on Fie. His frown deepened. “Suit yourself.” He rolled out his sleeping mat and lay down without another word.
Fie couldn’t fault Tavin’s reasons; it’d be too easy for the Vultures to snatch the prince up if he alone kept watch. She was also dead sure this wasn’t the last time they’d have this quarrel.
She rolled Hangdog’s cold tooth betwixt her fingers again, over and over. Tavin broke the quiet soon enough. “Is there any chance you can sustain a glamour until the Marovar?”
Fie pursed her lips and reached for Pa’s bag of teeth. Peacocks had plenty of witches, but they had an even more abundant desire to pay as cheap as possible. “Pa may have, eh, underestimated our stock,” she allowed. “You want to look like the prince again?”
“We don’t know what we’re up against. And I’m his body double for a reason.”
“That wasn’t an ‘aye,’” Fie noted. Tavin didn’t elaborate. She fished a Peacock witch-tooth out of the bag anyhow, then sat on her knees before him.
The spark tittered as she called it to life, a Peacock gentlewoman who’d spun fanciful illusions for the royal nursery to gain favor with the queen. The older she’d gotten, the more cruelty and ambition had rotted her away, leaving battered servants, cheated merchants, and swelling coffers. When the plague came for her, she wove her own delirium dreams, giggling at the sights right up until Pa’s blade touched her throat.
“What do you see?” Tavin asked.
Fie opened her eyes. “A Hawk full of sauce and nonsense,” she answered, and handed him the tooth. “Keep this on you until the glamour breaks.”
“I meant when you—I don’t know—wake up a tooth? Is that what you do?”
“I see their lives.” Fie squinted at the prince’s sleeping face, tallying up the differences to paint onto Tavin. “Their choices.” A straighter nose; a rounder eye. “How they died.” Ears set a little lower. “What they did to Crows. I’ve seen how every other caste lives. Hold still.”
Though Tavin had tucked the tooth up a sleeve, it hummed yet in Fie’s mind, clear as a bell. She traced a path for the Birthright along Tavin’s face, fingers skimming a breath away from his skin. The nick on his brow vanished; the arch of his nose shallowed; the curl smoothed from his hair at the nape of his neck.
She tried not to think on the heat that grew beneath her fingertips, or whether it came from him or from her.
She also tried not to think on the fact that she’d have to do every bit of it again when the tooth burned out two nights hence.
Tavin watched her hand pass in quiet until she reached for his burn-scarred knuckles. Then he twitched back. “Leave it. Please. I’ll … cover it up.”
Startled, she only nodded.
“Is there anything else?” he asked.
Fie studied Jasimir’s face, then turned back to Tavin. Something was amiss. She frowned, searching for the flaw. “Aye. Hold on.”
Tavin exhaled. “We’ve never thanked you, have we? For any of this.”
“Crows don’t get thanked. We get paid. Sometimes.”
“I’m serious.” He’d stopped watching her weave the glamour, gazing dead-on at her now. “You could have taken Viimo’s deal. You could have had your family back. But you didn’t give us up. Thank you.”
Fie went still.
She scrabbled about her head for a scrap of wrath, anything to carve another line betwixt her and the Hawk. But all she could think of was Pa and Wretch and Swain and Madcap and every Crow she’d lost, and the hateful wisp of hope that she might find them again.
Fie’s own words failed her, and his still raced about her head, and to her dismay the knot in her throat broke open. The camp’s firelight blurred with tears.
“Oh—oh no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Twelve hells, I’m bad at this.” Tavin fumbled his sleeve about his thumb and reached for her, then caught himself. “Er … may I?”
She managed a wordless nod. Hawks didn’t ask. Fie had no notion how to deal with one who did.
Tavin dabbed at her face. “I promise you, when Jas is safe, I’ll help you get them all back. I’d swear to the Covenant, but I suspect you’re getting tired of that.”
Fie gave him a weary look. “Don’t try to sell me pretty words, Hawk boy. We both know you’ll be nailed to the prince until one of you dies.”
He glanced sidelong at Jasimir. His answer did not come as quick or easy as she thought it would,