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Dawsyn shakes her head, lifting it from the ground. “I didn’t force it this time,” Dawsyn rasps, her voice uneven. “I didn’t… force the iskra. I swear.” Dawsyn seems to be waiting for an answer, an explanation.

Baltisse doesn’t give it. She averts her eyes, rises, her dress falling to brush the ground. She turns away from Dawsyn, away from them both, away from the questions that Ryon’s mind shouts to her, and hurries from the clearing before he can say anything more.

Ryon looks back to Dawsyn, who still works to slow her breathing. He watches her colour return to normal, and wonders what the mage could possibly know to stare at Dawsyn as though she were condemned.

Exhausted, Dawsyn sleeps as Ryon carries her back to camp. It is one of the only times Ryon can recall when she hasn’t shown reluctance at being reduced to fit in his arms. She rests the side of her face against his shoulder, her hands cradled together and shoved between their chests.

It’s a difficult thing to know someone loves you before they know it themselves. He must reconcile with it all the same. It would be worse to have her realise she loves him and disregard it anyway. Every day he worries that it has already happened, that she has deemed their differences too vast, insurmountable. If that’s the case, then he is doomed to spend the rest of his life thinking she’s wrong, and there will be no way of showing her.

Ryon doesn’t waste any time getting back to camp. If he were smarter, he’d lengthen the trip and delay the moment where he must distance himself again. But there are more pressing things he must deal with. He must find Baltisse and force her to explain everything he saw in that clearing.

The fact that Dawsyn’s iskra seems to surpass his expectations is something he has mused over more than once. His own magic, long since dried up, was mostly an inactive entity, nothing but a strange burning in his stomach and palms if he became too animated. It lasted little longer than it took to save his life.

Dawsyn’s is different. Perhaps it’s that she is human and the iskra is incompatible. Perhaps she was overcome, there in the clearing, by magic meant for a beast.

But she healed Esra, where Ryon knows he couldn’t. She conjured fire, a thing not done by any Glacian magic he’s ever seen.

Despite his own confoundment, it seems that there issomeonewho knows exactly what is happening to Dawsyn Sabar.

Dawsyn opens her eyes and asks to walk as Baltisse’s cabin comes into view.

“Can you?”

“Of course,” she mumbles, already untangling herself from him. He sets her down, and watches warily as her legs shake.

“I wish you’d let me help you,” he says, unwilling to let go of her wrist.

“I know,” she says, surprising him. She looks up and smiles weakly. “I’m working on it.”

Ryon’s heart stutters, a flood of warmth spreads within his chest.

But for now, headstrong as ever, Dawsyn pulls her hand free and walks off in the direction of the camp.

He sighs deeply, grits his teeth at what will come next, and heads to Baltisse’s cabin.

Within, Esra sits on a stool, spooning broth awkwardly into his mouth. “Ryon, my love!” he says. “Come and speak with me.”

“Soon,” Ryon answers. “I need to speak with Baltisse first.”

Baltisse stands over a shallow basin, washing her hands with the utmost attention.

“Baltisse?”

She doesn’t answer, doesn’t look up. The mage keeps her back turned from both men and acts as though they weren’t there at all.

“What’s the matter with her?” Esra muses. “Baltisse? Are you and Ryon amid a quarrel? If so, don’t mind me. Speak freely. Tell him how you hate the way he struts about.Pigeon-chested,you called him. She says it all the time, Ryon. But if you ask me, she’s envious that her own chest doesn’t command quite the same atten–”

“Shut up, Es!” Ryon and Baltisse say at the same time.

Esra looks at the two of them, noticing for the first time the intensity of the tension passing between them. “What’s going on?”

“Are you feeling improved, Es?” Ryon asks.

“Well… mostly.”

“Some fresh air will help,” Baltisse proclaims, and suddenly the door flings open.

Esra eyes her warily. “I suppose I don’t have a choice.”