the Sinner’s Brand now…” She shivered into the silence. “Once the king dies, it’s going to get bad. I don’t know how long they’ll have.” She squared her shoulders. “I asked Pa to send as many Crows as he could two days ago. If they’ve made it, we’ll have help.”
Tavin squeezed her hand. “What a coincidence. Three days ago I got Mother to sign an order for the Hawks to offer rides and escorts to any Crows headed to the palace.”
Fie had a number of thoughts then, and most of them involved lowering her standards for where she’d roll a lad.
“So we can stop this.” Jasimir ran a hand through his hair. “We can let the Crows in, and isolate the infected, and once the bodies burn…”
Fie looked at the chief’s blade in her free hand.
Dealing mercy had never gotten easier, in the end.
“Jas,” she said. “It’s not just the bodies. All of it has to burn.”
Jasimir shook his head. “But we can contain the plague. We’ll make pyres for the bodies, and then it won’t spread.”
“It already has. The Covenant’s been trying to bring Surimir to light for weeks. We can get the uninfected out, but the plague wouldn’t spread the way it has if that rot wasn’t clean through the palace grounds by now.”
Jasimir’s throat worked. “I can’t—we can’t just burn all of it, can’t we try to save anything?”
“I think we’ve been trying, Jas.” Tavin sounded tired. “Haven’t we? You and I have tried our best to survive here without becoming”—he gestured helplessly to Surimir—“this. But if we just burn the dead, clean the palace, and go back to the same damn games … Who is that good for? You? Me? Any of us? We told ourselves that if we played by the rules we knew, it’d protect us from people like Rhusana. We told ourselves that people born into castes like ours couldn’t be touched by the Sinner’s Plague. And it’s all been—nothing. None of it did a damn thing to stop it, because the sickness started with the king.” He put his free hand on Jasimir’s shoulder. “What good is any of this?”
Jasimir stared at their father, lying bloody and squirming on the stone, an exile from his own tomb. Fie could only imagine what it was like: being raised to believe your father was good as a walking god, one of the Covenant’s beloved Phoenixes, chosen to rule the way you were chosen.
She could only imagine what it was, to see the rotten heart of it all now.
“It’s already gone,” she said softly. “The Covenant sent you a Crow, not a queen.”
He locked eyes with her.
After a heartbeat, he nodded and whispered, “All of it has to burn.”
Tavin and Jasimir were the ones to carry their father from the catacombs, Fie leading the way, a Phoenix tooth alight in her hand, the lament of the Well of Grace in her bones.
When they reached the surface, the sun had just touched the cliffs behind them, beginning its final descent on the royal palace of Sabor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE FLOODGATES
Skin-ghasts wreathed the royal quarters above, peering out over the gardens as Rhusana’s thousand-eyed sentinel.
Before, they’d not even tilted toward Fie. But now, as she, her lordlings, and the king climbed from the catacombs, one by one, every hollow face turned toward them.
“Don’t look now,” Tavin said slowly, “but I think we have an audience.”
Jasimir shifted his father’s arm over his shoulders with a grunt. “They didn’t bother me at all on my way here. I think they’re protecting Rhusana.”
“The queen who hid her damnedest to make sure this scummer never saw the light of day again?” Fie jerked her thumb at the king as they passed under the stone arch. “That Rhusana?”
Tavin glanced up. “That Rhusana,” he confirmed tightly. “We may want to pick up the pace.”
Fie dug in her satchel of Phoenix teeth. “You two go first, and I’ll cover our backs. We’re going for the main gate.”
“Yes, chief,” the lordlings said in unison. Fie looped back behind the king’s dragging feet—and not a moment too soon, as a skin-ghast leapt toward them from the stairs leading to the Well of Grace above.
It landed in an arc of golden Phoenix fire. “Go,” Fie shouted, teeth blazing in her fists.
Through the gardens they half ran, half stumbled, wheels of fire driving off the ghasts, great sweeps of crackling gold from Fie, from Tavin, from Jasimir, leaving trails of lingering flame and scorch marks. They carried the king past