“Oh.” She did not know what else to say besides “Well. You should.” Then she wriggled farther away from the cold of the passing storm. “Wake me for second watch.”
It was a strange thing, to fall asleep feeling safer for the warmth at her back. To fall asleep feeling safe at all.
Where her dreams went that night, no Vultures followed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE FOOL
Tavin did not wake her for second watch.
Fie roused on her own anyhow. The humming did it, quieter than before, and somehow familiar by now. She pushed her head out from the pelts and found him sitting up beside her, eyes on the dark valley below.
“What’s that song?” she mumbled, resting her chin on his stomach.
He smiled down at her in a fashion Fie would have called revolting a moon earlier.Damnhim, making a foolish sap of her. “It’s an old watch-hymn my mother used to sing. It’s supposed to help you keep awake.”
“Seems like it works.”
“Well enough.” He threaded a lock of her hair through his fingers. “How… how are you feeling?”
She knew a question behind a question when she heard one, sleepyas she was. “You surprised me. Figured you’d know all there was to tumbling, but…”
He tensed. “It’s… complicated,” he said, an edge of uncertainty in his voice. “Gender’s never mattered to me, but I—I didn’t want to get anyone with child. So if that was a possibility, we just did other, er, activities. Was it—were you—”
“Aye. You did right.” She relented and gave him a crooked grin, and was secretly tickled when he relaxed, his breath settling into an easy rise and fall. “But I won’t mind if you want more practice.”
He huffed a laugh at that, one that rumbled through her, too. His fingers curled tighter in her hair, his thumb resting just below her ear. “I wish I could do it all right. Flowers, poetry, awkward conversations with your parents. You know… courtship.”
“Told you I don’t truck with those,” she said through a yawn. “Can’t even read poetry.”
“I’ll read it to you. I guarantee it will be terrible.” He grinned. “There will be nineteen verses. Your eyes will absolutely be likened to starless skies. So will your hair. I’m not very creative.”
“Stick with flowers.” Fie wrinkled her nose.
“Or knives. Weapons. That’s what Hawks give one another, anyway. Half of Dragovoi’s armory comes from the year the master-general chose her spouses.”
“I’ve already go half a sword.” She traced the shiny lines of his burn scar, curious. “Who gave you this?”
She felt his breath catch, the skin beneath her cheek stilling for a heartbeat or two. Then he said, “Someone who didn’t know what they were doing.”
The old bitterness in his voice reminded her of Hangdog.
She didn’t ask more, only twined her fingers with his until the rise and fall of his chest steadied again.
Then she pushed herself up and reached for her clothes. “I’m getting my laceroot. And then I’m taking watch.”
Tavin opened his mouth to argue and yawned instead. When Fie returned, she settled beside him and shifted his head onto her lap.
“I don’t suppose I can convince you to sleep more,” he sighed, weariness bleeding his words together.
“Maybe when you stop slurring.” She couldn’t scrape the wry smile from her voice. “Now quit fussing and get some rest.”
Fie took his disgruntled grumble as surrender. The rhythm of breath on her knee evened out as she turned her eyes to the dark beyond the cave.
Somewhere, beyond the quiet, beyond the heat of her and her Hawk, somewhere she couldn’t see—the Vultures waited for her.
For a moment, the weight of the unreadable dark crushed in all about Fie. The best trackers in Sabor hunted her. The queen had sold the Crow caste to a prey-beast’s death. And her family lived only as long as their monstrous captor found them useful.
