herself sit up straight, scrubbing at her leaking eyes. “I mean it. I don’t care what happens to us after this, I never, ever want you to die for me, aye? I want you to live for me, Tavin, I want you to keep fighting, I want you to be happy with or without me, because that’s what love is.” She clasped his face in her hands. “Someone told you love means giving up on yourself, and they were lying. I know you never gave up on me. But I never want you to give up on us again.”
Tavin let his forehead rest on hers, so close she could see the firelight caught in his glistening eyes. “To be fair, one half of this equation just got himself poisoned and locked in a crypt.” His voice cracked. “Could … could you say that part about being happy again?”
“I don’t want you to have to sacrifice for me. I want you to be happy. I want you to live.” She kissed him. “Because I love you.”
“That,” he said raggedly. “That’s … what I wanted to hear.”
“And I’m still mad at you,” she added, and kissed him anyway as he laughed, and for a few beautiful moments, all they did was laugh and kiss and dry each other’s tears and hold each other close until they had both steadied out.
“We have to stop doing this here,” Tavin said as she helped him get to his feet. “I feel like Ambra’s watching us, the pervert.”
Fie choked. “I, uh. About that.”
But before she could figure out how to tell him that, in a roundabout way, Ambra had been watching them the whole time, a strange, unholy sound lowed through the catacombs.
It sounded like crying. Like a moan.
Like a soul in torment.
Both she and Tavin froze. “That’s the noise,” she said. “The one the Sparrow man heard. It’s something to do with the queen, we have to find it—”
Tavin laced his fingers through hers and headed for the door. “Yes, chief.”
The cry faded as they entered the main chamber but swelled up again a moment later, almost gurgling. Fie turned toward one of the gaping doorways. “There.”
“That’s the crypt for cousins,” Tavin said, brow furrowing. The fire-lines did not continue beyond the entrance, so he raised one burning hand, his other still tight in hers. Golden firelight caught on dark, wet smears on the ground, and he recoiled. “Eugh.”
“Oh. Right.” Fie stepped well over one of the smears. “There are skin-ghasts. Reckon that’s what Rhusana did with the plague victims.”
Tavin shuddered. “A new and horrifying way for her to be creative. Why am I not surprised?”
They made their way into the hall, then into the crypt proper. Coffin-filled hollows lined the walls like larvae in a hive, and more dark slicks polished the floor, spreading from rows upon rows of wet, red heaps of corded muscle and tripe.
A sad kind of wrath coiled in Fie’s throat. Whatever the Covenant had meant when it had marked so many with the Sinner’s Brand, it couldn’t have been this.
Another groan made Fie grip Tavin’s hand tighter. It sounded closer, bestial.
He touched his hand to a brazier in the middle of the room. It did not send lines of fire to light the crypt, but as the coals caught, they cast a sullen orange glow over the stone.
At the far end, something stirred.
Fie sucked in a breath. She’d thought it one more body, splayed on a tall stone slab in its final moments. But as she and Tavin watched, its chest racked with coughs like sobs.
“Fie?”
Jasimir’s voice made both her and Tavin jump. Footfalls fell across the stone, and a moment later, he appeared in the tunnel behind them. His eyes widened as they took in the gore—then landed on Tavin.
The prince marched across the crypt and pulled him into an embrace. “You absolute ass,” he said into Tavin’s shoulder. “How dare you.”
“Funny, that’s what Fie said,” Tavin wheezed.
“There’s still a decent chance I throw both you and Khoda in jail.” Jasimir let his brother go. “Assuming there’s still a jail. It’s a mess up there. People are breaking out with the Sinner’s Brand left and right. Rhusana’s soldiers have taken the gates, and they won’t let anyone in or out. She’s holed up in the royal residence with a small army of skin-ghasts. Aunt Draga…” He gulped. “She lost an eye. She may lose an arm, too. The prison’s rioting, and I only found you because Viimo snuck