and dumped her on the road. This arrow bore no flashburn, only a shaft of steel, and so the fires hadn’t troubled it in the slightest.
Pain ripped up and down Fie’s thigh, the kind that she felt in her teeth, the kind that twisted in her gut and turned her bones to water. Her fingers scrabbled at the arrow’s stem before she could fight the instinct, sending searing agony through her leg.
The teeth screeched into discord. Fie let one go, kept the other alight, sweat rolling down her face as she forced her bloody hands to clench in the dirt instead. A wall of golden fire bowed across the road. The Vulture riders kept their distance.
She didn’t realize the prince had been calling her name until he knelt at her side. “We’re almost there, Fie, just a little more to go.”
He looped her arm over his neck again. She tried to stand—slipped—
One wrong step put all her weight on her right leg. She screamed, red flashing through her sight. Jasimir swore and lowered her to the ground again.
“I can’t believe this,” he said with a strained smile, too alike Tavin. “You’re supposed to drag me into Trikovoi, not the other way around.”
Fie winced, propping herself up on shaking arms. So close—they were so, so, so damned close—
She shook her pain-addled thoughts down as blood pooled beneath her leg. She could heal herself with a Hawk tooth—no, healing was risky work to do on its own, let alone while injured and rushed. She could call Gull winds to blow the arrows off course—but she’d need two teeth, maybe three, and she’d have to hold them—
More red fog chewed into her vision. Paces away, the Vultures’ horses pawed at the earth.
The starving wolf had come for her. And she had no way to run.
Her heart thudded in her ears. So close—she’d almost done it—Wretch said they’d tell her story for centuries—
The story of a chief.
Her red-stained fingers shook too much to undo the knot on the bag of Phoenix teeth. She pushed it at Jasimir. “Get this open.”
“What are you planning?” His face blurred and swayed back into focus. She was running out of time.
Fie looked dead at Tatterhelm. Then she looked back to the prince.
“Leave your pack here and make a run for the gates. I’ll hold the road.”
Another arrow sighed in passing, ringing off the dry earth.
Jasimir’s face hardened. “Not an option. I’ll carry you.”
Fie blinked away patches of red as she shook her head. “I’ve got one waking minute left, maybe two. The second I black out, they’ll ride you down.”
“I won’t—”
“You have to,” she yelled, voice cracking.
“No one else is dying for me,” he spat back.
She seized a fistful of his shirt, smudging dirt and blood on the crowsilk. “You get caught and it’s all rutted. It’s all a waste, everything you’ve given up, everything I’ve given up to get this far. All of it. You get caught and Rhusana wins. You have to be king. You have to keep the oath.”
Even as she said the words aloud, the last lit Phoenix tooth slid from her grasp.
The flames sputtered into thin air, revealing a line of skinwitches across the road, dim phantoms in the haze. Tatterhelm rode at their heart, the notch-cut helm carving an unmistakable crown on his hulking silhouette; behind them swayed the drooping shadows of even more skin-ghasts.
Tatterhelm nudged his horse into a deliberate, unhurried stroll. Each ambling hoofbeat fell like the slow toll of a slaughter bell.
“Go,” Fie hissed. If she pulled together, she could light one more tooth, one more fire—she couldn’t burn it all, but by Ambra, she could burn her name into history—
The crown prince of Sabor got to his feet.
And then he planted himself between Fie and the Vultures.
“No,” he said. “They have to go through me. Rhusana wants me alive. So we’ll see how many of them it takes.”
Tatterhelm paused, the helmet’s eye-slits betraying naught. Then he flicked his reins and rode on.
Fie wanted to fight. She wanted to drag Jasimir to the gates of Trikovoi herself. She wanted to tell Tavin she’d done it, she’d kept the oath.
She wanted to see Pa again.
The earth shuddered.
At first, she thought thunder had rolled off the mountainsides. But that was wrong: the blue skies were only mottled with smoke.
Then she thought it might be more skinwitches. But that too was wrong: Tatterhelm dragged on his reins less than five paces from the prince, and twisted in his saddle to peer into