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And if I was honest …
What would I have won by biting my tongue? I knew what I knew. If the kings and queens and rulers of houses were unhappy with that fact, we’d better deal with it now rather than halfway through a gruelling military campaign.
Creon sent me the briefest smile as he sat down next to me. Somehow, I managed to produce one in response.
‘There’s no taking back the discussion anyway,’ Tared said at that moment, shrugging as he turned at the window. ‘The best we can do is think very hard, come up with a decent plan, and then shout at some people a little. Do we really want to try and trick part of the Mother’s army into moving away, or was that a desperate suggestion on the spur of the moment?’
‘I was mostly trying to draw the attention away from Etele’s blood,’ Agenor admitted with a grimace. ‘Don’t get me wrong, it would probably help alittleif we could lure some of the army to an uninhabited part of Rhudak, but Achlys and Melinoë won’t be mad enough to send a truly significant part anywhere. They know as well as we do that we’ll have to come for the court sooner or later.’
Tared groaned. ‘Yes. Any other suggestions, then?’
‘I suppose it would help if we could figure out the bindings,’ Lyn sourly said, stomping towards us from the last lantern she’d lit. In the glow of her phoenix fire, the room looked a little cosier, a warm sanctuary rather than our last desperate hideaway. ‘Any luck with your calculations, Creon?’
The tightness of his jaw suggested that his failure to solve the puzzle bothered him more than his shrug implied. ‘Too many options. If we had three or four more locations of individualbindings, we could likely deduct some rudimentary patterns, but as it stands …’
‘So we need Thysandra to talk?’ Naxi said eagerly.
Lyn cursed. ‘Yes, and also,no.’
Naxi deflated like an undercooked pudding.
‘No to what?’ Agenor said, frowning at the two of them. ‘I’m open to most suggestions to get her talking, as long as you aren’t planning to torture her.’
‘Oh, no,’ Naxi said gloomily, rosy fingers fidgeting with her fuzzy pink scarf. ‘I tried torture ages ago. Didn’t work. I’m pretty sure I could break her if you gave me a few more days to talk to her, though.’
Tared let out a desperate laugh as he plopped himself on the windowsill. ‘Look, as romantic as that may sound—’
‘Aswhat?’ Agenor sputtered.
It was in that moment – as we all stared at my father and my father stared at Tared like a male confronted with a language he’d never heard before – that I realised I had never discussed the peculiarities of Naxi’s amorous obsession with him, and that it seemed rather unlikely any of the others had done so, either.
Which meant that he knew the story of the Last Battle only from Thysandra’s reports.
‘Oh,’ Lyn said, the breathless laughter in her voice proof of the same dawning understanding. ‘Oh, gods. Brace yourself. Where do we start, Naxi?’
‘Look, there’s no need to make aspectacleout of this,’ Naxi grumbled, glowering at us from beneath pink-blonde curls. ‘Just because she happened to like me last time we met—’
‘Beg your pardon?’ Agenor’s eyes were well on their way to popping from his face. ‘Because she— Did I hear you say shelikedyou?’
Naxi’s hands tightened in her scarf. ‘Yes?’
‘She …’ He blinked once, twice. ‘Thysandra?’
‘Yes, Thysandra,’ she snapped, baring her small teeth at him like a cat about to hiss. ‘So?’
‘So— Look.’ His befuddled laugh suggested he was hoping –waiting– for someone sane to intervene and admit we were just messing with him, a poorly timed practical joke. ‘We’re talking about the same Thysandra who almost killed you during the Last Battle, yes? Who has been known as bloodyDemonbanefor decades since?’
More glowers were the only reply he was granted.
‘I suppose they didn’t kill each other in the end,’ Lyn said, sounding unwillingly amused as she clambered into the lowest chair of the bunch. ‘One could consider that a sign of some feelings, presumably.’
‘But …’ I’d rarely seen Agenor look so utterly befuddled, glancing around the table as centuries of assumptions fell apart behind his eyes. ‘Couldn’t it be … well, a misunderstanding of some sort?’
‘I’m a demon,’ Naxi said, scowling. ‘I don’t misunderstand.’
‘No,’ he blankly said. ‘No, I suppose you don’t, but—’
‘Am I really that unlikable to you?’ The tremble in her voice was unexpected. Her fingers were plucking at her scarf more and more frantically, sending flutters of pink wool into the air. ‘Is it so impossible to believe—’
