“Jas is a good person.” His voice was a dangerous breed of quiet. “He’s going to be a good king. Better than the one we have. And by every dead god, I will do whatever it takes for him to sit on that throne.” His eyes narrowed. “I would have been sorry about your cat. But you would have been sorrier if anything had happened to my king.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Call it what you want. But you’re going to be a chief, and he”—Tavin jabbed a finger at the prince—“is the Crows’ only hope at not reliving this night, every night, for the rest of what will consequently be a very short life.”

He was right.

She gave him her coldest, nastiest smile anyway.

“Joke’s on you, bastard boy: they’re all short lives. Wager I’ve spent more nights ready to die for my kin than you’ve spent rolling palace girls.”

Something haunted shot through the razor hum of his anger. She hadn’t dug for a nerve this time but she’d rattled one all the same. He tilted back, his stare dropping to her mouth, and when he found words after a long moment, all he said was “You’re bleeding.”

Her nose. Fie tasted salt and copper tracks flaking on her lips. She scrubbed them away with a sleeve. “It doesn’t matter.”

Tavin nodded, still oddly off-balance, but a heartbeat later, humor glossed over his face once more.

“As for how I spend my nights … you might win that wager, you know.” Tavin rolled off the branch, effortless, dangling from his fingertips as he flashed that damned grin up at her. “If you’re counting only the girls.”

He dropped. The branch sprang back and near flung Fie off. She swore and flailed for a handhold.

Tavin landed and gallantly stretched out his arms. “Let go, I’ll catch you!”

“Get scummed,” she spat, and made her own way out of the tree.

By the time Fie touched ground, Jasimir had gone to work fishing out any goods that could be salvaged from the still-burning wagon, ducking his head with embarrassment as Wretch and Madcap lauded each rescue.

Tavin in turn had commandeered the cat. He shook his head when Fie stalked over, frowning at Barf’s bloodied paw.

“Give me a bit,” he muttered, distracted. “Looks worse than it is. At least, now it does. She tried scratching her way out.”

Fie watched a torn toepad slowly knit together and swallowed her spite. Perhaps the Hawk witch had some usefulness to him yet. For all his pompous nonsense, the prince had proven as much for himself.

And from the drawn look on Jasimir’s soot-streaked face, he’d learned the fear of strangers in the night after all.