Instead, she sat on the bench and watched the fire. “That was how you fooled the Vultures. They tried to burn you.”
He nodded. “The rest of the Hawks just saw me as a bastard and a healer close to Jas’s age, perfect for a bodyguard. Surimir knew I was … his. And perfect for Jas’s double.”
“What else did I miss?”
He let out a breath, thinking. “I … started the fire in the cave. The man in Gerbanyar—half of that was blood, half of that was fire. The campfire, back with the Oleanders.”
“You put it out.” No wonder Fie’s Phoenix teeth hadn’t stopped the flashburn fires outside Trikovoi. Phoenixes knew how to start fires; their bastards had to learn how to stop them.
A chill wind whistled over the tower, knocking sparks from the brazier. They blazed orange against the darkening sky, then winked out. Fie couldn’t stave off her question any longer.
“Are you angry with me?”
Tavin gave her an unreadable look. “With you?”
“You’ve been hiding all this most your life. It’s not like I asked before airing it out far and wide.”
He pulled his hand from the fire and turned to her, brow furrowing. “You saved me from a slow, agonizing death, Fie. Twelve hells, you made it look easy. Anger is the opposite of how I feel. If anything, I’m lucky you’re still voluntarily in the same fortress as I am.” Fie cocked her head, puzzled. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Everything that—that happened with us … happened while I was keeping this from you. That’s not right. You have every right to hate me.”
“Why?” Fie asked.
“I pretended I was someone I’m not,” Tavin said, the words falling almost too swift and heavy to catch. “I know what the king has done to you and yours, what he’s allowed to happen. I know what my father is.”
“And I know who you are.” Fie met his gaze, steady and unwavering. It felt just like the night they’d met, when she’d stared down his steel. This time, he held the point to his own throat.
“That doesn’t change anything for you?” He’d gone stock-still. “Anything at all?”
Fie pursed her lips, thinking. The fire crackled in the brazier, casting a rosier light over both of them as the sky steeped into indigo.
At last she said, “If I’d known I’d rutted a half prince, probably I would’ve bragged about it more.”
Tavin stared at her in disbelief. Then his shoulders began to shake. He threw his head back and let his laughter spill into the night. Fie grinned up at him from her bench, feeling tension slip from her spine like a straggling thread pulled free.
They’d both been afraid. They’d both been wrong. She supposed that meant they both were fools, at least this once.
Tavin closed the distance, knelt before her, and pulled her to him, still shaking with laughter and relief.
“I missed you,” he whispered into her hair. “Gods, Fie, I’ve known you a moon and a half, and I swear I didn’t know I could miss anyone that much.”
The hollowness in his voice had filled in.
Fie tried to answer through the lump in her throat. A sniffle gave her away before the tears did; Tavin only held her tighter as she buried her face in his shoulder. The weight of the last two weeks crashed in—every league she’d walked knowing it carried her farther from him, every hour she’d spent wondering if he yet lived while she kept watch in the dark, every time she’d waited for his laugh and nonsense only to remember where they’d gone.
She didn’t wait to stop crying before she kissed him. Salt stung her tongue, then faded as he kissed her back, careful at first, then spiraling into dizzy, feverish glee that somehow, someway they had managed to find each other once more. She’d forgotten how much she liked the way his chin brushed hers, the feel of his back shifting beneath her palms, the sharp, quick breath when she pressed her mouth along his jawline. She’d forgotten how he could light her up like her veins ran with flashburn, even with something as simple as fingertips tracing her hips.
Pulling back took more effort than she’d reckoned for; every time she caught her breath, he stole it from her again, and the worst part was that she didn’t want him to stop. Eventually she found a moment to gasp, “My room.”
She felt Tavin’s too-pretty grin. “How do you like having a room to yourself?”
“I’m about to like it a lot more,” she answered. “Once you help me figure out where it is.”
He laughed again and scooped her up in his arms as he stood. “Yes, chief.”
* * *
Fie woke in the soft half shadows before dawn, still curled against Tavin, still marveling that he was there.
And, by the creeping morning light, she allowed herself to untie the most painful knot in her head and heart, made all the worse by the boy at her back.
He shifted, mumbling her name in his sleep, and that undid her entirely. She eased herself from the bed, pulled a robe over the shirt she’d stolen from him, and glided into the hall. The Hawks at guard just nodded as she passed.
This time she caught the familiar watch-hymn sooner and followed it up to the wall that Draga seemed to favor. The master-general stood there wrapped in a thick snow lion pelt, eyes on the west.
“Tavin hummed that at watch,” Fie said. Draga’s gaze flicked to her, then returned to the horizon. “That’s how I figured out you were his ma.”
Draga barked a quiet laugh. “He’s right. It’s truly impossible to slip anything past you. Here.”
She drew a dagger from her sash and handed it to Fie hilt-first. The moonlight drew out waving bands across the blade.
“That’s tiger steel,” Draga said. “It’s stronger than any other metal we know. This blade outlived my mother and her mother, and it will outlive me. But it takes a master blacksmith to forge.”
“Aye.” Fie passed it back. “I saw it once in a Hawk tooth. Rush, and it shatters.” She leaned against the wall. “But leave the blade too long, and it’s rutted all the same.”
“I thought it would be like tiger steel,” Draga said. “The oath. Because you’re right, no Saborian should live as the Crows do. And if we forge something better, the nation will be stronger for it. But if we move too fast…” She sighed. “The fact is, we’re already shattering. How we treat Crows is a liability. The queen’s using it to net herself a throne. And you, a teenage girl, used it to fool the master-general of the kingdom’s armies.”
“No hard feelings,” Fie said with a shrug.
Draga shot her a sharp look. “It’s been a long day and night, Lady Crow. Don’t try me. Especially while wearing my beloved son’s shirt.” Fie coughed, ears burning, and Draga continued. “I’ve had war scholars digging through our libraries for anything on skin-ghasts. We’ve found nothing. There’s no knowing how great a threat we’re facing, but we know the queen means to wipe out people the Hawks are honor-bound to protect.”
Fie took a gamble. “Because no one’s protected us.”
“Because we failed.” Draga nodded, jaw set.
“Pa says change always has a price.” Fie stared at dawn’s edge in the eastern sky. “That even Phoenixes need ashes to rise.”