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“You must!”

STOP!She screams within herself and feels the horrible sensation of being twisted. The light is winning.

“Dawsyn, go easy!”

But the pain is unbearable, her awareness is trickling. She can feel the black corners of consciousness coming to swallow her. To rescue her.

“Get back!” shouts a voice.

“STOP!” Dawsyn screams. But the word is too big to remain inside her chest and it passes her lips. It fills the room. And with the reverberations of her roar, the light in her chest erupts. The iskra expands, races to her fingertips and out.

Dawsyn feels the burning frost of the iskra as it explodes from her. She sees the brilliant light through her closed eyelids, and she feels the receding glow of the mage magic returning to her mind, raw and defeated.

She wants to sleep. Those black corners in her mind lurk, ready to drag her into their recesses. She is so… so very tired. But Baltisse is shouting, her voice edged with concern, and Dawsyn forces her eyelids to open.

“Yennes?Yennes!”

Dawsyn sees the ceiling of Baltisse’s cabin first. When she turns her head, she sees the wreckage. Baltisse’s table and chairs, the hanging herbs and plants, a basin, cutlery, a kettle, all of it is upturned and lying in a heap against the far wall, as though a gust of wind had come through.

Baltisse lifts a chair out of the mess. “Yennes?”

Yennes. Is she hurt?

“Come, Yennes. I’ll help you stand,” Baltisse says, leaning down to a crumpled form.

Dawsyn rolls to her side and feels sick. Fighting nausea, she pushes her head from the floor in time to see Ryon barrel through the door.

“Dawsyn?” He bends down to her form on the floor.

“I’m fine,” Dawsyn whispers. “… Yennes.”

“I’m well,” comes Yennes’s voice. There is some clamour as she finds her feet amongst the heap. “Just a knock on the head.”

“What happened?” asks Ryon.

“A minor thing,” Baltisse says. “Did I not ask you to stay away while we work, Ryon?”

“I came to–”

“See if your beloved was hurt? Yes, I know. As you can see, she is not. Now get out.”

Ryon scowls at Baltisse but doesn’t argue. He storms out of the cabin without a backward glance, slamming the door behind him.

“Do not pay him any attention. His mind is a storm and he’s exceptionally nosey. He can barely stand not being involved.” Baltisse helps Yennes to a chair, and then begins to right the rest of her discarded furniture. “Well, Dawsyn. You both succeeded and failed. Congratulations.”

Dawsyn sits upright, her stomach rolling in sickening waves. “Is there any chance all of that,” – Dawsyn points lethargically to the mess – “wasn’t me?”

“None.”

“What was it? That… explosion? It happened on the Ledge, and on the wagon road. It killed a person.”

“The iskra,” Yennes answers, her fingers pushing gingerly at a spot on the back of her head. “Anger, anxiety, fear. All of it gives the iskra a pathway. I had severalincidentsmyself at first, when I was pushed to my limits. It is not your fault.”

“Instead of stopping the mage magic, you lit a fuse for the iskra,” Baltisse adds. “Effective, but dangerous.”

“I tried to call it off,” Dawsyn says.

“I told you. You mustconvinceit that the iskra poses no threat.”