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Ryon narrows his eyes. “And how did you come to find yourself in Terrsaw afterward? Quite the accomplishment, I must say. Even more so than Dawsyn’s, to escape Glacia unaided.” Ryon himself has never heard of her – a woman other than Dawsyn who escaped Vasteel’s grasp? How is it that her story never reached him?

“I did not say I was unaided,” Yennes replies quietly. “And the rest of the tale… is something I’d rather not recall.”

He can’t imagine it, how this woman came to find the slopes. How she managed to traverse them, assisted or not. She is curious, but there are other matters to tend to while he has Yennes’s attention. There is a sense of flight in this most strange woman.

“So, you have the iskra magic inside you still?” Ryon asks instead. “You’ve lived with it all this time?”

“Yes,” she assents. “It was resistant at first. Though my struggle with it was nothing like yours. Baltisse told me of your mage blood. She hopes I can guide you to use the iskra, while she helps you with the other.”

“And will you?” Dawsyn asks. It seems she knows it is past time to deny help from anyone who offers it.

Yennes scrutinises her for a moment, her fingers burrowing beneath the table, likely to hide their frenetic jittering. “I will try to show you what I know of iskra, but as for convincing the light and dark to share?” Yennes says. “You will have to uncover that knowing on your own.”

The vice that has gripped Ryon’s heart loosens an inch. Whoever this woman might be, perhaps she can offer a glimmer of possibility.

Dawsyn turns her face to his, sharing with him a look of fragile, vulnerable hope. It is a face that has morphed slowly since he first saw it. It is wearier now, less sure. It shows each and every one of her burdens.

Beneath it all is the memory of a girl hiding in a warren, her teeth gritted and eyes wild. A girl who moved across the snow like she was made from it, lifting her face to the sun and becoming aglow with its light. Smiling so rarely that each one wrenched his heart out. A person who doesn’t recognise her own softness for all the hard things endured. Sharp and impenetrable and unyielding… except to him.

It is not often, and it is not without effort, but these small moments when he earns her gentleness is better than drinking the sweetest elixir.

Mother above, help the ones who try to take it away.

CHAPTERFIFTY-ONE

There’s blood in her mouth. Her jaw is locked so tightly, she wouldn’t be surprised to find her tongue bitten off.

“Focus, Dawsyn. It can only hurt you for as long as you fail to stop it.”

But she can’t. There is only the horrible, suffocating pain and the will not to scream.

“Dawsyn, breathe.”

She can’t.

“You can. Call to the magic. Make it listen,” comes Baltisse’s voice.

Dawsyn wants to succumb to the pain instead. It is blinding. Its squeezes and squeezes, the light wrapped around the dark in her chest, refusing to let go. But there’s that other part of her that hasn’t completely relented. It can hear the voices outside of her.

“Call it back, Dawsyn. It won’t be forced, but you can guide it. The pain will be gone.”

Just try,she thinks.

Release me,the iskra hisses.

You must try.And there it is. There is this task, or there is failure, and nothing else.

It is only pain,she thinks.We know pain.

Dawsyn summons every lingering tendril of her awareness. She pinpoints the light, trapping the iskra in its grasp, and thinks,Stop.

“No,” says Baltisse. “The magic will only do what it believes it needs to, Dawsyn. You must convince it.”

How?

“Show it that the iskra is not a threat.”

But she can’t.