Page 47

One day, he died.

One day – this day – he appeared again.

It was foolish of her to have ever wished for a life of variety. Change has rarely offered its blessings.

“Dawsyn?”

She shivers. That damnable voice. Mother save her.“What do you want?”

Ryon stands ten paces back. Downwind, but still, she must be truly rattled not to have heard his approach.

He eyes her ax warily, chances a tight smile. “Well, you aren’t trying to kill me. That’s a start.”

“Nothing is starting,” she snaps, and walks on. “Leave me be, hybrid.” But she hears him immediately keep pace behind her.

“I’ll help.”

“I do not need yourhelp.”

“You never do,” he mutters, but he has gained on her, and she hears it still. The rumble in his tone hurts. The knowledge that he is so near to her; it is a torment not to turn and look her fill.

Her mind and body are at war. It is why she cannot be in the cave with him. She wants to demand things from him – the truth, answers, apologies. She wants to kick and punch and claw at him. She wants to hurt him. She wants to cut ties. She wants and wants and wants.

She walks ahead. She is dangerously close to snapping, and she knows that if he has the poor sense to reach for her, she might just throw herself over that internal edge. Anything to relieve herself of this chaos. All her thoughts of him are tangled in a web of her own self-loathing. She was an idiot, a blithering fool.

“Do you know what a fool is, Dawsyn?”

“What?” she asked her grandmother.

“A fool is a woman tricked into entrusting her life to another.”

Dawsyn takes the ax and hauls it over her shoulder before letting it arc. It thuds violently into the side of a spruce, the sounds of its shudder scattering across the mountain.

Ryon has halted behind her. He seems to wait, as she does, for the echoes to dissipate. She can feel how close he is. His breaths seep through her hair to her scalp, raising gooseflesh along her neck.

“Dawsyn,” he pleads. “I’m sorry.” His voice slips over the skin beneath her ear.

“For what?” she asks, not nearly as sharply as she intended. Instead, her voice sounds hoarse, fragile. How she hates it. “For hiding deals to kill me? For allowing me to walk back into a palace of those who wished me dead?”

Ryon huffs a tired breath. “I made no deals to kill you, Dawsyn. Surely you’ve deduced that much.”

“So Alvira asked, and you declined.” Dawsyn rounds on him, widening the space between them. “You are truly a gentleman. You even made me come a few times after the fact. I should be thanking you.”

His expression hardens, jaw ticking. “Don’t.”

“Don’twhat?” she challenges, squaring her shoulders.

His eyes turn violent. “Don’t try to turn what we had into something as base asfucking.”

The words are forceful. They hit her directly where she is weakest. She hates that she feels it breaking her, pulling her apart. Hates that she feels at all.

She hates that Ryon looks so lost, unhinged. His eyes afire, the planes and slopes of his face taut and agitated, fists unfurling and retracting uselessly. “Icouldn’ttell you,” he continues in her silence. “Your very survival depended on your ignorance. I declined the deal, and then I swore to her that you were unaware of your lineage. I told the Queen that I was there by order of King Vasteel, and that I would return you to the Ledge myself.” The air fogs with the urgency of his tale. “I thought I could hide you away at Salem’s.”

“But you learnt,” Dawsyn interjects, “that I am not the kind that can be stowed away and kept safe, and you chose to keep your secrets anyway.”

Ryon closes his eyes, and when he opens them, they are filled with torment. “I had little idea of the depths she would sink to, Dawsyn. I thought it was merely fear for her people that motivated her. Truly! Now I know that it is something entirely self-serving.”

“Youdied,” Dawsyn accuses him. “You left me there,alone!”