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Baltisse nods. “And other things. You must be hungry.”

“No.”

“We have travelled all day and you’ve not eaten.”

“I do not want to eat.”

“Are you fasting for penance?”

Dawsyn scoffs. “From whom would I need to seek penance?”

“Yourself,” the mage says, her eyes falling to Dawsyn’s stomach. “I can practically hear that battle in your belly, turning you inside out.”

Dawsyn stills. It is only then that she notices her own pacing, her restless fingers.

“It must be very painful,” Baltisse says. Mild. Impassive.

Dawsyn scoffs. “I’ve been far hungrier.”

“Not thehunger,sweet. The confusion.”

Dawsyn’s jaw twitches. A blossoming discomfort fills her.

“It is a strange thing, to be so filled with loss and heartbreak and wrath, all for one person. Impossible to consolidate, I’ve found.”

The discomfort grows. Blooms. So too does the roiling of her stomach. Her hands sweat. “I do not need your consult.”

“Ryon betrayed you. Did he not? I heard your mind earlier. It is plagued by him. Your thoughts are so tangled even I could not unravel the parts of you that break and burn.” Baltisse regards her. “Whatever he did, Dawsyn. Whatever happened, he had reason to do it.”

Reason.

The beast in her belly raises its head, bares its teeth.

“You hate him as much as you care for him.”

“Stop it.”

But the mage forges on. “That hate is misplaced, Dawsyn. Ryon is not your enemy.”

“He is not myanythinganymore.”

Baltisse takes Dawsyn’s measure, eyeing her critically, and smiles. “He is the reason you are still alive.”

And with that, the beast surges, overflowing her, pushing every cell to breaking point. “He is the reason I almost died!” Dawsyn shouts, each word laced with venom. “I will not listen to one more person discredit me in favour of a man.”

“Not even a man you love?”

Dawsyn’s palms begin to burn with trembling energy. “You mistake admiration for love. And I no longer remember him as admirable, either.” When she looks down, she finds her hands coated in a filigree of ice, white shimmering patterns covering her skin. It barely registers in the flourish of hurt.

“You were drawn to each oth–”

“He bartered my life!” Light explodes from Dawsyn’s hands, filling the room. The pain that has multiplied and fouled within her now fights its way to the surface. The sentient thing that she has failed to summon now expands with the wrath. The floor beneath Dawsyn’s feet shakes, the widows rattle, and the light blinds.

For a moment, Dawsyn is stunned to silence, to stillness. How she had struggled to wrench this magic to the surface these past days, all for it to flow so easily now that she does not need it. The light recedes slowly, lingering on her palms, and she shivers, her body quaking.

Baltisse watches that ethereal glow, entranced.

But Dawsyn does not allow the things inside her to be left unsaid. “That hybrid made deals to trade my head for an alliance with the Queens. Even if he could not bring himself to do it in the end, he deceived me, and then heled meback into their palace. I do not care if his conscience was greater. I do not care if he changed his mind. He is no better than Alvira.”