hair for Rhusana to turn him, I don’t want to—I can’t take any chances.”
He’d held up a steady front all evening, teasing Lakima and jesting with Varlet, but the scratch in his voice said this wasn’t just about Burzo.
Fie reached out, turned his chin until he met her eyes. “You’re not the king.”
He swallowed. “That’s not enough.”
And in her bones, Fie knew he was right. She took up the shears. “I’ll need rags and water.”
Once Tavin’s hair lay in damp waves against his skull, she got to work. She’d watched Wretch trim hair short often enough, and usually with no more than the chief’s blade or a shard of broken pottery. Shears made for much quicker work, and it wasn’t long before the rags covering Tavin’s shoulders had darkened with shorn hair.
Something about the silence felt too grim for Fie to abide. “How did you know Khoda for a Swan?”
“When he pushed me aside, I … felt it,” Tavin explained. “The Hawk witch-finders trained me to read caste in the blood, in case any assassins tried disguising themselves.” He blew out a breath. “Not that it was good for much. He’s been spying on you since before I arrived, and I didn’t notice a thing until today.”
Fie raised an eyebrow he couldn’t see. There was something both tiresome and delicious about what sounded like jealousy from Tavin. “Reckon that’s all that bothered you?” she prodded, tugging another lock between her fingers.
To her surprise, he answered swift and blunt: “The guard on the road. I don’t care that he was a … How did you put it?”
“Dung-sucking dog-lover?”
He gave an exaggerated dreamy sigh. “You have such a way with words. I’m used to people like him. But I can’t stop wondering, how many of them are Hawks?”
“Plenty. But you saw it yourself—he backed down when Jas showed up. They care about the lad at the top, and if he fancies Crows, they’ll learn to do it, too.”
Whatever Tavin had to say to that, he kept to himself, and Fie was more than willing to distract herself with running her fingers through his hair. She’d cut near all of it down no higher than a knuckle-width when he asked, “Do you feel safe here?”
Fie fumbled the shears.
She had the protection of a prince and a master-general, two swords, a bag of teeth. Yet not a dozen paces away, even in the middle of scores of the kingdom’s finest warriors, Corporal Lakima still kept watch over Fie’s band.
“Safe enough,” she lied.
The last curl fell to Tavin’s shoulder with a decisive snip. She bundled the rags off his shoulders, taking care not to let any hair fall loose. “There. Done. We’ll throw this in the river tomorrow.”
Tavin twisted about on his knees, and when she looked up, she wasn’t quite sure who she saw. It wasn’t just that his hair no longer softened the harsher lines of his jaw; it was his face. Even when things had been at their most dire on the road, even when she’d nigh killed herself burning too many teeth or he’d good as killed himself letting the Vultures take him, he’d kept the faintest embers of a grin or a jest, like letting them go cold meant some kind of surrender.
She couldn’t see any ghost of laughter in him now.
“Fie.” He cradled her face in his hands. “I—I will never let anything happen to you. No matter what. You know that, don’t you?”
Fie didn’t know why the notion made her eyes burn, why it stole the words from her burning throat. Then she thought of Pa, tears streaming down his face as he said in wonder, I’m … home.
She reached to douse the lamp, voice cracking. “I know.”
As he drew her to him, she whispered the most terrible truth she knew against the pulse of his neck: “I feel safe with you.”
It wasn’t that he watched her back, put her at ease, or made her soft in ways she both reveled in and despised. Fuss as she might, she loved him for those and more.
The terrible part was one they both knew and neither could say into the dark: he made her feel safe, and that was not enough.
* * *
A quarter hour into the dinner with Lord Geramir, Fie had learned three facts about the man.
First, he was wholly, predictably insufferable, shoveling praise onto the prince and the master-general like dung into flower beds, yet curling his lips at Fie and Tavin as if they were the