He would live. That had to be enough.

When they drew within a few paces, Tatterhelm barked, “Hold up.” They stopped. “Prince goes the rest of the way himself.”

This was it. Fie licked her lips and let Jasimir go. He shook his head and tried to protest around the gag. It sounded something like “You can’t.”

“Trust me,” Fie said, “it’s too late for that, Highness.”

She shoved him to the Vultures.

“No!” Tavin shouted, wild-eyed.

Jasimir stumbled through the dust—one pace, two—and Tatterhelm seized the scruff of his neck.

Now. Fie licked her lips, drew breath to whistle—

And the ashes erupted at her feet.

Gray, flat hands slapped about her ankles. Another pair roped round her throat. She screamed, half fear, half fury, thrashing like an animal in a snare.

She’d forgotten the skin-ghasts, and now—it had all fouled up.

Fie choked out a furious scream before the clammy hands yanked tight.

Cinders rained from two skin-ghasts as they swelled from below, slick gray hides gorging like water skins. The one grasping her ankles yanked them up with him as he rose, until she hung by both her neck and feet.

And then the skin-ghasts’ faces filled in, hollow, dreadful. Known.

Hangdog’s eyeless face yawned at her, narrowing his hold on her throat.

The thing that had once been Swain began to drag at her ankles.

Panic shrieked through her veins. She flailed for—for aught, a rock, a scrap of bone, even a handful of hide. But the skin-ghasts simply folded out of the way, pulling like they meant to tear her apart.

Pain ripped along her jaw, up and down her spine, at her ankles. She heard screams that weren’t her own. Some sounded like they might be her name. One sounded like it might be Tavin.

The skin-ghasts said naught, for they had no tongue, no bones, no teeth to speak with. Only Hangdog’s slack face. Only Swain’s.

The queen had, in the end, turned even Fie’s dead to her ends.

How much more, Jasimir had asked, will you let them take?

She’d never expected to die quiet. Young, maybe. But not like this.

She’d not come here to die.

She’d come to look after her own.

Fie wet her lips and forced the last of her breath into an earsplitting whistle.

If Tavin were a Crow, he’d know that whistle signal. It meant drop.

If Tavin were the prince, he’d know what was coming.

And if Tavin were only a Hawk, he would have died when Fie loosed the Phoenix tooth that had burned, hidden, in Jasimir’s bound fists all along.

But Tavin wasn’t only a Hawk.

And so when the cyclone of Phoenix fire swallowed Tavin, his prince, and his captor in one starving snap of golden teeth, only the skinwitch burned.

The Crows flattened themselves to the earth in a chorus of iron bell-song. Phoenix fire swept over them, scattering the skinwitches like sparks.