Chapter 33

There was one last battle she had left to fight, and she was both dreading it and craving it with a vehemence that made her heart hurt.

She made herself eat two more buns before she allowed herself to leave the room. She brushed her teeth. She brushed her hair. She put on a dress, took it off again, put on another dress, and found that one lacking as well; eventually, she settled on a gown she hadn’t worn for ages, deep purple at the hem that blended into wine red, then vibrant orange, then daffodil yellow. It looked like a sunrise. Like a new beginning.

Two golden rings, one golden necklace, and she finally forced herself to turn away from the mirror. If she didn’t give herself a stern talking to, she might dither until nightfall.

Out onto the balcony. Fresh air brushed her face. Chirping birds sang in the trees below.

She let herself drop into the briny sea breeze.

Only by flying over it did she realise just how much destruction the Labyrinth had caused in the Mother’s bone hall. At the heart of the castle, a stretch of the roof had been torn away, edges curling like burned parchment. The single glimpse she caught of the interior was as black as that light had been white, every inch of the hall burned to charcoal by the force of the mountain’s fury.

She remembered how her own skin had felt, open and raw, and shivered as she swerved away from the charred ruins.

Soon, she’d have that last reminder of the Mother’s court torn down. Hell, she might smash the walls to pieces with her own damn hands.

Soon.

But first …

She pressed away the cowardly urge to take a detour, making straight for the south of the island instead.

Creon’s pavilion stood a little to the west of Faewood, where the trees were straighter and lighter and didn’t whisper tales of murder to each other. The silvery roof gleamed blindingly in the sunlight as she descended. The roses curling around the stained-glass windows looked even redder than they usually did – nymph magic, perhaps, or else the flowers were simply reacting eagerly to Naxi’s vicinity.

Which Thysandra quite understood.

It was bloody hard not to feel like a better, stronger, more alive version of herself with this particular half nymph around.

She stepped up onto the low porch and knocked lightly on the pale green window. Straightening her back was a useless gesture when every single person inside could read the nervousness directly from her heart, but she did it anyway – a fae had her pride, for hell’s sake.

‘Come in!’

Creon’s voice.

For perhaps the first time in a century, her magic threatened to slip from her control as she drew just enough red from her wing to make the window vanish. Only a hurried addition of just the smallest drop of blue kept the shards from erupting into the home beyond.

She’d visited the place plenty of times in her life, yet it was rare for her to actually step inside – see the light birchwood floor, the intricate wood carvings around the windows, the plush blue couch and ready-made bed. It had always felt dangerous. Like stepping into enemy territory. Only now, the hate and the rivalry gone, did she recognise the pavilion for what it was: another safe refuge, another place to hide.

Creon still didn’t look quite like the Creon she knew, peeling onions at the kitchen table with the ease of a man who knew his way around a knife.

Naxi, on the other hand, looked so very much like herself that it was hard to fathom she was real.

She was sitting at the short side of the table, rosy and golden, a half-finished flower wreath between her petal-stained fingers. A moment ago, she must have been chattering cheerfully. Now, her eyes had gone wide like saucers, her lips parted in a never-uttered squeal – as if she might have hidden beneath the bed if Creon had been just a heartbeat slower to reply to that cautious knock.

On the edge of Thysandra’s sight, the bastard was looking very fucking content with himself. She couldn’t be bothered to waste any thoughts on that observation.

Because Naxi was here. She shouldn’t have been anywhere near the court anymore, shouldn’t have wasted a single minute more in a place she hated to the very core of her demon soul – yet here she was sitting, radiant like sunlight, beautiful like the first rosy blossoms of spring, and even if it was silly and reckless to hope …

Thysandra couldn’t help it.

Just a tiny little sparkle of it, but enough to get her through the empty window frame. Enough to clear her throat, clear her throat again, and say, ‘Morning?’

You gave your family every reason to trust you , she’d snapped at that dainty, delicate face. Didn’t you?

She heard it again in the small beat of silence.

‘More like afternoon, actually,’ Creon helpfully pointed out, chucking his onion into an oven dish with the others and plucking another one from the unpeeled pile.

That was enough reason to avert her eyes and send him a blistering glare. He returned a smile that was a little too pale for the breezy carelessness in his voice – a smile that said I know , and I’m sorry , and most of all, let’s talk about that mother of mine later, when you’re done sorting things out with the demon about to explode beside me.

They must have heard she was awake.

He might have been the only person capable of keeping Naxi here in the time that had since passed.

‘Right,’ Thysandra said sheepishly. ‘Afternoon.’

Creon shrugged and pointedly returned to his maiming of onions, as if to inform her that his job here was done.

‘Right,’ she said again, a little more lost now.

Naxi still hadn’t moved.

It was almost unimaginable that this was the same bloodstained, sharp-toothed little avenger she’d seen emerge from the Labyrinth’s darkness in those last frantic moments. Here, scrubbed clean and dressed in pale pastels, every part of her seemed crafted from the finest, most delicate materials – a fragile beauty that beckoned, begged to be cherished.

You ran from the ones who relied on you before …

Her words.

Her turn for courage, now.

‘Would you, um …’ Gods help her, it would have been useful if she’d actually decided what she’d wanted before opening her mouth – something more specific, at least, than please don’t hate me forever. ‘Would you mind going for a walk?’

There.

At least that would get them out from under Creon’s chaperoning eyes.

Naxi turned even pinker than usual. But she rose, flicked a handful of bruised petals from her dress and fingers, and made for the open window without a word, blue eyes cast to the floor – a strangely demure posture, except Thysandra suspected it was likely a last, desperate attempt at restraint.

‘Come by for dinner if you feel like it,’ Creon said, not looking up.

Thysandra swallowed. ‘Thanks.’

By her side, Naxi did not seem to have heard him at all .

Outside, the air was heavy with the scent of blooming roses, sunlight trickling through the foliage and flecking dancing patterns on the ferns and mosses. Thysandra walked onward aimlessly. Naxi followed quietly, her steps lacking their usual bounce – a stillness that became more and more pronounced with every minute that passed, morphing from flustered timidity into the implication of question, and then into an undeniable demand.

Even in this sun-streaked forest, the ghost of that gallery argument hung heavily between them. The words still echoed, sharp and vicious.

‘I’m sorry,’ Thysandra managed, finally.

A pathetic start. But it was a start, at least.

Naxi gave a small huff.

It was almost familiar. She’d been in a place like this before, begging for forgiveness in the face of unrelenting vexation – except grovelling before the Mother had only ever been a necessity, a betrayal of her own feelings for the sake of approval and survival. This …

This was the gods-damned opposite. This was finally allowing her feelings to speak for her, approval be damned, survival be damned.

She didn’t need anything in exchange this time. If the favour wasn’t returned, the feelings were still just as true – and that realisation, somehow, made it a hundred times easier to open her mouth again.

‘I was being cruel because I couldn’t wrap my head around the possibility of kindness,’ she said, the words coming mind-bogglingly easily – because she no longer needed to persuade, to convince, to prove herself true. She only needed to be honest. ‘I was furious with myself for being weak, so I tore you down too. That was unnecessary and undeserved, and I wish I hadn’t done it.’

Funny how frankness could feel so little like weakness. Far less so, really, than feigned strength.

Naxi sighed.

Then, long seconds later, she murmured, ‘I was very angry.’

Was . Not am . Madness, to draw conclusions from a single small word, and yet Thysandra’s heart couldn’t help but stutter a little.

‘Yes,’ she said .

Naxi glanced sideways at her, face scrunched up a little. ‘Maybe I still am.’

‘Yes, that would be—'

‘Even if you almost died in the meantime. Especially because you almost died in the meantime.’ Her singsong voice was climbing higher. ‘They didn’t know if you’d survive it for the first three days! That was very rude, Sashka!’

Would it help to point out that Thysandra wasn’t the one who had detonated a mountain right beneath her own feet? She decided the answer was a resounding negative and instead said, ‘I’m very sorry for almost dying on you, too.’

Naxi huffed again.

The trees didn’t stir, though. The ferns lining their path didn’t develop any razor edges. It would have been so very easy for the forest to take bloody revenge on an aggrieved nymph’s behalf, and yet it did not – a small comfort, perhaps, but this was hardly the time for complaints and grand demands.

At least a minute went by before Naxi suddenly said, ‘I was going to leave, you know.’

Which shouldn’t have been a surprise.

It landed like a blow to the skull all the same – the unspoken possibility, still so very much there. Perhaps she had only stayed around to ensure Thysandra would wake up from her near-fatal injuries. Perhaps she had hoped for a better apology. Perhaps she had needed more than honesty, and—

‘Sashka.’ A drawn-out groan. ‘You’re supposed to have the presence of mind to realise that I did not in fact leave, and then you’re supposed to ask me why.’

Oh.

‘Sorry,’ Thysandra said weakly. ‘I didn’t realise there was a script.’

Naxi’s eyeroll was a strong suggestion she figure out the rules of the game immediately, if not five minutes ago. ‘It’s not like it’s hard. Just pretend you’re actually good at trusting people.’

That was more helpful than it had any right to be .

‘Alright.’ She managed a nervous laugh. ‘Why did you come back, then?’

‘Because,’ Naxi said, her entire body leaning into that word, ‘I realised I was leaving you in the company of a backstabbing arsehole whose fingers I should have bitten off weeks ago, and you were going to die if I didn’t do anything about it.’

It made all the sense, and yet it didn’t.

‘I was being horrible to you.’ Why she was arguing, she didn’t quite know. Not pointing it out felt like lying – as if Naxi might have overlooked the fact. ‘Horrible enough that you decided I didn’t have anything left to offer you. You weren’t supposed to care about me anymore.’

‘Yes.’ Naxi shrugged, some of the springy lightness returning to her movements. ‘That’s what I thought, too.’

‘Oh,’ Thysandra said, because she couldn’t think of anything better to say.

It earned her another glare. ‘The script , Sashka.’

‘I don’t know the script!’ Her voice cracked. ‘I’ve never done this before! What am I supposed to ask – why you decided that you were going to run straight back into a fucking battlefield despite knowing damn well that it might be the end of you? Despite your having reminded me time and time again that you weren’t going to risk your hide for anyone else’s wellbeing? Is that—’

‘Oh, pretty good,’ Naxi brightly said, and all at once she was entirely herself again, the twist of her head swift, sprightly, as if her body could barely contain the energy bouncing within her. ‘The reason for all of that is, of course, that I’ve always been a terrible demon.’

‘You are certainly terrible,’ Thysandra muttered.

‘Oh, thank you.’ A sharp-toothed grin. ‘See? You’re getting better at this already.’

The urge to throw something at that smug blue-eyed face was maddening and delightful at once. ‘Am I supposed to ask what makes you so terrible now?’

‘Well,’ Naxi said thoughtfully, ‘the thing is that I’m still a nymph, too.’

That was hardly news.

The tone of her voice suggested it should be news, though.

‘Yes?’ Thysandra said, entirely unsure what the script expected from her now.

‘I’ve been thinking a lot about that, these days,’ Naxi murmured, stepping gingerly over a fallen log on their path. Gone was the mischievous twinkle in her eyes. She was suddenly entirely solemn again, gaze drifting into the distance as if to puzzle out something far greater than either of them. ‘I was never like my mother’s family, you know, so I figured I had to be like my father instead. Except that my father did enjoy scaring people. He wouldn’t feel lonely. He wouldn’t feel envious of community.’

All of it made sense, all of it was entirely unsurprising, and yet Thysandra had not the faintest idea of where this line of reasoning was leading.

‘Yes,’ she said again.

Either it was what she’d been supposed to say, or Naxi had stopped caring about the precise course of the conversation. ‘Demons are solitary creatures, of course,’ she continued, expression not brightening. ‘Nymphs are very much not, though. It was easy to forget that when I lived in the Underground and had friends around me every day. Here … I realised.’

Thysandra’s heart went cold. ‘Are you saying you want to go back to the Underground?’

‘What?’ Naxi jerked her head around so violently that pink curls flew in all directions. ‘No, of course that’s not what I’m saying, for hell’s sake! Don’t be dense, Sashka!’

‘But … but you said—’

Naxi threw up her arms, whirling to a standstill on the path. ‘I’m saying I want you, you idiot!’

That was not what she’d been saying.

Thysandra was really quite sure that was not what she’d been saying at all.

‘But …’ Gods have mercy, why was she still arguing? ‘But I … ’

‘But you’re stubborn and unreasonably distrustful and terrible at conversations?’ Naxi finished, glaring at her. ‘Yes, I know. So?’

‘You don’t love me,’ Thysandra said faintly.

The forest was silent for a moment.

Green, gold-flecked silence, framing that pale little demon face as it softened into an expression Thysandra hadn’t seen before – not the piercing knowingness of those all-seeing blue eyes, but rather pensive, self-observant, as if for the very first time, Naxi’s demon senses were turning inward and reading the beats of her own twisted heart.

‘No,’ she admitted, tasting the word. ‘No, I assume I don’t.’

It didn’t matter, and yet it did. Didn’t matter, because Thysandra’s heart had made its own senseless choices, and no lack of love could change a damn thing about that. Did matter, though, because she was already in far, far too deep. Because she didn’t know if want could be enough. Because for once, just once in her life, she didn’t want to be the one sacrificing, surrendering, giving more than she could ever hope to receive.

‘No,’ she repeated, and it felt like a lock clicking shut.

‘Or at least …’ Naxi cocked her head, curls tumbling over her shoulders. ‘I don’t get those warm, fuzzy feelings in my stomach whenever I think of you. I don’t feel your pain and joy like it’s my own. I think those are the things you people with empathy tend to call love, aren’t they?’

Did they have to spell it out like that?

It almost felt like mockery, coming from the person who knew perfectly well what warm, fuzzy feelings Thysandra still couldn’t manage to suppress.

‘I don’t think there’s any need to talk about this further,’ she choked out. Not the script. Too hell with the script. Disappointment hit harder after hope; at once, she wanted nothing more than to get out of here, lock herself back in her rooms, and empty a bottle of wine on her own. ‘Might be best if you—’

‘It hurts not to have you,’ Naxi said.

It didn’t sound like a confession.

It simply sounded like a truth .

‘It’s hurt every single day since we first met.’ A small, rueful smile that, despite everything, made Thysandra’s heart twinge. ‘And I told myself it was because of what you could do for me , what I got out of it … but then you were in danger, and it had absolutely nothing to do with me anymore. I just didn’t want you to be dead.’

Nymph blood after all … but hell, did it really change anything?

‘You already said you wanted me.’ Disillusion made her voice tremble. ‘That doesn’t—’

‘It’s not that ,’ Naxi cut in, voice urgent, agitated, her hands fluttering the half-made point aside. ‘Fine, I want you! But I also … I want you to be well more than I want myself to be well, do you understand? I want to feed you tea and pastries after every stressful day. I want to hold you in the bath for hours and kiss you until you feel safe again. I want to bite the face off everyone who ever calls you—’

Was it a sob that broke from Thysandra’s lips? Was it a laugh? She had no gods-damned clue anymore. ‘You’ve made your point, I think.’

‘No, but you don’t get the point, Sashka!’ There was a rawness about Naxi’s voice. Something that wasn’t soft or sweet at all. ‘This is my sort of love. Who the hell cares what I’m feeling or not feeling? It’s not as if you can read my emotions. And I don’t think it fucking matters how you would classify what’s in my heart, because … because …’

She wavered.

‘Because what?’ Thysandra whispered, and she wasn’t quite sure her heart was still beating.

‘Because what matters is you. Not me.’ Naxi’s lips twitched into a not-quite-smile. ‘And even if I’m terrible at feeling love myself, I’m damn sure I can make you feel loved .’

Thysandra stared at her.

Felt, tangible on her skin, a blanket draped around her shoulders by gentle, feathery fingers.

Hot tea in her hands. A brush through her hair. Lips and hands on her body, coaxing her to sleep at night and waking her sweetly in the morning – laughter, danger, always by her side. Did it matter what feelings did or did not lie beneath ?

It would be grossly inaccurate to claim Thysandra was the one giving too much in all those moments.

‘You …’ She had trouble shaping words all of a sudden as the world shifted in and out of focus – away from that single stupid word she’d put so, so much weight on, and towards the nameless, unspoken feelings that had been there all along, in every fight, in every tender touch. The things she wanted . ‘You do make me feel … safe.’

‘Good.’ Naxi crossed her arms, jutting her chin forward. ‘I intend to make you feel very safe and very strong and occasionally horny. Anything else?’

Her heart felt like it might burst.

Could it be that easy? Ridiculous, and yet so many things had become easy when she’d let them be – because people had helped her and saved her and wiped the vomit off her lips. She didn’t want Naxi’s feelings. She wanted what she felt around Naxi. So if she could believe it, if they could stay here and—

Oh.

Stay here .

Her chest deflated.

‘You’ll want to go somewhere else, though, won’t you?’ Even as she spoke the words, her shoulders were already tightening. Bracing for the next blow to hit. ‘This is my home. It’s never been more my home. So if you want to leave, I—’

‘Oh, I don’t want to,’ Naxi lightly interrupted.

‘You … you don’t?’

‘No.’ A sudden, dazzling smile. ‘I actually think I haven’t wanted to leave in a while. Kept trying to convince you, but I was trying to convince myself just as much. I’ve come to the conclusion that I really like this court.’

It took several seconds of replaying those words in her mind before Thysandra dared to assume she had in fact heard them correctly.

‘What?’ she stammered.

‘Well, the Labyrinth is lovely, of course. And not scared of me.’ Naxi spun around, pointing to the east as if directing an invisible orchestra. ‘Faewood needs some work, but I think I can fix it if you give me a few decades. And maybe we can domesticate the hounds? That would be pretty funny. Creon says there’s plenty of good soil for gardening, and—’

‘Are you joking ?’ It seemed unlikely, admittedly – but then, it seemed equally unlikely that any of this was true. ‘You … you really want …’

‘Well,’ Naxi said, lips twisting into a wicked smile, ‘upon reflection, idyllic islands are pretty boring, aren’t they?’

A breathless chuckle slipped past Thysandra’s lips, and then another one. And then she was laughing – wholehearted, unstoppable laughter – because the world was great, the world was perfect , and there were a million-and-one things she needed to do, but Naxi would still want her if she did exactly none of them …

‘So you want me to stay?’ There was such light in those bright blue nymph eyes, such unguarded, un-demon-like hope. ‘Do I make you feel happy, Sashka?’

‘You make me feel stupidly happy.’ She felt dizzy. Like she’d flown too hard for too long, drunk on the rush of the wind, spinning on the edge of lost control. ‘I … I’m not sure I’ve ever been this happy before. I …’

‘Oh good,’ Naxi said, and her shivery little giggle sounded as delighted as it was surprised. As if even she hadn’t believed life could possibly be this good. ‘I really like it when I make you laugh. It feels like I’ve won something. You’re really pretty when you laugh, do you know that, Sashka? Your eyes—’

Thysandra could not care less about her eyes.

One step forward, one dip of her head, and her lips smothered the rest of that breathless sentence.