to be terrible enough that when the Covenant weighs the sins that got you executed, it’s balanced out by the suffering you endured, and then you can be born a Phoenix again.”
“How many—?” Fie couldn’t finish the question. From what she’d seen in the memories of Phoenix teeth, they were inordinately fond of recreational murder. There could be dozens, perhaps more than a hundred bodies at the bottom of that well. No wonder her bones ached so, from all that wretched, hopeless death.
“No one can say,” Tavin admitted. “Sometimes they fish out the bodies once they start floating, if they’re still worthy of being buried in the royal catacombs. Not always. And it’s not just for Phoenixes, but also for the people who cross them. Not even a Gull witch could summon enough wind to carry themselves out. They’ve tried.”
Fie shot him a sidelong look. Tavin was slipping, calling the Phoenixes them.
But suddenly his eyes cut to her. “Lady Sakar,” he said, terse. “Do you understand why the queen asked me to bring you here?”
The people who cross them.
Fie froze.
It had been a long, long time since she’d looked at Tavin as a boy who could kill her.
It would be so easy, a quick shove, and once she wore herself out screaming and trying to stay afloat, she’d be one more body at the bottom. They could call it an accident.
And every way she could fight him off, she would lose—she knew that as sure as the sun rose. He’d win with steel, he could not be touched by fire, and whatever she might wreak with a Hawk war-witch’s tooth he could easily undo with his own healing.
She’d just always trusted that Tavin wouldn’t hurt her, not when he needed her help, and then not while he held her heart. That wasn’t the boy Fie knew.
But this was a traitor with a stolen face.
She should have cut his throat while he slept.
“I know why I’m here,” she rasped.
He took a step back from the well’s edge, drawing her away with him, then unwound his arm from hers. “I’m going to play the fool,” he said tightly. “I’ll tell the queen I thought she just wanted you taken away from the party, and if you’re asked, we only passed by the well as we walked about the gardens. But if you ever speak openly against her again, she will know, and she will kill you.”
To Fie’s humiliation, her sight blurred with tears. She couldn’t help it; the well still droned in her spine, her heartbeat still crackled down her veins, she still hated him, missed him, she hated this awful palace and everyone in it and she wanted to go back to her roads and her crowsilk and her pa.
The words choked themselves free: “How do you live like this?”
Tavin’s face fractured the way it had the night before. He turned his head away and said, voice cracking, “They’re all short lives.”
Fie wanted to push him into the well for quoting her own words to a different face. She wanted to cry more because he’d remembered them.
All she did was scrub her face with a sleeve until she could speak again. “W-why are you helping me? Won’t the queen be angry?”
Tavin didn’t look at her. “I don’t want to answer to the Covenant for any more than I already have to,” he said heavily. He hesitated a moment, then turned to the stairs, offering his arm once more. She took it. “The palace is full of dark secrets. You don’t have to be another one.”
Fie gulped. She needed to manage something today, or Khoda might send her back to the well himself. “And if I like dark secrets?” she made herself ask.
Tavin’s eyebrows shot up, as if to ask, Even after this? He gave her a long look, one that ended with a hint of a smile. “Then I have a lot to show you, Lady Sakar.”
Niemi’s tooth-spark flickered at Fie, prompting. “You saved my life, Your Highness. If I may be so bold, I think you can call me Niemi.”
Something hitched in Tavin’s face, only to smooth over. He reached over to rest his free hand on hers. “Thank you, Niemi. And you may call me Jasimir.”
* * *
Jasimir and Khoda were both waiting for her at the meeting statue, and they fell in line behind her, seamlessly shifting from palace servants to personal attendants as Fie strode toward the guest quarters.
Once they reached the empty chamber Yula had set