go along with it, if you say you didn’t need it in the first place?’

A scoff. ‘Because you clearly needed an excuse to get over yourself and fuck me. Which I didn’t mind, necessarily.’

Oh.

Oh, hell.

Had it been that obvious?

‘So stop dithering and get yourself into the bloody bath already,’ Naxi added with a crabby shrug, slipping back into that gold-lit room and adding from inside, ‘You feel like utter shit.’

That much, at least, was true .

Thysandra blinked at the door one last time, then cursed and dragged herself off the couch, onto her bare feet. Forward . Towards the bathroom. Scented steam whirled towards her. She staggered over the threshold, onto the lilac floor tiles, and almost passed out at the sight of the plush white towels waiting for her.

‘Need help?’ Naxi said, looking up from the bottles of bath oil she’d been studying.

Thysandra’s reflex was to say no. Help was always costly in the end.

But she did need it.

She needed it, and Naxi had never been going anywhere.

‘Yes,’ she mumbled, shutting the door behind her. ‘Please.’

She steadied herself against the wall, the edges of the gold and ivory mosaic tiles harsh against her fingers, as Naxi’s quick hands unbuttoned the back of her dress, then the slits for her wings. They steadied her, those touches. Nothing sensual about them, nothing seductive; they trailed down her spine and over her shoulder blades feeling simply like … care.

Like tenderness .

The dark red silk slid off, pooling around her feet like discarded skin. Her underwear came next, and then she was naked, the bath beckoning in a haze of steam and chamomile scent.

‘Go on,’ Naxi murmured, nudging the small of her back.

She stumbled forward. Her hands found the cool ceramic of the bathtub; her legs somehow managed to lift themselves. The water was almost painfully hot, a temperature so perfect she couldn’t help but moan as she sank into it – letting it seep into every pore of her body, rinsing out the poison and sweat and the wine and the fear.

Rinsing out something older, too, a tightness that slumbered so deep in her bones she had not known of its existence until it uncoiled.

She was alive.

And somehow she was … not alone.

It didn’t make sense. Life was a solitary fight, each for their own and none for all – or at least that was what the court and the Mother had taught her. But the Mother had lied. The Mother had died. Her father had tried to save her, and even Creon had not torn her down for the cruel pleasure of it …

Soft hands prodded her knees. ‘Move over, Sashka.’

Only then did she realise she’d closed her eyes.

Naxi was already climbing into the tub when she opened them, her small, delicate body moving with swift grace as she lowered herself opposite Thysandra. Water sloshed over her small breasts, her shoulders, turning her pale skin pink. Their knees slid together for a moment, a gentle, fleeting touch. No seduction, still – no giggling propositions, no challenges, no skilful hands sliding up Thysandra’s thighs …

Nothing that could make this worth a demon’s while.

And yet.

They lay in comfortable stillness for a few minutes, nothing but the lapping of the water and the rhythm of their slowing breaths to break the silence. Steam curled around the glowing faelights. Warmth misted the mirrors. The ripples of the water sent flecks of reflected light dancing across the ceiling, and Thysandra stared at them until she no longer saw anything else, too mesmerised by the dizzying patterns to remember to worry.

An eternity had passed when Naxi sighed, not lifting her head from the rim of the tub. Her voice was quiet, almost drowsy, as she murmured, ‘My mother was scared of me, you know.’

There was a weight to that sudden statement. A sense of meaning – as if this was the answer to a question Thysandra had asked mere moments before.

In the soothing heat of the bath, it took her a few blinks to realise that in a sense, she had. That she had been wildly and helplessly confused. That she still was, really.

Why are you still here?

Demon senses. She had not needed to speak the words out loud.

‘Your … mother?’ she stammered, belatedly.

‘I didn’t know it at first, of course. Before my demon powers developed.’ Naxi’s voice remained distant. Monotone. Her unseeing eyes were aimed at the wall. ‘And then when they did, I didn’t know what that feeling meant for a while, because my family members weren’t scared of much else around me. Not until the war came. That was when I realised that what they felt for me was not unlike what they felt for the fae warships passing by our shores.’

Understanding rose – slowly and horribly.

‘And they never told me just what my father did to my mother before he left.’ A small, joyless smile curled around those soft, pink lips – a smile of resignation. Of a wound that would never fully heal. ‘They still loved me, you see. In all the ways I could never love them. So they tried not to let me notice what I reminded them of … but of course I knew damn well that there wasn’t a pretty ending to that story.’

Thysandra swallowed. A painful lump had settled in her throat. ‘I … I’m sorry.’

Naxi just gave another wistful sigh, sinking deeper into the fragrant water until only her head still rose above the surface.

‘I don’t think I want to be like him,’ she said then, suddenly.

Thysandra blinked. ‘Like your father?’

‘Yes. Old bastard.’ In a surge of wet skin and soaked pink curls, she sat straighter again, wiping strands of hair off her shoulders with quick, impatient hands. ‘I thought for a while that I wanted to be like him, because clearly I wasn’t like anyone else. But when I found him …’

She was silent for a moment, steam whirling around her, lips twitching with unspoken words.

There was something eerily unguarded about the look in her wide blue eyes – something that lay worlds away from her usual breezy cheer. That was innocence wielded as a weapon. This, on the other hand, the quiet, almost mournful contemplation in her gaze …

An invitation. An unveiling.

Thysandra was suddenly – inexplicably, yet unshakably – sure that these thoughts had never been spoken out loud to any other soul.

‘He didn’t really care about anything,’ Naxi whispered, finally. ‘None of his friends did. And I don’t really care about anything half of the time, either, but sometimes … sometimes …’

It hung heavy in the air for an infinitesimal moment, her faltering voice .

Then she pulled her bony knees to her chest, her small, mirthless huff abruptly self-aware again, and mumbled, ‘Sometimes I wish I did.’

It was in that very moment that Thysandra realised she was in love.

A surprise, and at the same time, the opposite of it – not the abrupt emergence of brand new feelings in her heart but rather the sudden awareness of what was already there, lurking in the shadows, waiting for her to finally discover what was right in front of her. Not lust. Not the thrill of newness. She didn’t care about the pleasure or the power or even the distraction from the deadly turning of the court.

She just …

She stared at the little demon curled up in her bathtub, frail, delicate, yet stronger than tempered steel, and wanted nothing but … her .

Naxi, who could support without subservience. Naxi, who could feel joy without weakness. A creature of opposites, of thrilling, terrifying unpredictability, and gods help her, Thysandra craved all of it – the bright colours, the infectious laughter, and every shard of unexpected hurt hiding behind that facade. A want so great it hardly left room for breath in her lungs. So great that it should have felt dangerous, that it should have been a betrayal of every lesson life had ever taught her …

And instead, it felt like the safest thing in the world – a sanctuary welcoming her with open arms.

She was in love.

Gods help her. She was in love .

With a demon who was by her very nature incapable of reciprocating the feeling, with a demon who should by all laws of her kind vanish one day and never look back … but also, with a demon who wished she cared.

It had to be fatigue, soreness, the poison still playing tricks with her mind, that all of a sudden it did not seem such a bad idea at all.

‘You …’ she started, grasping for words as the world rearranged itself around her. A whole new world, yet it felt startlingly familiar – a shock that felt rather like a relief. ‘You still … can’t feel love, can you?’

‘No,’ Naxi admitted, chewing on her bottom lip as she thoughtfully canted her head. The question didn’t appear to surprise her ‘No, I don’t think I can. But on the other hand … I can’t juggle either, and Edored insists he could teach me if I just took the time to learn.’

Thysandra hadn’t thought herself capable of laughter just now.

A chortle escaped her all the same.

Naxi sank back into the water with a small grin flickering around her lips, as if even that short burst of laughter had been a victory in itself.

Again they were both quiet for a while – a more hopeful silence, somehow, even though Thysandra’s thoughts were still flailing like fledgling birds. She ought to feel more bewildered, shouldn’t she? Or at least Naxi ought to, picking up on these bewildering feelings? Something, most of all, should have changed … and yet, against all rational thought, it rather seemed the world had more firmly established what had already been, as if reality had finally settled where it belonged.

She was in love. The question was just …

‘What do we do now?’ she muttered out loud, barely louder than the rippling water.

Naxi hummed a pensive little sound. ‘What do you want to do?’

Flee .

For the very first time, it seemed a conceivable possibility to her mind.

She’d been minutes away from death, and not even Naxi had been able to protect her. The court knew of her plans, and even if they’d finally identified the leak, that damning information was still out there – which meant her only paths forward were to give up or to go head-to-head with her own damn army, and quite likely die in the process.

She didn’t want to give up.

It seemed stupid to fall in love and die the next day, though.

Which didn’t leave her with a whole lot of options.

‘We could sneak away and hide somewhere,’ she made herself say, even though the words lay bitter on her tongue, even though the thought itself made her want to shrivel up in the hot water. ‘Your idyllic nymph isle, just as an example.’

She expected agreement. Cheerful triumph, quite possibly.

Instead, Naxi narrowed her eyes and said, ‘But that’s not what you want to do, is it?’

There really was no use in arguing against demon senses.

She shouldn’t want to stick around at this hell of a court. By all laws of scheming and self-interest, it had run out of advantages: no more chance of success, and a towering chance of an untimely death. There were other ways to save the humans. Hell, she could move all of them to that nymph isle with her – surely they would agree to that, if the alternative was facing Bereas and his mob again?

Her heart wasn’t that rational, though.

And the problem – the ridiculous but undeniable problem – was that she cared about this fucking place.

Not about the courtiers and the violence and the blood-soaked trees of Faewood. Not about the Mother’s ghost haunting every inch of the castle. But she loved her rooms. The gardens and the hills. The shore, the beaches, the sea of which she knew every reef and islet. It was hers , this island, the soil in which her roots had grown, and she’d be fucking damned before she let another cutthroat conqueror burn it all to ashes.

Do better.

She had no one left to serve, and she was not bowing again.

‘No,’ she said, voice hoarse but unwavering. ‘No, it’s not.’

Naxi’s shrug sent the water sloshing against the edges of the tub again. ‘Well, then we’re not fleeing.’

It was almost too easy.

‘But you want to leave.’ No use in beating around the bush here. ‘You’ve been wanting to leave since we arrived.’

‘Ye-e-es,’ Naxi admitted, almost unwillingly, as she draped her arms over the ivory edge of the bathtub. Her wet skin shone golden in the deep, warm light. ‘I suppose so. But I also don’t want you to do something you regret and then resent me over the choice, so if you don’t want to leave, I’m not going to make you leave.’

Bewildering, how a demon without empathy managed to be more considerate of her choices than most of her allies had ever been.

‘We might die,’ she said feebly.

‘Hmm.’ A devilish grin. ‘ We might not.’

They might not.

And at once the poison in her veins did not matter anymore – the ache slumbering in her every muscle, the exhaustion weighing down her mind. They might survive. She had to survive, truly, because how in the bloody world could she die after a hundred and thirty years of unwilling pining had finally turned into something as unexpected, something as utterly bemusing, as love ?

‘I suppose we have until noon tomorrow, then,’ she said.

Naxi sat up straighter and squinted, rivulets of scented water running down her arms, her shoulders, her pale breasts. ‘I thought you’d be sleeping.’

‘Yes,’ Thysandra said, unable to suppress something suspiciously akin to a smile. ‘So does everyone else.’

A small beat of foggy, gold-and-lavender silence.

Then Naxi slowly said, ‘Oh. You don’t want to tell anyone else about it?’

‘We’ve seen what happens when we tell anyone else.’ Thysandra rubbed a wet hand over her face, then sat up as well, feeling the drops rush down her wings with the motion. Their legs tangled together again, deep umber and rosy pale, muscle and lithe boniness, and she felt weirdly like swooning at the sight. ‘This time it was Gadyon. Next time it might be Inga. We really, really can’t afford any additional trouble this time.’

Naxi looked doubtful, but did not object.

‘So as long as we stay out of sight, we have until noon.’ Something like energy was seeping back into her limbs. Something like, gods help her, optimism . ‘Tared will probably show up as soon as he gets the message, which could be any moment after our messenger has reached the Golden Court, and once we tell him what’s going on, he could get the representatives of the other peoples together rather swiftly, couldn’t he?’

‘Oh, probably.’ Naxi’s eyes were still narrowed. ‘They’re always quick when there’s fae to be dealt with.’

‘Right. So then we meet with them in secret. Get their official confirmation of the rates at which they’re willing to trade. Have them take the captives from Ilithia – surely there’ll be a few alves willing to handle that within a few hours?’

Naxi snorted a laugh. ‘Minutes, if you need them to. But then you have a trade deal and an angry army, and—’

‘Angry army,’ Thysandra cut in, ‘but happy everyone else, don’t you think?’

Naxi fell quiet.

‘We keep talking about the army as if they’re the only force at the court that matters.’ She drew in a lungful of humid, chamomile-scented air, pausing briefly to gather her thoughts. ‘And they are a force. A significant one. But their numbers are … maybe a fifth of our total population? Or even less, after the battle? Most people the Mother sent out during the war weren’t permanent army members at all – people like all those teachers and archivists who were only called in when the need was high.’

It made so much sense, now that she was speaking the words aloud. And of course she’d never seen it before. She had been the army; it had shaped her entire world. Yet Inga had made a perfectly valid point: there were plenty of fae at the court with no desire to keep fighting at all, and …

‘And they’ve all had military training,’ Naxi said slowly, blue eyes piercingly sharp now. ‘The teachers and the archivists and everyone else.’

‘Every single one of them.’ A joyless laugh. ‘No one survives into adulthood at this court without some skill with a weapon.’

‘So what you’re saying is …’

‘They aren’t the majority, the people who were clamouring for my head at the feast.’ There was no stopping the grin growing on her face now – the realisation, so perfectly crystal clear, of whose High Lady she wanted to be. ‘And everyone else will be happy enough to have their peace and their daily meals. If I can rally their support, I frankly don’t think the army stands any chance at all.’

It echoed a little against the bathroom tiles, that outrageous, triumphant conclusion .

Naxi, somehow, didn’t yet smile – sitting perfectly still on the other side of the bath, a feverish blush on her cheeks, pink lips pressed together into a line of unspoken worries. ‘So why do we need the secrecy, then? If you need the whole court to suddenly grow a backbone, don’t you want to make the plan as public as possible?’

‘I need the trade prospects to be a done deal before we ask for help,’ Thysandra said, closing her eyes. She needed her focus, now, to keep track of the pieces moving in her mind. ‘I don’t think anyone will risk their life for just the potential of peace and security. And if the military knows we’re moving forward with the plan before we meet with the representatives, they’ll probably try to sabotage that meeting – so it has to stay a secret until the meeting is over, and then we can shout about it to every soul willing to listen, you see?’

A plan.

She had a plan .

To hell with Orthea and whoever had put that poison in her glass; to hell with the commanders champing at the bit to do away with her. She could still win this game. All she needed was a clear head and a few good hours of sleep, and …

And Naxi.

Old Thysandra would have thought it a weakness – but hell, it felt a damn lot like a strength.

When she looked up, Naxi still hadn’t moved on the other end of the bath, blonde head tilted like a clever little bird. Her blue eyes were swarming with thoughts. As if she was already making plans of her own … and then she smiled, her own dazzling, sharp-toothed smile, and all glimpses of calculation were gone.

‘Excellent!’ she declared, rising from the bath and clambering out in an excited jumble of limbs, dripping all over the pale purple tiles. She shook the water from her hair like a stray cat shaking off the rain, then snatched a towel from the pile and wrapped it around herself. ‘I’ll get ready to shout at Tared if he makes a fuss. Shall we go get a few hours of sleep, then, Sashka?’

Too easy.

But for once in her life, Thysandra could believe in easy.