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We hadn’t lost her alliance, that single glance told me – not yet. But we were close, and now that a solution had been mentioned that could save her trees and people, we’d alienate her once and for all by weaselling our way out of it.
I glanced at Creon, who smiled and pulled a strap of leather from his pocket to pointedly bind back his hair.
‘Does anyone have any better ideas, then?’ I said, making my decision in the blink of an eye.
‘Inika have mercy,’ Lyn muttered under her breath, which was more than enough of a reply. ‘Do you at least have aplan, if you insist on going through with this madness?’
I didn't, or at least not in the sharply drawn, meticulously scheduled way I supposed she was looking for; my thoughts hadn't jumped much farther than a vague idea to swiftly work out the applications of iridescent magic and somehow nullify all magic my opponents would try to use.
‘I suppose we could start with one ship.’ I fell to my knees in the sand, shook my travelling bag from my shoulders, and began gathering shells. ‘Do we have the time to take them on one by one?’
‘If we’re very lucky, yes,’ Helenka said sharply, breaking her silence, ‘and what in the world are you doing with those shells, girl?’
‘Preparing.’ I gathered my loot into a little pile and looked up at Creon, who’d just tucked the last loose strands into his bun. ‘How many fae do you expect per ship?’
Forty or so.He looked not at all deterred by that number.So one crew should be manageable. If our dear alf friends could arrange a little distraction in the meantime, so the others don’t all attack us at once …
‘Can’t say I’d be glad to,’ Tared said grimly, ‘but will do.’
‘Greatly appreciated,’ I quickly said, just in case Creon was planning to be more unpleasant in his reply. ‘Alright, then we’ll take care of one ship first and see what we can do with the others after that is done. If anyone tries to attack the island in the meantime, I’ll make sure to show my face and hopefully lure them away again. Is everybody happy with that?’
Happy, it turned out, was too ambitious a term; by the looks on their faces, they quite regretted bringing me here in the first place. But Tared nodded, Lyn muttered an unwilling confirmation, and even Helenka looked slightly less inclined to set those claw-like nails into my eyes.
The nymphs hiding in the forest behind her had gone dead quiet, or maybe they’d fled the sight of the smile lingering on Creon’s lips – that strangely seductive smile of bloodlust that was entirely the Silent Death’s. Gone was the laughing, teasing creature of a few minutes ago. The air around him had gone sharp with anticipation, an energy like the pressure of lightning about to strike.
Hell, I’d missed him. I’d missedthis– the intoxicating thrill of diving headfirst into danger and doing it well, of dancing right along that exhilarating edge between recklessness and brilliance. Which did sound like madness, admittedly, and then again …
Even if I was untrained, the fae fleet wasn’t prepared for godsworn magic. I would have the Silent Death himself by my side. And as long as Creon thought we’d survive the endeavour, who was I to doubt him?
‘Time to get to work, then?’ I said, rising, and it took an effort to suppress the heady grin that bubbled up in me.
Helenka was already moving back to the forest, never taking her watchful eyes off Creon’s tall figure until she reached the wall of flowering vines. Tared took two steps after her, then turned back to Creon one last time and hissed, ‘If anything happens to her, I might just kill you, Hytherion.’
Creon looked faintly amused.If anything happens to her, I’m afraid you’ll be too late for the honour.
Tared’s cold glance suggested he didn’t have much faith in that promise, but he restricted himself to a tight-lipped nod and a curt, ‘Stay safe, Em.’
‘Idiots,’ Lyn muttered, sounding close to tears as she tottered after him and Helenka.
Then all three of them were gone, swallowed by the dense greenery of the nymph trees, and we were left alone on an apparently empty beach, nothing but two miles of indigo sea left between us and the warships on the horizon.
Creon turned towards me, and I knew from the look in his eyes that there would be no fleeing for our targets – that I’d unleashed the predator slumbering under his skin, and that nothing but the taste of blood would rein him in again.
‘I’m going to need one of your coats,’ I said.
His gaze flicked down to the small heap of shells at my feet.Pockets?
‘Yes. As many as you can get.’
The coat he pulled from the bottom of his bag reached to halfway down my thigh, inches above the hem of my dress; it was black and tightly-woven and had pocketseverywhere.I tucked the ammunition I’d gathered into one of them, then scurried around the beach to collect even more, selecting only the shells with an unblemished layer of mother-of-pearl on the inside.
Creon stood in the surf while I made my rounds, an obsidian silhouette against the background of blue sky and woolly white clouds – turning his knife around and around between his scarred fingers, watching the ships with that cold, calculating gaze of looming death. When I finally joined him, my pockets were so full of shells that my shadow showed odd bulges on every side of my silhouette and I couldn’t take a single step without hearing the faint tinkling of chalk against chalk.
‘What are you thinking?’ I muttered, keeping half a wingspan between our bodies just in case anyone was watching us. I’d be disappointed in Helenka if she hadn't left any spies between the trees.
He finally tore his gaze away from his targets, knife stilling in his left hand.Don’t think we should start by sinking them. His gestures were swift, the way he signed when his fingers had trouble keeping up with his spinning mind.It would leave us without a place to stand, and fighting in flight is a challenge when you’re severely outnumbered.
‘Right,’ I said, biting my cheek. ‘Too many dimensions to get surrounded.’
