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Ryon presses his forehead back to hers, wrapping her tightly in his inescapable embrace. This close, she can see the flecks in his irises, the water droplets on his lashes. “Anything you want,” he says, lowering her onto himself. She gasps at the shock if it, being so filled with him. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he says, softly kissing her again. “I’m yours.”

And then she is consumed with him, with them, with the feel of their bodies combined and moving together. And she follows the feeling of ecstasy into oblivion.

CHAPTERFIFTY-FIVE

As the sun bleaches the sky, Dawsyn and Ryon leave the shoreline behind them, damp but dressed. They walk back to the cabin with deliberate slowness. It brings to mind the nights Ryon spent in the Colony, loitering where he ought not be until the night leached away and he had to return to whatever bed, in whatever lean-to he then resided, with whatever kind soul he then burdened. He would drag his feet and kick at the ice and opt for the longest path, weaving his way back, step after reluctant step, wringing out every last second of solitude.

Ryon keeps his hands to himself for little more than a moment before he lays a palm to the back of her neck, slipping his fingers into her wet hair.

“Do you think the others will have noticed our absence?” she asks, tucking into the space at his side, pacing her steps in time with his. Close enough for him to feel her chilled skin.

He wraps his arm around her. “I can’t bring myself to give a damn.”

A smile. Slight, but true. Her eyes change when she smiles. They widen. Soften. The lines from years spent peering into the wind are replaced with something gentler. He cannot name which form of her he favours, the calm or the storm. Any. All.

“Why do you smirk?” Dawsyn asks abruptly. The wind carries ropes of her raven-black hair across her nose.

Ryon breaks from his reverie. “I’m thinking about how insufferable Baltisse will be.”

A small pause. Dawsyn considers it. “We could always weight her feet and drown her.”

“I’m afraid I’d have to protest. There are more than a few outstanding debts I’ve yet to repay her.”

Dawsyn sets her eyes on the cabin, smoke beginning to unfurl from its chimney. “As do I,” she says.

Ryon breathes a sigh of deep contentment. Beneath his skin, where Dawsyn cannot see, there are knots – entire nests of them – becoming free. A slow release of tendon and nerve, brought by the dawning of relief. A correction made to his dangerously teetering world. Restraints that steadfastly held him at a distance are gently released. He can reach for her once more. He can touch the line between her brows, follow the pathways of her palm. He can weave whispers into her ear until her eyelids droop and she falls asleep. All of it… returned to him.

“We shouldn’t be for each other, you know,” Dawsyn says slowly, gaze unwavering and open, searching. Tender.

Ryon understands what she means. It is a weak, surface-level truth. Humans don’t belong with Glacians. “I know,” he says.

“I’ve asked myself why I didn’t try harder to ignore it at first. Ignoreyou.” Her brows bunch and release. What he wouldn’t do to hear her mind.

“And what answer did you give?”

Dawsyn brings them to a stop outside the cabin. They can stretch the journey no longer.

She observes him before responding, mapping his features. She is delving into him, seeing each dark, fetid corner of him and remaining undeterred. “I think we were unavoidable, you and I. Do you feel it?”

He thinks of waking in a dungeon with his chest burning and his blood singing for her. He remembers the shock of black hair against the stark snow and the way it had made him want to pray, give thanks, because he’d found her. He thinks of the hundreds, the thousands of moments his hands have ached for Dawsyn, when he could do nothing but watch, keep his distance, be patient and hopeful. Knowing all the while how helplessly tangled his existence was with hers, whether she came back to him or not.

So, he nods, gently brushes his fingertips along her jaw. He releases the smile he’s been dulling and lets her see the full extent of his wonder. “I feel it,” he says.

The others are in various stages of waking within the cabin. Yennes has lit a fire. She deftly chops stored root vegetables while the others grunt and scrub their faces. As predicted, Baltisse oozes smugness. She says nothing as Ryon and Dawsyn sit beside each other on upturned buckets, but her grin is serpentine and her eyes churn with superiority. Ryon glares back, and it seems to dissuade her from offering any remark, at least.

Dawsyn, however, pays Baltisse and the others no mind. Instead, she tirelessly tracks Yennes’s movements. Ryon passes her a bowl of soup, and she thanks him, but her gaze doesn’t leave the woman before the hearth, busying herself with serving their party a heartier meal than any they’ve had in weeks. Amongst the clamour and flurry of many bodies in a small space, Dawsyn’s stare is unbroken.

The others eventually venture outside, seeking relief from the oppressive heat of a cabin made for colder climates, but Dawsyn doesn’t follow. And when it is only her, Yennes, and Ryon left, Dawsyn wastes no more time.

“Will you tell me now how you did it?” Dawsyn says to Yennes’s back. “How you escaped from Glacia?” The timbre of her voice fills the ceiling and walls and empty spaces between. It isn’t to be ignored.

Yennes turns with a wet rag, winding it manically around her hands. Her eyes skit between Dawsyn and Ryon and away. She seems even more furtive than usual. “Of course,” she says. “I… will try.”

The woman’s voice, the very sight of her, daunts him. Ryon cannot explain it in his mind. Perhaps it is only the risk of a stranger in their midst, the knowledge of power lurking beneath her skin. No matter how harmless she appears on the outside, Ryon can’t help the faint wariness that arises at the sight of this human. Some keen sense within tells him to ready himself.

When it seems she cannot pluck free the words to start, Dawsyn clears her throat. “You were selected from the Ledge?” she asks, letting the words linger.

“Yes,” sighs Yennes, her breath trembling. “It was… horrific. Worse than I ever feared. It will be… quite difficult for you both to believe, but I was not always the shaky leaf you see before you. I was once quite… fierce, I suppose. Callous, as one must be, up there. Meekness is the swiftest path to death on the Ledge.”