Before, she’d just woken in Tavin’s tent, curled in his arms on a soft pallet in the honeyed glow of morning light.
Now she woke alone on a thin grass-woven sleeping mat over a dirt floor, mossy stone walls blocking most light. A few weak shafts broke through the mats woven of living vine that made up the roof. Someone had spread a blanket of crowsilk over her.
Pa. She’d fled to Pa.
She’d given up on the prince. On the oath.
Tavin had given up on them all.
There was no more running from it. She curled in on herself like a withering leaf and finally let the weight on her heart cut itself open.
Her whole body shuddered with sobs. Not the quiet ones that she could hide in a sleeve, or the ones that squeezed between angry words, but terrible, guttural things that tore from her chest like furious beasts, sucking the wind from her as they clawed their way out.
That was how Wretch and Bawd found her, racked with grief and wrath and guilt beyond words. The next thing Fie knew, she’d been gathered to lean beneath Wretch’s chin like she was five again and wailing for her dead ma. Once again, Fie couldn’t scrape together a protest, weeping into the older woman’s shirt as Bawd sat beside them, rubbing Fie’s back.
Eventually Wretch said, “You can’t carry this alone, Fie. What happened with the queen?”
“Rhusana w-wanted one of them to rule with her.” Her voice rattled in fits and spurts. “She—she—wants to turn all Sabor on the Crows. Jas said n-no.” Fie tried to think of a way to say the next part without saying Tavin’s name.
“Why did the Hawk lad say aye?” Bawd prompted after a moment.
Fie couldn’t help a shiver, but she had to say it, had to tell them what he’d damned them all for. “He asked for Rhusana’s word that no—no harm would come to … me.” She gasped a broken laugh. “I told him earlier, we need to put better kings on the throne, and he—and he—”
She broke down again.
“He cares for you,” Bawd said.
“Then how could he do it?” Fie choked out. “How could he trust her? How could he sell us all for—me?”
“Deep breaths.” Wretch let out a sigh. “I’ll never doubt that boy loves you, Fie. But loving someone doesn’t make us choose right, for us or for them.”
Fie didn’t want to hear aught about how Tavin cared. She wanted to cut his throat for being such a fool to trust the queen’s word. For choosing a throne over an oath. For forsaking her kin, her caste, her king-to-be.
“What are we going to do now?” she whispered.
“I don’t know about the next moon, or even the next week.” Wretch propped Fie up and pushed a clay plate with a stack of panbread her way. Fie saw bits of soft cheese and a drizzle of honey, the way Pa made it specially for her. “But we’ll scrape it together as we always do. You need to eat.”
Fie shook her head, even as another sob bubbled up her throat. “I’m the chief, I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”
“You think that’s how it works?” Bawd scowled and tore off a strip of the panbread. “We look after our own. That didn’t stop when you became our chief. You’re the cleverest, meanest chief on the road, and we’ll follow you straight into the twelve hells if you ask, but if you fall, we carry you. If you’re sick, we carry you. If you need us, we carry you, and I swear on Varlet’s head that if you don’t take care of yourself, we will make you.”
The strip of panbread was shoved in Fie’s face. She grudgingly took a bite, and then another, and something about filling her belly made tears roll down her face anew. The panbread vanished in short order.
The hurt went nowhere, still dragging thorns about her every thought—but her hurt never truly went away. Wounds became scars, pain tempered to bitter wisdom, and from the embers of her grief always, always rose rage.
She let Bawd and Wretch lead her to the temple’s makeshift wash-chamber, where rainwater had been diverted to a great stone cistern surrounded by barrels and basins. They left her with soap-shells and a change of clothes, and it wasn’t until Fie scrubbed the reek of old blood from her stiff hair that she realized it had clung to her like a curse.