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Blood traces his path through the woods. He and his men approach. They clear the treeline, closing the space left between them and the precipice, with the remaining humans caught between. “Tell me where you have taken the rest,” Adrik growls, spit flying from his mouth.

Dawsyn does not answer. She stares with hard, stony silence.

“TELL ME!”

His roar is interrupted.

Behind Dawsyn, in that gaping abyss she has always loathed, sounds reach her.

The Chasm sings.

It is not that same whispered siren call from her dreams. Carried to her on a gust of wind is the sweet, melancholic sonation of wing song.

Ryon, Rivdan, and Tasheem appear from nothing, up out of the endless inky black.

They land with resounding cracks as their talons gouge into the ice.

They appear readied, their swords drawn in flight. Eyes pinpointing each of the assailants before them. Dawsyn can only imagine that Baltisse had warned them, there at the bottom of the Chasm.

“Adrik,” Ryon says darkly, stalking closer. His eyes slip to Dawsyn’s and away. “You seem changed.”

“Hiding in the Chasm, Mesrich?” Adrik calls, his voice a thunderous vibration. “Perhaps I am not the only one so changed. I did not raise you to be coward.”

Ryon’s eyes become fire and brimstone, the muscles of his arms roiling as he tightens his grip on his swords. “You did not raise me at all,” he returns. “That credit goes to much nobler folk.”

Adrik laughs, though Dawsyn hears the insatiable thirst in its rasp. The eviscerating madness. “It is your very penchant for nobility that made you my best apprentice, Ryon. I must thank you. Without you and your dim-witted aspirations for the good of all, I would never have known the pleasure of sitting where the Glacian King once sat.” Adrik looks to the shadowy outline of the Glacian palace across the Chasm. “Of drinking life as he did.”

Tasheem shakes her head wildly, her anger a loosely tethered creature. “You fucking traitor!” she spits.

“Me?” Adrik asks. “For wanting what was withheld from our kind? For claiming what our heritage demands?”

“For pitting your worthless, self-serving life above others,” Ryon says evenly, the words striking like serpents. “You are not worth the iskra you were born with. Stealing another’s will not save you.”

Adrik’s eyes flash. “Where are my humans, Ryon?”

“Long gone,” he answers. “I’ll give you the mercy of returning to Glacia, while your remaining wing might still carry you. Though, I doubt it will.”

The moment lengthens, stretching to its limits. Adrik’s eyes move to the humans left on the Ledge, who stand erringly close to the Chasm. His lips pull back over his teeth.

Dawsyn braces.

“Kill them,” Adrik instructs, and the Glacians at his back lurch onto the ice.

Ryon, Tasheem, and Rivdan charge forward, their wings lifting their feet from the ground and carrying them onto the backs of the first Glacians. They drive their swords into their necks, backs, stomachs.

There is no time to think or feel. No time to strategize. Battle rarely allows it. There is only the spray of blood, the brutal unscrupulous breaking. Dawsyn throws herself into the fray, ax swinging.

She sees Tasheem’s jaw crumble against an elbow. Ryon ducks beneath a sword that narrowly misses his scalp, and he drives his own into another’s stomach. Dawsyn sinks her ax into an unsuspecting back and pulls it out before the Glacian can fall to the snow. Rivdan tears through them, cutting and slicing without discipline, only strength. A knife sinks into his shoulder and he drops one of his swords but remains standing.

Suddenly, Adrik is before Dawsyn, one wing torn open and drooping, the other whole. He vanishes them, as though not wishing to tempt her twice.

As the sounds of battle ring out around them, he somehow makes his voice loud enough. Even the wind cannot carry it away. “I can’t wait,” he sneers, “to drink your soul.” He then pulls his sword over his shoulder and advances.

Dawsyn blocks the first blow and spins, trying to catch his calf, but Adrik is too skilled a fighter. He kicks her in the stomach, sending her to the ground. Dawsyn tumbles backward and lets the momentum put her feet beneath her again. She pushes herself upright once more.

But Adrik is already there, already shoving her back. He pushes her to the ground again, his body trapping hers, the ax trapped between them.

She can hear Rivdan groaning in pain. Tasheem calls his name in a panicked voice. She cannot see Ryon.