“Hang on.” Tavin’s fingertips pressed in a steady half-moon between her shoulders. “Just have to get over the bridge.”
Jasimir looked back. “We can’t outrun them. Not like this.”
“Keep going,” Tavin barked.
A horse’s scream ripped down through the gorge.
Fie tried to train her eyes on the end of the bridge, on one fixed point. Make it off the bridge. Keep on your feet. Keep going.
The hoofbeats rose like a tide.
“We won’t make it,” the prince called. “Maybe we can negotiate—”
“They negotiate using arrows, Jas. Keep going.”
“We’ve already lost!” Jasimir stopped and spun around, a few planks from the end of the bridge. “It’s over. She’s too weak—”
“Fie,” she interrupted, hoarse.
“What?”
“You know my name.” She spat blood into the canyon below. “If I’m about to die for you, you can damn well use it.”
Jasimir looked from her to Tavin and took a deep breath. “They… they aren’t after you. If I give myself up, the two of you can escape.”
Wind and hoofbeats and hunting horns crashed around the rock walls.
Tavin’s face tightened. He looked at the canyon and at the bridge, and then he looked at the prince.
“Yes,” Tavin said, “you can.”
He pulled Fie to him and pressed a swift, soft kiss to her mouth.
“It’ll be all right,” he whispered.
And then he shoved her back.
Fie crashed into the prince. The two of them fell not onto rickety plank but steady ground, over the gorge at last.
Steel clattered and flashed. Fie scrambled to her knees. Something dropped from her arms onto the ground beside her—Tavin’s pack, and something cold and heavy—
A scabbard. A short sword. Unbroken.
Tavin knelt on a plank, wrapping one hand around a cord, the other holding his remaining blade aloft.
His voice rang hard as iron. “Keep the oath.”
And in one terminal sweep, he cut the ropes of the bridge.
It happened faster than Fie thought possible:
In one heartbeat his eyes held hers.
I can do something better with my life than die.
In the next, he was gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
