Reign of Beasts (Creature Court) - By Tansy Rayner Roberts Page 0,61

and she was getting closer, closer.

It would be nice to say that we banished her with love, that the power we had from being together was enough to conquer her. It would be nice to say that we gathered the strength to send her to a better place; that we held hands and chanted a song with meaningful lyrics and turned her to dust. That would be a story worth the telling, wouldn’t it?

Instead, she reached the pavilion and dragged her grey body onto the frosted platform. I backed up as far as I could go, and cried out as she lunged for me, her hands grabbing. She felt like bone and plague all at once, and just being near her was enough to make me struggle for breath.

Garnet rose up behind her, dripping wet, and snapped her neck. She didn’t even seem to notice, her thin fingers still clamped around my throat, her fingertips drilling into me like spikes of ice. This close, I could see her, could see the grey patterns on her face, the broken skin, the shadowy shapes inside her that animated this thing that was no longer Tasha. It was as if the nox itself was leaking out of her.

The sun should have risen half an hour ago.

Light, orange and crackling, bright and hot, flashed past my eyes. Ashiol yelled, and Lysandor, and I felt myself burning as the flames took hold of everything — me, Garnet, the Tasha-thing. The pavilion broke under our feet, submerging us all in the cold, contaminated water.

It tasted like death, and I was happy to drown in it.

Livilla found me, and we came up out of the water together, her sodden strands of hair stuck to both of us. She buried her face in my chest, and I stared through my misty vision to see whatever it was she didn’t want to see.

The cubs, all three of them, were in their animal forms. The lynx, the gattopardi and the cats clung to the wreckage of the pavilion, shadowy shapes tearing and gnawing at something in the water. It was a moment before I realised what it was that they were doing. They were eating her, piece by piece.

Livilla and I made it to shore and sat there shivering as the sun finally rose over the city. One by one, the cubs joined us, naked and man-shaped again. They flopped down on either side of us, breathing hard.

‘Thank you,’ Garnet said in a low voice, his eyes closed.

Ashiol leaned over in that casual, thoughtless way he had and dropped a kiss on his forehead. ‘We’re family,’ he said. ‘We’ll always be family.’

But Tasha was gone, and Ashiol and Lysandor had already sworn allegiance to Priest. Garnet was a Lord, and the rest of us were courtesi. It would never be the same again.

When we returned to the Arches, we stayed together as long as we could, but then we went our separate ways, Ashiol and Lysandor walking up the canal path to the Cathedral, while Livilla and I followed Garnet back to the den.

‘Nothing has to change,’ said Ashiol, but Garnet turned away from him.

Back home, Livilla burrowed into the covers of Tasha’s bed. I sat in the chair that was mine, the one with the squeaky leg that showed I was the lowest in the pecking order. I could take Ashiol’s chair now, but I didn’t want to make that gesture.

Hands came over my face, cool and gentle. I blinked, looking through the glass of a pair of spectacles. The room came into sharper focus than before.

‘They were in the haul from the apothecary the other week,’ said Garnet.

I was pretty sure that wasn’t true. He had to have gone back for them specially.

I leaned back, letting my neck rest against his hand. ‘Thank you.’

‘You won’t leave me,’ he said, and there was barely a hint of question in his voice.

‘Never,’ I vowed.

Garnet sighed. ‘You’re lying. Everyone lies, whether they know it or not.’

I could still feel the imprint of his hand on my neck long after he walked away.

PART VIII

Lamb to the Slaughter

23

Fortuna; one day

before the Kalends of Saturnalis

Fortuna was almost done and the Lord Livilla still knew nothing about what that man of hers had in mind for the Saturnalia. Topaz had been worried about some kind of vengeance after she had delivered the cup of death into that bastard’s hands, but there was no assault on the stairs. She and the other lambs were left alone,