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“Certainly not,” Baltisse says. “But we are running out of time. There is none to waste.”

“We leave in three days,” Dawsyn says quickly. “Can I master it by then?”

“It is not likely,” the mage answers, brushing sand from her skirt as she stands. “But ‘unlikely’ seems to inhabit your entire persona, Dawsyn. Get up.”

The next hours are spent in a brutal battle between time and space as Dawsyn learns to think of a desired destination, let it fill her mind entirely, and then will her magic to collapse into something as fine as air.

It is infuriatingly painful and difficult, but she continues to work until long after Baltisse has left, until Ryon comes outside to collect her from the dark. He takes her hand, pulls her into the cabin to eat, to rest, before she must start again.

CHAPTERSIXTY

The night before they’re to leave for the Ledge, Dawsyn is standing amongst the thin trees, attempting to fold herself from one place to another, just a short distance away. Thus far, she has done nothing more than manage to disappear and reappear in the same place, gagging and panting, her muscles screaming.

She hears footsteps in the dark long before they reach her, and she stills. Logic tells her that whoever approaches is a friend, but experience tells her not to trust it. Suddenly, the footfalls cease. There is a rush of swooping wind, and then the moonlight disappears. Something descends upon her.

Dawsyn takes her ax out in time for her arms to be pinned at her sides. She is hauled backward a foot to the trunk of a tree, her back pressing into the soft, papery bark, while the mass of a great hulking hybrid holds her there, his face a picture of victory.

“Well,” Ryon says, leaning to kiss the underside of her jaw. “I never thought I’d succeed in sneaking up on the infamous Dawsyn Sabar.”

“It would be more impressive without the damned ring on your finger.”

But Ryon holds up a bare hand. “Yennes wanted to inspect its magical properties,” he explains. “The victory is all mine.”

“I heard you,” Dawsyn mumbles, distracted by the closeness of him. “Hardly constitutes as sneaking if I was aware of your sneaking, does it?”

“I’ll have to keep practicing.” He grins, loosening his hold on her arms. He touches the soft skin beneath her eyes, which must be black with weariness by now. “Come with me,” he asks her. “Sleep by my side.”

Ryon’s face is etched with something like worry. Worry for the task ahead, worry for her, maybe.

She worries too.

“I don’t want to sleep,” she tells him, taking his hand. She leads him toward the trees, toward the water. “I have something else in mind.”

His face transforms into something wicked. “Perfect.”

“Not that,” Dawsyn shoves him. “You can tell me a story.”

“Riv is the Storyteller.”

“A story that isyours,” she presses.

Ryon groans, but it is performative. When they reach the beach, he sits on the warm sand and pulls Dawsyn down until she is settled with her back to his chest, her head nestled in the crook of his neck. They’ve rested this way before, in a cave on the mountain, where he whispered a story with his lips at her ear.

He does so again now.

He tells her of bonfires that turned the ground to sludge, where the mixed-Glacians danced and sang around the flames. He sings her a song of the Colony. He talks of Tasheem and his other childhood friends. Dawsyn savours the tales as she once did her grandmother’s, letting them fill her mind until it quiets.

It feels right to know him.

It lulls her, to hear him speak.

When the favourable stories are spent, Ryon speaks of darker things. The beatings. The displacement. The way Adrik had shaped him into a weapon and cast him aside once used.

“With no humans on the Ledge, Adrik will move upon the Valley,” Ryon murmurs, his tone hollow. “Just like Vasteel. He will find his iskra… one way or another.”

The ocean is reflected in his eyes. It claws its way to the shore. On the outside, he appears nothing but stern, contemplative, but beneath it is a man burning from a lifetime of betrayal.

“One day,” Dawsyn vows, “when we have settled the humans, we will come back for the mixed.”