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.

Tavin gathered her hands in his, brow furrowing. The same needling heat flared about her fingers as new skin swallowed the scabs. She couldn’t help a sharp breath.

His gaze flicked up to her. “Sorry. I’m not all that good at healing.”

Fie saw it, then, the flaw in his façade: the campfire lit his dark eyes closer to gold than Jasimir’s flickers of gray.

How did she know that?

She couldn’t ken why she couldn’t bear to change it. She hated him for trying to give her hope. She hated herself for hoping at all.

And then, with horror and fury, she found she hated her traitor heart, for burning quiet with something that was not hate at all.

A sick frost rolled down her veins. Hawks didn’t fancy Crows, they used them. Tavin had wooed her kin well enough when he needed their help. This was naught more than another round of that dance.

And even if it was more—no. That road wasn’t meant for either of them, not a Hawk, not a Crow—

Didn’t want to be a Crow no more, the memory of a skinwitch hissed.

Hangdog hadn’t wanted it.

Did Fie?