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“Truly. I still await the snow to soak through to my nether regions, and yet they remain blissfully untouched.”

Dawsyn only nods slowly, her eyes distant.

“Dawsyn?”

“What?” she asks, finally looking at him.

“Are you listening?”

“No… sorry.”

“I was speaking of my nether regions.”

“Then I’m not sorry.”

“Are you well?” Hector asks. Hector himself seems challenged by the heat. Since first setting foot in the valley, his cheeks have been flushed and his forehead damp.

“I am,” Dawsyn tells him. “I’m… I’m thinking.”

“About how to be saviour of the Ledge?”

Dawsyn narrows her eyes. “Do you mock me?”

“No,” Hector mutters, subtly shifting further from her. “It’s not mockery, it’s concern.”

“For whom?”

“You. Us. Going back there.” Hector hesitates. “I can’t help but think it’s exactly what we should be avoiding.”

“And so we should leave the rest of them there?” Dawsyn asks, and not with malice, but with a genuine need to hear another’s reasoning. “To be selected? To freeze and starve?”

“No,” Hector allows. “But you must see what I see?”

“And what is that?”

“That you are likely to fail once more.”

Hot ire climbs her spine. She feels the iskra crawl into her palms.

Hector sighs. “I only mean to say that I don’t want you todie, Dawsyn. We made it here, alive. We deserve to spend the rest of our lives trying to feel safe.” He rolls his eyes at her, as though he finds her exasperating. “I’m not trying to insult you. Unclench your fists.”

“I’m deciding whether I should put one in your face.”

He chuckles. “The last time you tried, we were twelve, and I shoved a handful of snow down your shirt for it.”

“Well, there’s no snow here, Hector. And you wouldn’t dare stick your hand down my shirt now.”

Hector thinks for a moment, wiping his forehead. “No, I suppose not. I get the impression that large Glacian would bite my head off.”

Dawsyn says nothing, but her stomach tightens at the mention of Ryon. She picks a leaf from the ground and begins pulling it apart.

“Ah,” Hector murmurs, watching her. “So, I am right. You two are lovers?”

“We are lots of things. Lovers is no longer one of them.”

Hector grins. “And you loathe complexity.”

How nice it is to be so easily understood. “I do.”