Page 39

He steps toward her.

Dawsyn flinches. It is a small, subtle movement – a twitch between her brows, a lift in her shoulders – but it is enough. He has never seen Dawsyn flinch.

Seconds suspend between them, and he watches as her expression turns from shock to fleeting relief, confusion. And then… unfettered, blinding fury.

Ryon raises his hand. “Malishka… don’t–”

But it is too late. She slips another knife from her side and throws it at him.

He ducks with inches to spare. “Dawsyn! Wait–”

But she throws another and he rolls as it pierces his tunic, ripping a hole in the sleeve as he retreats.

He rights himself, only to see her closing the distance between them, an ax in her hand.

“Fuck.”

He retreats further, his back suddenly slamming against the trunk of a tree, and he realises too late that she has pinned him there on purpose, chased him to this exact place… where she will likely split him apart.

“Malishka,stop!Will you not even let me explain before you kill me?”

She halts her advance, not close enough for him to make a move to disarm her. She isn’t so easily beaten.

For a moment, their eyes lock, hers screaming from some unnameable turmoil, and it almost breaks him to see it. He almost kneels in the snow and surrenders to it.

But he cannot let the Queen win.

Dawsyn pulls the ax back over her head, forearms shaking, vacant of reason. With a cry of agony, she hefts it forward, and Ryon closes his eyes.

There is a heavy, crunching thud. Pine needles shower Ryon’s face and shoulders. But there is no pain.

He opens his eyes.

Above his head, buried into the trunk, the ax shudders from the force of the collision, concerningly close to his scalp.

Ryon sags. Exhales. Cursing, he rests his hands on his knees, his chest heaving. He looks up warily, expecting to see her bearing down on him, murderous, or perhaps pacing. Instead, he finds her kneeling in the snow, face hidden in her hands. She shudders all over, overcome. Though they are quiet, he hears the sobbing, muffled by her hands. And he understands now, why wars are so often won and lost upon the promise of mercy, because here is his heart, wrenched outside of himself, twisting before him in the snow, and he’d give entire kingdoms to ease the torment.

Look at her,he thinks.Look at what you have done.

He waits until the shuddering slows, reticent though he is, not to take her into his arms. When her breaths begin to even, he lowers himself beside her, ever so carefully.

Tendrils of wayward hair hide her face, and he reaches out to brush them back. “Is that all, malishka?” he asks hesitantly. “Any other blades hidden under there?”

He’d once said something very similar to her, on this very mountain, but if she remembers, she gives no reaction. She only draws shuddering breaths, the air fogging in violent whorls before her.

“Malishka–”

“Do not call me that!” she screams, finally lifting her head. Her bottom lip trembles.

Ryon swallows his retort. He has earnt this much, he knows. But she might as well have thrown the ax into his chest. “One day, I will earn the right to say it again.”

“Go!” she yells, and the word is so full of venom that it strikes him. Another blow. “Go from here!”

He expected this. Did he not? He has worried over it, every step of the way. But he won’t be cast aside so easily. “I cannot be where you are not, Dawsyn.”

“You will have to try!”

Ryon knows that if he must follow her from the skies or hidden away in the tree-tops, he will. “You know Ican’t. You… you know me.”