The Merciful Crow (The Merciful Crow, #1)

by Margaret Owen

If the dead gods were kind tonight, he’d have no call to use them.

She pursed her lips. “So that’s what a sinner prince looks like.” The dead boy sat up. “Well, no,” he said, “but I’ve been told I’m fairly close.”

“She’s got a point, Jas. Several, in fact. Enough points that I’m starting to think she’s mostly thorns.”

“Some bone in there, too,” Pa added, his grin little more than lacquer over an unspoken threat. “Y’know. For structure.”

It wasn’t that she wanted to burn the world down, no. She just wanted the world to know that she could.

You need this deal, part of her whispered. But another ugly voice hissed back: Only if the prince is good to keep it.

The prince exiled himself to the far side of the clearing, sneaking looks Fie couldn’t trace until they landed on Hangdog changing his shirt. She couldn’t begrudge Jasimir that, at least: Hangdog had problems aplenty, but looks weren’t one.

“Not all Hawks are bad,” Jasimir argued. “For the dead gods’ sake, you’re a Hawk.” Tavin shook his head. “It doesn’t take all Hawks to get us killed. It just takes one.

And then, with horror and fury, she found she hated her traitor heart, for burning quiet with something that was not hate at all.

When, not if. Fie took Tavin’s face in her hands and kissed him. At first he hardly stirred, and for a horrid moment she thought she’d made a mistake, that she’d misjudged it all, that he’d think her a fool—she pulled back— Then a strange, slight shiver passed through him, and a breath later, she found that meant the last of his restraint had snapped. He didn’t kiss her back so much as drown himself in her. His fingers wound themselves in her hair, mapped out the bones and planes of her back by touch, fitted her hips against his; his mouth sought hers like a cure, starving and fierce, only to wander down her throat until she could scarce breathe.

A curious thing happened then: the crown prince of Sabor looked at Fie, and for the first time, fear crept into his eyes.

A queen answered this time. And she fought furiously with the dead prince, circling and spitting like cats. But they were neither a match for Fie, the worst Crow they would ever cross.

Mercy. They always wanted it, in the end. They wanted to hunt Crows, and they wanted to cut them to bits, and when they faced the Covenant’s judgment, they wanted the Crows to grant them a swifter, cleaner way out.