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“Salem, your pants gave up on your waistline a long time ago and we’ve all been subjected to a very different sort of chasm these past weeks. Do not lecture me on the functionality of fashion.”

“Fine,” Ryon intervenes. “You’ll come, Esra.”

“And I’ll be useful, too,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “What weapons shall I procure for the Chasm beasties then?”

Dawsyn smiles at him. “Whatever you can find.”

“Whatever can be carried,” Ryon adds.

“What can I do, Dawsyn?” Salem asks now. “If this moanin’ blob is goin’, then I best be at yer disposal too. I’ll make meself handy.”

“You needn’t, Salem.”

Salem hesitates for a moment, glancing around their mob, eyes sticking first to Ryon, then Esra, Baltisse, and finally back to her. “My family is here,” he says simply, then says no more.

Dawsyn swallows the tightness gripping her throat, then nods. “If the people on the Ledge can be convinced, I’ll need your help sorting their provisions. Preparing them to leave.”

“I’m yer lad,” he says, squaring his beefy shoulders.

“We might not make it so far,” Dawsyn remarks, turning her back on the others to face the Chasm’s end. “They might not be persuaded.”

“Maybe not,” Hector answers. “But we must try anyway.”

Dawsyn grimaces. “We must try anyway.”

And there is a piece of Dawsyn that won’t stay quiet, a nagging thought that this plan is suicidal. That they are no more than pests scurrying away. Running from a Queen who ought to die for her misdeeds; running away from Adrik, who should be pulled apart for his betrayal. A piece of her that calls for their demise. For the liberation of more than just one people.

She thinks of Ruby telling her to lead the Ledge people through the Mecca and watch the Queen flounder. Watch her fold at the sight of Terrsaw rejoicing.

But Adrik is in Glacia, drinking iskra with his followers. When the pool runs dry, he will come to Terrsaw. The cycle will continue. How long before Terrsaw stops seeing the return of the Ledge people as a blessing? How long before they start to long for the days where they lived in peace in the valley, while the Ledge lay out of sight above them?

No, there is only one path. One option.

Through the Chasm.

CHAPTERFIFTY-EIGHT

Inside the Queens’ palace, Ruby has fallen into a relentless cycle of delirium. The lack of light in the dungeons does not help matters. She is no more aware of the hour than she is of the number of days that have passed since she was locked away. The comings and goings of sentries mean little to her now. She barely notices the changes.

She sings to stay the hysteria. It reminds her of her initiation at the Boulder Gate, when she did the same to quell the helplessness festering inside her.

When she forgets to sing, she thinks of Will Brockner, the young man she had courted before abandoning. How he is now dead because of her.

Incrementally, she is beaten – sometimes with fervour, sometimes with deep, bitter reluctance. One guard or another comes into her cell, they knock her onto the floor and kick her in the stomach. It has happened with enough frequency that her piss bucket contains mostly blood.

After this she cries, then sleeps.

The cycle repeats.

The only other person who comes to call is Darius, the lop-smiled kitchen hand. He brings extra meals to her cell, just as Ruby once did for Dawsyn.

She awaits her death, a torturous preoccupation all on its own. Alvira has not come to this keep. Wherever she is, she seems content for Ruby to slowly go mad.

Only small snippets have reached her ears from the guard’s conversations.

…Deployed half the army into the forest to search…

…The Sabar girl has not shown her face. You don’t think…