She had to get out. She had to get away from him before she did something foolish. She had to run.
She took a step back, and her luck finally gave out: her servant uniform slipper had picked up grease from the stew. It skidded out from under her. She slipped and smacked into the marble steps.
A tense silence fell. She scrambled to her feet fast as she could.
“Hello?” Tavin called up the stairs. “Who’s there?”
Fie tore her slipper off and bolted up the steps two at a time, clutching it in her hand. She heard Tavin hurrying up the stairs behind her, mercifully still out of sight.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Identify yourself!”
Fie stumbled out of the passageway and back into the grand gallery. Barf was still licking the splatters of fallen stew. If Tavin saw her… Fie tossed her slipper at the cat, who sent her an indignant glare and scuttled off to sulk behind an urn.
Tavin’s footsteps had nearly reached the top of the stairs. She couldn’t hide fast enough without burning one of her precious Sparrow witch-teeth, she couldn’t flee the hall fast enough for him to miss,nothingwas fast enough to get out—
The notion struck swift as lightning. Fie ran to the other side of the statue, calling a Peacock tooth in her belt.
You, it seemed to hiss as its spark snapped free. Fie sucked a breath through her teeth, then called a Peacock witch-tooth to life as well.
The harmony was hard to strike—two different notes, two different songs—but she didn’t have time to negotiate. She yanked them into cooperation and wove the image around herself in a blink of an eye: the vivid memory of a long, glossy braid, a rich brocade gown, bracelets and armbands as befit a Peacock family’s heir.
The spitting image of Prince Jasimir emerged from behind the statue, even though Fie knew it was Tavin wearing his face.
And Fie turned to him with a look of genteel surprise, wearing the face of Niemi Navali szo Sakar, the Peacock girl whose throat she’d cut just two weeks earlier.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LADY SAKAR
It was unnerving, seeing Jasimir’s face on a figure that moved like Tavin. She’d woven plenty glamours just like it for him before, when they’d fled across the country, but it was different when she’d painted those features herself. Besides, whatever Peacock witch they’d found to do it was clearly skilled; if she hadn’t known Jasimir to be locked away somewhere below, she’d have wondered if he’d broken out on his own. They’d even foregone a topknot like the one Jasimir once sported, spinning instead the same finger-length straight, dark hair he’d had at Draga’s camp.
But all it took was the sharp way he scanned the hall, shoulders stiff, for Fie to be certain. Tavin’s eyes narrowed on her.
“Excuse me,” he said tightly. The voice was still unmistakably his own, yet close enough to Jas to fool all but the few of us who knewthem well. “No one is allowed inside the Divine Gallery at this time. How did you get in?”
Fie stared at him, score upon score of curses and questions and threats banging about her skull, none so loudly asWhy?Panic and rage warred behind her eyes.
None of it would help her now.
Tavin frowned and took a step closer. “Can you understand me?”
Answer, she had to answer—all she wanted to do was push him into the fire herself—what would a Peacock girl say? She’d seen but a brief glimpse of the Sakar girl’s life before shaking the memories down to build her glamour; Niemi had been a gossip, a liar, and beloved in the mansions of the north.
Oh, let me, the spark of the tooth sighed impatiently. Fie’s head flooded with words, gestures, like a mother teaching her child the steps of a dance.
“I apologize,” Fie said with a graceful bow, shocked to hear her voice smooth out to a delicate purr. “Your Highness startled me. I was simply out for a morning walk, and I’m afraid I seem to have gotten lost. You see, my family’s only here for your coronation.”
He smiled a flat smile, only as polite as custom dictated. She hadn’t shaken his suspicions yet. “Where were you trying to go?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Fie saw Barf sidle out from behind the urn to sniff at the remains of the stew. It took everything she had not to throw her other slipper at the cat.I need a distraction, she thought frantically.
Then stop trying to be clever, the Peacock girl’s spark sneered back.
Fie felt her features relax into something empty and pleasant. “Only around the gardens, Your Highness. I thought I’d walked back to the guest quarters, since I saw a servant leaving in such a hurry.” Astonishingly, the spark nudged her back toward the statue, words bubbling to her lips. “Is there an exit over here? I’ll just leave this way.”
The moment Fie took a step in that direction, a hand wrappedaround her arm. “No—!” Tavin cut himself off as she turned to face him, eyelashes fluttering like palm fans.
He’s hardly going to let you go back there, Niemi’s voice whispered between her ears.Nowhe’sthe one scrambling for excuses.
