“Oh? Round six.”
“He’s spent his life having everything handed to him, with a roof over his head, all the food he wants, and the best guards in the nation.” She seized a shell from his side, scarce caring as he swiped one of hers. “Reckon it slipped your ken that I haven’t.”
“No, but he’ll fight to the death for what he believes in, like you. And he lost his mother, too, just a few years ago—”
“Who told you about my ma?” Fie demanded.
Tavin looked pointedly at the campfire, where Pa knotted new teeth into his string.
Pa?When did Pa trust outsiders so?
Fie bit the inside of her cheek. “I’ve no duty to like him because both our mas are dead.”
“You don’t have to like him at all,” Tavin said. “I just suspect it’ll be easier to carry out that oath if you two find common ground. Both of you have been raised to lead your people since birth, for example.”
“Don’t care.”
“And neither of you are looking forward to it.”
Any scorching reply died in Fie’s throat, gutted on that notion.
Half of her wanted to slap him. She didn’t know why.
The other half of her could only think of the moment Pa had handed her his broken sword and told her to cut the Sparrow man’s throat.
“I want to be chief,” she said.
Another half-truth.
“Round seven,” said Tavin.
She wanted to be chief.
When, not if.
She had to be chief. She wanted—
There was a line there, as clear as the one drawn between her and the Hawk. She wanted to flash her own steel the next time a guardsman tried to make her jump. She wanted to tell off the next village that tried shorting them on viatik, and punch herself a new tooth string if anyone pushed back. She wanted to light every Oleander ablaze until fire turned the night to sunrise.
But the cost of all that wouldn’t come out of her hide alone.
Look after your own.
Crows had one rule. And she had to be a Crow chief.
He won the next five rounds, played in silence but for the countdown. Fie didn’t care. The sooner this damned game was over, the better. She’d learned her lesson for digging into ugly truths with pretty boys.
“Round twelve.”
The shells caught the firelight, studding the sand. Tavin was winning. On “three,” she made a halfhearted grab for his side.
He caught her, of course. Fingers landed on her wrist, then let go—but not wholly, the tips trailing across the back of her hand, following ridges of vein and bone.
“What do you want, Fie?” he asked.
She’d been asked what she wanted before: her price from the prince, which branch of a crossroad she favored, what to leave in a shrine’s viatik stash. Matters for a chief, matters of business, matters of surviving another day.
Tavin didn’t mean survival. He meant the way she wanted steel, and fire, and games with pretty boys. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had.
