Instead, she kept an eye on the growing dark, and on those silk crowns.
The rest of the ceremony was meant to be straightforward. The priests would ask for Ambra’s blessing upon the new rulers-to-be. Then, Khoda had told her, would come what the priests called “the Miracle of the Burning Crown”: the silk would burst into flame as a sign of Ambra’s favor.
“And by Ambra’s favor,” Fie had pointed out as they ran through the plan in Ebrim’s office that afternoon, “you mean the fact that even a royal toddler could light those crowns, since they’re practically kneeling on dead Phoenix gods.”
Khoda had tilted his head with a lazy grin. “I guess the presence of the Phoenixes makes it a miracle?”
“Shitty miracle,” Fie had observed.
But now she watched a bead of oil slide down the side of Tavin’s face as the priests droned on, and she thought of what it meant to burn.
Doubtless he would light the crowns for himself and Rhusana. Or maybe he would light his own, and a Peacock illusion would serve for hers. The point was to show the crowd they were Phoenixes true and could not be harmed by fire. Then they would meditate until dawn, and when the final ashes of their silk crowns were swept away, they would be given crowns of gold and rise with the sun.
Fie’s eyes stayed on that twist of silk.
He’d called her the girl he loved. He’d enjoyed her in his bed. He’d sworn she would never be gone to him. But all it took was a palace and the promise of a golden crown to burn it all to ash.
Fie made sure the tooth at her wrist was still securely wrapped in a bit of rag, for if it touched her skin, it would sing double, no, triple as loud as any other she carried. For one thing, the Phoenix god-graves rumbled beneath her toes, calling to the scrap of bone she held now.
For another, the teeth of the living always sang louder than those of the dead. And Tavin lived yet, though how long she would abide it, Fie no longer knew.
The priests wound down their chant, the sky well and truly black with night now. Torches and lamps had been lit about the hall, but the great lantern-columns cast the brightest light.
“And now, O Ambra of the Sunrise, Queen of Day and Night, Tiger-Rider, Fire-Drinker, God-Sent, Conqueror of the Highest Lands, we beseech your memory and your name,” Rhusana’s priest proclaimed, holding his arms aloft.
Tavin’s priest raised hers as well. “Grant your favor to these new rulers, that they may follow in your ways. Show us that your flame burns on in them.”
Fie took a deep breath and called first an Owl tooth. The spark of the scholar within jumped with curiosity, eager to unravel a new mystery, but Fie offered a plea instead: I need to find a memory, she told it.
And swiftly, she slipped Tavin’s tooth from her wrist into her palm, rolling it to call out the spark.
His thoughts, his memories, surges of blood and fire, they all threatened to drown her as she tried and tried and tried to shut them out. She didn’t want to see him, she didn’t want to feel—
This, the scholar said, picking a memory out of the maelstrom in her bones. Fie lunged for it and fell into a dark night moons ago, one she knew well—but this skewed different, this was through Tavin’s eyes—
He crouched on a branch in the dark, the Crow girl and Jas beside him. Until a moment ago, they’d been utterly invisible; Fie had called the Birthright of a Sparrow witch as easily as slipping on a sandal, and they had only appeared now so she could call on a Phoenix tooth.
She was too good at her work, he thought, and a rebellious part of him wondered what would happen if the Crows ever decided they’d had enough of carting around plague-dead. Perhaps that was why the Oleander Gentry were so hell-bent on keeping them unarmed and starving.
Though since they’d acquired Phoenix teeth, perhaps that would all change. Even now, Fie seemed about to put out a hearty campfire, a trick he hadn’t mastered until he’d practiced his firecraft for a few years.
“It’s not working,” Jas whispered, and Tavin swore silently, knowing that had to have shattered the girl’s focus.
Sure enough, the fire roared with glee as Fie hissed. She drew a sharp breath, no doubt trying once more.