“… 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 calloused fingertips 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 damned fool. 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, but now it 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.

He rocked back on his heels. One hand ran over his mouth, fingertips pushing down into the sides of his jaw. Then he stood and looked away.