“What do you see?” Tavin asked.
Fie opened her eyes. “A Hawk full of sauce and nonsense,” she answered, and handed him the tooth. “Keep this on you until the glamour breaks.”
“I meant when you—I don’t know—wake up a tooth? Is that what you do?”
“I see their lives.” Fie squinted at the prince’s sleeping face, tallying up the differences to paint onto Tavin. “Their choices.” A straighter nose; a rounder eye. “How they died.” Ears set a little lower. “What they did to Crows. I’ve seen how every other caste lives. Hold still.”
Though Tavin had tucked the tooth up a sleeve, it hummed yet in Fie’s mind, clear as a bell. She traced a path for the Birthright along Tavin’s face, fingers skimming a breath away from his skin. The nick on his brow vanished; the arch of his nose shallowed; the curl smoothed from his hair at the nape of his neck.
She tried not to think on the heat that grew beneath her fingertips, or whether it came from him or from her.
She also tried not to think on the fact that she’d have to do every bit of it again when the tooth burned out two nights hence.
Tavin watched her hand pass in quiet until she reached for his burn-scarred knuckles. Then he twitched back. “Leave it. Please. I’ll… cover it up.”
Startled, she only nodded.
“Is there anything else?” he asked.
Fie studied Jasimir’s face, then turned back to Tavin. Something was amiss. She frowned, searching for the flaw. “Aye. Hold on.”
Tavin exhaled. “We’ve never thanked you, have we? For any of this.”
“Crows don’t get thanked. We get paid. Sometimes.”
“I’m serious.” He’d stopped watching her weave the glamour, gazing dead-on at her now. “You could have taken Viimo’s deal. You could have had your family back. But you didn’t give us up. Thank you.”
Fie went still.
She scrabbled about her head for a scrap of wrath, anything to carve another line betwixt her and the Hawk. But all she could think of was Pa and Wretch and Swain and Madcap and every Crow she’d lost, and the hateful wisp of hope that she might find them again.
Fie’s own words failed her, and his still raced about her head, and to her dismay the knot in her throat broke open. The camp’s firelight blurred with tears.
“Oh—oh no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Twelve hells, I’m bad at this.” Tavin fumbled his sleeve about his thumb and reached for her, then caught himself. “Er… may I?”
She managed a wordless nod. Hawks didn’t ask. Fie had no notion how to deal with one who did.
Tavin dabbed at her face. “I promise you, when Jas is safe, I’ll help you get them all back. I’d swear to the Covenant, but I suspect you’re getting tired of that.”
Fie gave him a weary look. “Don’t try to sell me pretty words, Hawk boy. We both know you’ll be nailed to the prince until one of you dies.”
He glanced sidelong at Jasimir. His answer did not come as quick or easy as she thought it would, nor as loud. “I have to disappear. After… the Marovar. It’s a divine mandate when a Phoenix prince survives the plague. It’s a cheap hoax when his guard conveniently lives, too. Taverin sza Markahn died a quarter moon ago; I’ll be trapped in the palace’s shadows if I go back. And I will not live as a ghost.”
The words spilled before Fie could catch them: “Not anymore.”
Something sudden and starving flashed through Tavin’s face then, flames tearing through silk. “Not anymore.”
He sounded too alike Pa, only a week ago:We need this deal.Only Tavin didn’t need to cut any oath; he needed to cut himself free.
Fie refused to feel sorry for a Hawk, even a pretty one mopping up her face. Instead she said, “Well, we’ll have to live through this mess first.”
“They’re all short lives.” He bent a shallow smile. “The cleverest girl I’ve ever known told me that, so it must be true.”
“The cleverest girl you’ve ever known got her family captured by a monster.” Her voice hitched. Tavin shook his head and caught another tear, then another, a slow thumb trailing down the side of her cheek.
“The queen did that,” he said. “And the governor. And Tatterhelm.” Then, quiet: “Jas and I did that. I’ll do everything I can to make it right.” His hand dropped to graze her knuckles, still battered from when she’d split them on Viimo. “I can fix that, if you’d like.”
She nodded, her voice failing her.
