I growled, anger rising, and stuck out my hand to stop Taran from shutting his bedroom door in my face.
“Why won’t you…” I began to demand an explanation, but my movement caught Taran’s eye.
Faster than I could react, he reached out with both hands. One yanked down the neckline of my dress, and the other darted into it. I was so tired that my first impulse was to object to this assault on my modesty, but he wasn’t looking at my meager cleavage. Instead, he glared at the tiny bird trapped in his fist. Awi.
His air of cheerful indifference vanished, and the aura of violence returned.
Awi struggled in his hand as the dangerous dip of his eyelids suggested that he might crush her first and ask questions later.
“Stop!” I grabbed for his arm. “She hasn’t done anything!”
I got a look of surprise that I had dared to put hands on him, but his fingers relaxed.
“Who areyou?” he addressed the bird.
Her beady little eyes bulged over the puff of feathers where he’d squeezed her body. “I—I—it’s your auntie Awi. You don’t know who I am?” the bird said in a tiny peeping voice, so high in pitch that I could barely perceive it.
“Sure don’t,” Taran said, not releasing her.
“I know you! I knew you as a baby. I used to slip you honeycakes when you turned up at your mother’s parties without a stitch of clothing to cover your dimpled behind.”
“My mother? You can’t come up with a better story than that?”
“No, it’s true,” Awi insisted.
“My mother has all the maternal instincts of the cuckoo, which lays its eggs in other birds’ nests. I’m sure I was nowhere near any parties until I was old enough to be decorative.”
As Taran’s face said that squishing was still on the table, I dug my nails into his arm.
“I can’t let you hurt her.” I wasn’t exactly fond of the goddess, but my vow had my chest in a vise. “She’s just trying to return to the mortal world. I promised to help her if she helped me get to Wesha.”
Taran scoffed at that, but after a moment, he released the bird. Awi transformed before she hit the floor, returning to her guise as a red-eyed raven. She was stiff and fearful as she shuffled away from Taran, feathers a mess.
“You really have made the most inconvenient vows possible,” Taran said to me, hand still hovering over the knife stuck into his belt. “And somanyof them.”
I was beginning to realize that.
He heaved an annoyed sigh and turned back to the bird. “Vow that you won’t speak to Wesha about me. OrIvow you’ll be picking your way down the Mountain in brand-new feathers tomorrow, powerless and forgetful.”
Awi hesitated, and Taran took the knife out of his belt, face coldly murderous.
“I promise,” Awi yelped, cringing away from him.
I had my hands clasped over my throat, stricken at how easily Taran had threatened the little bird goddess. How easily he’d killed the Fallen. How easily he disposed of me.
Taran had been kind. As gentle as someone fighting a war could be. Whether it had all been a performance or whether that man died on the cliffs to be reborn as someone utterly different, there was nothing for me here now.
I had to get out.
“Just let us go,” I whispered. “I made a mistake in coming here. I’m sorry for your trouble tonight, but if you take us to the Painted Tower, we’ll both go. Please.”
Taran looked at me quizzically as he replaced the knife in his belt.
“Why would I?” he asked me, the line of his mouth cruel in a way I’d never seen before.
What was in it for him? I’d once offered him everything I had.
“Do it as a favor to me. Please. Just let us go.”
