her his best attempt at a smile anyway. “You remind me of someone.”
Fie couldn’t make herself smile back, didn’t know why the next question couldn’t stay bottled up. “Is that why you kissed me earlier?”
Tavin winced. “Yes.”
Fie raised her hand, let it lie against the side of his face. “Would you like to do it again?”
His breath caught. “Yes.”
She drew him to her. It wasn’t feverish and feral, like that morning in the tomb. The way their lips met this time was deliberate, slow, gentle in a way that broke her heart, so sweet, too sweet. It was peace in the storm, one more scrap of beauty to hold on to.
And like all beautiful things, it ended too soon. Tavin pulled away, resting his forehead on hers a heartbeat or two. Then he told her, “I should let you get some rest. I’ll walk you back.”
She wished, for a terrible moment, that she could be the kind of girl who would be happy with him like this. That all his kindnesses here, all his sorrow, all his regret—they would let her forgive him for the choice he had made in Draga’s tent.
But the awful truth they both knew, and neither could say, was that it was not enough.
Tavin didn’t speak again until they reached the guest quarters, though his fingers stayed laced with hers. “The queen is holding a ball four days from now, on the twenty-first, to mark one week left until the coronation. Honestly, I’m pretty sure she’s doing it just to prove she can throw an event without casualties for once. Will you do me the honor?”
Another opportunity to spy, she told herself, not convinced at all. “Yes,” she told him. “I’d be…”
She trailed off, startled. A familiar sight had snatched up her attention whole.
“What’s wrong?” Tavin followed her gaze over the rooftops of the palace buildings. His own eyes widened.
Two unmistakable columns of fire and smoke rose from two of the palace’s three gates.
With or without the queen’s permission, the plague beacons burned.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DEPUTY CAT-MASTER
“The beacons are out now,” Yula announced in a low voice as she unloaded breakfast from the cleaning cart.
Fie pushed an overly interested orange tomcat away from the panbread and set it on the table. The beacons had given her a handy excuse to sneak back in the night before, claiming she’d seen smoke in the sky and gone out to see what it was. “Did Crows answer?”
Yula shook her head. “The sick are all still here, and then some. They found another five Sparrows with the Sinner’s Brand, on top of the first three. Some of them have to sleep outside the quarantine hut. There’s no room for them inside.”
“That’s faster than it usually spreads, right?” Jasimir asked Fie.
She chewed a strip of panbread, thinking. “It doesn’t spread like this, period, unless there’s a dead sinner somewhere that’s been left to rot. Like with Karostei. But Khoda saw it. It didn’t just spread fast, it killed fast. No one’s gotten worse since yesterday?” Yula shook her head. “None of it stacks up right.”
Khoda blew out a slow breath, thinking. “I need to go check in with my sources,” he said finally, scratching at the still-healing lines on his face. “I’m sure the Hawks had direct orders not to light the beacons, so I need to find out who’s willing to spit in the queen’s face. You two stay here. Especially you, cat-master. You can try to get harnesses on your employees.”
Jasimir made an annoyed noise but didn’t argue, picking at his panbread as Fie wove Khoda a glamour and tossed him the tooth to keep it going.
Once Khoda and Yula had left, the prince waited until they were sure to be well on their way out, then turned to Fie and asked, “What are your thoughts on breaking into the royal quarters?”
She choked on her panbread. He pounded her on the back and shoved water her way, and eventually she coughed out, “What?”
“Breaking into the royal quarters,” Jasimir repeated, as if he’d merely proposed a walk around the Midday Pavilion. “You and me. We know Rhusana’s hiding something. Maybe we can find some clue about what it is. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“What happened to Prince”—Fie fluttered her hands, warbled her voice, and mummed dewy-eyed dismay—“‘Oh no we can’t, it’s the la-a-a-w!’”
“First of all, ‘we can’t, it’s the law’ is not the wildly unreasonable statement you’re pretending it is,” Jasimir said peevishly. “Second, you know what happened, you