"Ah." The humor faded from Sarp's face. "What did he say?"
I told him. Every word, every vile accusation. By the time I finished, Sarp's easy smile had vanished entirely.
"Well," he said quietly. "That is considerably worse than his usual idiocy."
"I am going to fucking destroy him."
"Obviously. The question is how." Sarp took a long drink. "Ferit is nobility. You cannot simply gut him in the training grounds, satisfying as that would be."
"I am aware."
"You need something subtle. Something that makes him the architect of his own destruction."
A commotion near the tavern's back corner interrupted us. A group of young lords had surrounded someone—a serving girl, I realized, but not like any I had seen in the palace district.
Wings.
Delicate, iridescent things that sprouted from her shoulder blades, folded tight against her back as though she could make them disappear through will alone. An Iskylarian—from the mountain territories near the border where her people had settled after the great flight from Skandvar. When Light Court King Harold invaded, the Iskylarians had fled in masses, escaping his terror to these remote peaks. Generations of isolation had changed them; fae bloodlines mixing with creatures of the air until the wings bred true, until they became something new entirely.
They were rare in the Light Court. And valued, I had heard, for reasons that made my stomach turn.
"Please." Her voice carried across the tavern, thin with fear. "I must return to my duties?—"
"Your duties can wait." One of the lordlings—thick-necked, with the look of someone who had never been denied anything—grabbed her arm, yanking her closer. "We merely wish toexamine your wings. They say Iskylarian’s feathers bring luck if you pluck them fresh."
"That is not—please, my lord, they do not grow back if?—"
"Hush." Another lordling circled behind her, fingers reaching for the delicate membrane of her left wing. "Hold still and this will hurt less."
"Her wings are exquisite and I wonder how well you would obey my orders on your knees," the thick-necked one mused, stroking a finger along the wing's edge while the girl flinched. "Tell me, creature—is it true what they say about Iskylarians? That you spread your wings during mating? That if a man clips them just right, you cannot fly away no matter how badly you wish to escape?"
The laughter from his companions made my fists clench. Those idiots called themselves noblemen. They were worse than half breeds.
"Perhaps we should test the theory," another suggested. "For scientific purposes, of course. The Academy encourages empirical study."
"I hear the Shadow Court breeds them deliberately." The thick-necked lordling's voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur that still carried. "Keeps whole flocks of Iskylarians as pleasure slaves. Clips their wings and chains them to beds for any shadow lord who wishes to use them."
"Savages," one companion agreed. "Though one can see the appeal."
"Indeed. At least the shadow creatures are honest about their depravity." He yanked the girl closer, making her cry out. "Herein the blessed Light Court, we must pretend we do not want to do exactly the same things."
"Let me go?—"
"Should we tell her what happens to Iskylarians who displease their betters?" The lordling's smile turned cruel. "The purification ceremonies burn the wings first, I am told. The priests say the feathers carry shadow-taint. That the ability to fly is itself a corruption that must be cleansed."
Tears streamed down the girl's face. Her wings trembled, trying to fold smaller, trying to disappear.
"My cousin underwent the ceremony last spring," she whispered. "She has not spoken since. She sits by the windows and stares at the sky and weeps when birds fly past."
"Then she is blessed." The lordling released her with a shove that sent her stumbling. "Purified of her unnatural abilities. Welcomed into Gün Ata's light." He turned to his companions with a smirk. "You see? The Light Court's mercy is boundless. We even save the creatures that were never meant to exist."
They returned to their drinks, already forgetting the girl who gathered herself from the floor with shaking hands, who retreated toward the kitchens clutching the wing they had nearly torn.
No one intervened. No one even looked uncomfortable.
This was simply how things were.
"That," Sarp said quietly, "is what we are supposed to believe makes us better than the Shadow Court. Because we dress our cruelty in ceremony and call it divine mercy."
