Tavin flinched, eyes on the ground. “I’m a bastard.”
“He’s your brother,” Fie finished, hoarse, and sawed at the bonds about Tavin’s wrists. “Half, at least.”
Tavin looked at her then, as the rope fell free.
She wanted to burn away the awful anger and shame in his eyes. She wanted him to heal himself as he had before. She wanted his hand in hers.
She wanted him to forgive her for risking his king, for laying his secret bare, for letting him fall to Tatterhelm to begin with.
But she was a chief, and her own were not out of the valley yet.
“It’ll be all right,” she lied, and cut the slaughter bell from his neck.
An open hand reached into the space between them. Tavin blinked at the prince, then took it. Jasimir wobbled—and embraced his brother.
“I should have seen it,” Jasimir mumbled. “I… didn’t want to. I’m sorry.”
Tavin didn’t answer, but neither did he let go, and in his own way, that was answer enough.
Fie’s breath came hard and harsh as she turned to the Vultures, trying not to choke on the reek of burnt hair and foul cooking flesh. Blood sizzled in the back of her throat, a sign she kenned too well by now. Easy harmony or no, the dead queen was fading.
Fire prowled round the remaining Vultures, keeping its distance, waiting for her command. One way or another, it was time they learned what it meant to cross the wrong Crow.
“Drop your weapons,” she ordered. Most obeyed; a few stragglers hesitated until fire lashed at their elbows. Madcap took a spear and passed it to Jasimir to use as a walking staff.
“Now what, chiefling?” Viimo asked.
Fie swallowed, the burn of blood rising on her tongue. The fire rolled about her and the lordlings like a loyal beast. Three teeth of a dead queen and she could do anything. She could light them up, watch them burn, watch Sabor burn from mountain to coast if she wanted.
She was tired of pretending she wouldn’t.
No—that was false, still, even now.
Just once, she wanted someone to treat her like she would. And the terror in the Vultures’ eyes seemed to be a good start to that.
They’d hunted her for nigh a whole moon. They’d taken her family. They’d shed her kin’s blood. Just because they never imagined they’d find themselves at her mercy.
Tavin’s slaughter bell still dangled from her fingers.
Wind flushed through the vale, spraying ash and grit down the road, through the fire, as sunlight snatched at the edges of the valley walls.Mercy, it seemed to say.
And her teeth answered in kind:Give them fire.
“Fie.” Jasimir’s voice cut through the haze.
“Don’t tell me to spare them,” she hissed, half wishing he would.
“That’s your choice to make,” he said, face steady in the wash of gold firelight. “But it won’t be for much longer.” He pointed back down the road they’d walked.
A horn wailed off the gray hillsides, near buried in thunder as mammoth after mammoth stormed into the vale.
But Viimo had said—
Fie spun and found Viimo’s face in her fiery cage. The skinwitch watched the mammoth cavalry pound down the ashen road, her dirty face grim—not surprised.
So Viimo had lied to Tatterhelm. She’d known the Hawks were coming. She’d betrayed her own leader, and her kin would pay. Why in the twelve hells would she turn on her own?
Maybe Hangdog could have told her.
