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Ryon holds a hand aloft. Glinting on his finger is a worn silver band. An unimpressive onyx stone in its centre.

“You–”

“It was precautionary,” he interrupts. “Only for your safety and only meant for my use.” He tears his gaze from Dawsyn to address the captain. “It was not knowledge to be entrusted to someone likeyou.”

Even Dawsyn can feel the black malice seeping from him. From them all. The air is full of it – a thick, poisonous odour of mistrust between the three.

“The mage said to tell you–” the captain utters, halting as Dawsyn pushes the blade against Ruby’s throat once more. “She said to tell you, Dawsyn,you will decide what you were born for.”

She is desperate, clearly. She will say anything to have her life spared.

And yet she says this.

The captain’s eyes blink furiously, her lips quivering. The very same guard who had brought her food, still warm. The guard that had shown true remorse at keeping her prisoner. She is alone, now – not particularly threatening. Her soldiers scamper back to the Boulder Gate, likely breaking their necks along the way.

Dawsyn lifts the blade from her neck. She decides that she cannot – despite her wiser inclinations – cut out her throat. Not yet, at least.

There is still cause to believe Ruby is her adversary, but there is no need to take her life so soon, certainly not before she can ascertain a few things. Baltisse can reveal the truth.

Baltisse.Somewhere above them, surely fading.

There is no time. Few options. Nothing left but undesirable choices.

Dawsyn rises from the ground, swinging her ax around her head and letting it fall in an almighty spray of snow, covering Ryon’s and Ruby’s faces in powder.

“If I find either of you in my way,” Dawsyn seethes, “I will kill you both and sleep soundly after.”

A lie. Mostly. Perhaps imprisonment has softened her disposition.

Without looking at either of her unwanted companions, she sheaths her knives, picks up her ax once again and stows that too.

Without further preamble, she turns to Ryon, already detesting the need to ask a favour, even one as necessary as this. “Fly me to Baltisse,” she demands. “Now.”

CHAPTERTWENTY

“I cannot.”

Dawsyn must have misheard. The hybrid stands before her, hands up in surrender. An almighty dark beast of the mountain. Apparently flightless. “You jest?”

“Now doesn’t seem the time for jesting.”

“Tell me you fuckingjest.”

“You don’t seem in the mood.”

Dawsyn growls, turning to throw back her hood. “Why? Did they cut the wings from your back in that dungeon?” She says it with cold callousness, but as the words leave her mouth the thought that the Queen may have done such a thing fills her with venom. It awakens the iskra.

“If you’ll recall,” Ryon intones. “I was run through with a sword.”

“And yet here you are.”

“Yes, death did not take.”

“A shame.”

“But it has been… challenging, even so,” he continues, ignoring her aside. “I am still too weakened to fly.”

“You came this far on foot?” Dawsyn asks. “Tracking me with that fucking witch’s necklace?”