Each dwindling hoofbeat was an accusation. He had dead Crows to answer for, and Fie—she had enough fire teeth to light Sabor from mountain to coast.
But what she wanted didn’t matter.
Tavin, too, had steadied out. She pulled her hand free of his and looked away.
Three Sparrow teeth. Fie let her senses roam, prodding at what the triad could reveal. Nearer to Gerbanyar, she half saw, half sensed something like distant cobwebby nets casting about over the treetops. The nearest one already trailed dreamily toward them, just half a league off.
It had to be the rest of the trackers aiming to sniff them out. One thing was sore sure: she didn’t want to be any nearer those webs than she had to be. Tatterhelm had ridden on far enough now. It was time to move.
Fie let the third Sparrow tooth go and slipped off the branch, intending to dangle from her fingertips.
Instead every bone in her hands dragged like iron. Her fingers slipped off the branch. She hit the ground in a flurry of pine needles and crowsilk, knocking the wind clean out of her gut.
She gasped as cedar boughs and silvery sky spun dizzily above. A thin whine rang through her ears, the only sound until a thud said one of the boys had made it down as well.
Tavin lurched into view. He looked much better. At least she thoughthe did. Less blood, less flinching. Maybe no limping now. That meant he was better, right?
His mouth moved, but she caught no words, only a dull ringing. He really had a nice mouth. Even with a little blood streaked at one corner.
She almost believed the fear on his face. He’d gotten hurt for her today. Almost died. A lot. Kin might do that. Caste might do that. Not some near-royal lordling. It made no sense. He made no sense.
He crouched by her side, and as Fie’s thoughts slipped and wobbled about in her rattled skull, one thought drifted, dreadful and plain, to the surface: she wanted that.
She wanted him to stay at her side. Not for the day, not for the moon. She wanted him with her even after the oath. She wanted it more than she knew how to want someone. She wanted it more than fire or steel or teeth.
And she wholeheartedly hated it.
“… hear me?” Tavin’s voice seeped in past the ringing in her ears, rising with worry. “Fie? Are you hurt?”
She blinked up at him as her head began to clear. Then she laughed.
It was not a happy laugh.
A raid from monsters. A scummed sinner. The first throat she’d ever cut. A war-witch boiling a man in his own blood before her eyes. An ambush from the queen’s pet Vultures. That same war-witch near snapping his own neck on her account. Tatterhelm walking away in one piece. Falling out of a stupid tree.
And a traitor heart that refused to listen to sense.
She hated it. Hated all of it. Hated him. Hated herself.
“Anything else?” she croaked, waving a shaky, blood-flecked hand at the sky. “Covenant? Got any more disasters you’re keen to spit my way? Day’s still young.”
Tavin let out a breath, then brushed her hair aside to rest callousedfingertips on her brow. “Let’s not go giving the Covenant any ideas. Can you move your—”
“Let’s not go telling me what to do.” Fie swatted his hand off and made herself sit up, a peculiar wrath aching in her bones. He had no right to her, to any part of her, least of all her heart. “You damnedfool. We could have been in and out of Gerbanyar before Tatterhelm caught up, but you just had to lose your head, didn’t you?”
Tavin jerked back, shamefaced. Part of her curled with guilt. He’d felled that man on her account.
But she hadn’t asked for it. Wanted it, perhaps, in the ugly way she’d wanted Tatterhelm to burn before her. But wanting and asking were beasts of two wholly different names.
“We’re lucky the Gerbanyar Hawks didn’t stuff us all full of arrows on the spot,” she spat. “The queen would’ve liked that, aye? You’d have done her work for her.”
Tavin stared at the ground. Maybe if she pushed him far enough, this nonsense of theirs would be over. He’d stop pretending a Crow and a Hawk could share a road as aught but strangers, and she’d keep pretending it didn’t matter to her.
The razor edge of anger glittered in his eyes again. The set of his mouth said it wouldn’t be turned on her.
Somehow that only infuriated her more. “What, Vulture got your tongue? You couldn’t keep quiet when all our hides were on the line, butnowit suits you? You’ve mummed as my kin for nigh a fortnight now. When are you going to understand that being a Crow means you can’t just do what you want?”
“Don’t try to tell me I do what I want,” Tavin snapped.
