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“What did you dream of just now?” Baltisse asks sharply, her disturbing stare returning to meet Dawsyn’s.

“Ah,” Dawsyn defers, unwilling to share the image of the Chasm. Even less so, her ready self-sacrifice to its depths, or the ease with which the voice had persuaded her to fall. But as the dream plays over in her mind, Baltisse’s eyes narrow keenly, and Dawsyn knows that the mage sees it too.

“Stop,” Dawsyn says firmly – to her mind and to Baltisse. “Stop intruding.”

“What was that?” Baltisse asks, ignoring her request.

Dawsyn stands, turning to neaten the bedding. “No business of yours.”

“I saw ice falling away, beneath your feet. Was it–”

Dawsyn sighs, resigned. She places her hands onto the mattress. “The Chasm.”

There is little point keeping thoughts from the woman, it seems. Trying to keep her out of one’s mind only seems to invite entrance.

“Who was that… the one who sung?”

“No one,” Dawsyn says. “A… voice of some sort.”

“It was calling you into the Chasm?”

“Yes,” Dawsyn says begrudgingly, avoiding her gaze.

“You shouldn’t listen to it, Dawsyn Sabar,” says Baltisse, voice oddly stern.

Dawsyn gives a huff of derision. “It was only a dream, Baltisse.”

“No. It was the iskra distracting you so that it might roam free while you slept.”

Dawsyn pauses, then she turns to look at Baltisse.

The iskra… invading her dreams? Had the sweet lure of the voice not felt familiar to Dawsyn? Had she not likened it to the unshakeable call of the pool?

Dawsyn looks to her palms again, now warm and human, and swallows past the harsh sting of her throat. “Can it do that?” Dawsyn asks quietly, shakily. “Can it escape me?”

“No, not fully,” Baltisse answers, her chair scraping along the floor as she stands. “It can act beyond control, but it cannot detach itself. And yet…”

“And yet?”

“And yet… it tries to.”

Dawsyn has the answer already. “It does not trust me, as you said.”

“No,” Baltisse says, her head shaking. “It is more than that. It is… preservation, perhaps.”

“Preservation? It believes I will destroy it?”

Baltisse does not answer immediately. Her jaw ticks, as though she is biting her tongue, and then she says, “I do not know.”

But it seems to Dawsyn that the mage knows a great many things, and only shares a morsel.

Dawsyn scrubs her face with one hand, pushing her black tendrils from her forehead. “You are annoyingly secretive.”

Baltisse scoffs. “And you are abrasive.”

“There is little point in not speaking my mind if you’ll invade my thoughts, regardless.”

The mage laughs, and the sound seems to take her by surprise.