Fie swallowed, the burn of blood rising on her tongue. The fire rolled about her and the lordlings like a loyal beast. Three teeth of a dead queen and she could do anything. She could light them up, watch them burn, watch Sabor burn from mountain to coast if she wanted.

She was tired of pretending she wouldn’t.

No—that was false, still, even now.

Just once, she wanted someone to treat her like she would. And the terror in the Vultures’ eyes seemed to be a good start to that.

They’d hunted her for nigh a whole moon. They’d taken her family. They’d shed her kin’s blood. Just because they never imagined they’d find themselves at her mercy.

Tavin’s slaughter bell still dangled from her fingers.

Wind flushed through the vale, spraying ash and grit down the road, through the fire, as sunlight snatched at the edges of the valley walls. Mercy, it seemed to say.

And her teeth answered in kind: Give them fire.

“Fie.” Jasimir’s voice cut through the haze.

“Don’t tell me to spare them,” she hissed, half wishing he would.

“That’s your choice to make,” he said, face steady in the wash of gold firelight. “But it won’t be for much longer.” He pointed back down the road they’d walked.

A horn wailed off the gray hillsides, near buried in thunder as mammoth after mammoth stormed into the vale.

But Viimo had said—

Fie spun and found Viimo’s face in her fiery cage. The skinwitch watched the mammoth cavalry pound down the ashen road, her dirty face grim—not surprised.

So Viimo had lied to Tatterhelm. She’d known the Hawks were coming. She’d betrayed her own leader, and her kin would pay. Why in the twelve hells would she turn on her own?

Maybe Hangdog could have told her.

If she let Viimo burn, she’d never find out.

Mammoth riders cascaded into the ruined village, surrounding them before Fie could make up her mind.

“You can let the fire go,” Tavin said from behind her, resigned.

Fie winced. A Markahn bastard. One more Hawk for the collection. How long had Tavin known who he was? How long had he kept it secret? And now here he stood plain in roaring flame, unscathed, before scores of Crows and Vultures and Hawks. There’d be no running from the truth any longer.

Fie loosed the teeth. Mammoth riders circled the Vultures and dismounted, unwinding shackles. The master-general herself rode toward Fie through the ebbing flames, storm-faced. Fie couldn’t say which loomed more menacing: the mammoth or Draga.

If Draga meant to have her head for this, though, perhaps Fie’d settle for dragging the Vultures into the twelve hells with her after all.

Then someone limped past, leaning on a spear, and planted himself between Fie and the master-general:

Jasimir.