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“I am well,” Ryon says, mind stuttering. He observes Adrik’s bleary eyes, the tankard in his hand, the stains down his front. “Though the Queens would have me otherwise.”

“Ah,” Adrik nods knowingly. “I’m no prophet, Ryon, but even I had guessed your attempts to negotiate with them would not go well.”

“And they did not,” Ryon admits. “It seems I gravely misjudged the Terrsaw Queens nature.”

Behind him, Dawsyn snorts, and Ryon grimaces.

“Never mind it, deshun! We have what we suffered for, after all. Glacia is ours! Is it not, fellows?” he shouts, turning to the room at large, and the gathering calls back to him, their shouts slurred and indiscernible.

This difference in desire is one Ryon has long argued with Adrik. The man had only ever wanted to seek freedom within Glacia, and on the mountains. He had no care for venturing beyond it. But Ryon had been travelling beyond for years. He felt a pull to life in the Valley. He sought the feel of level ground, of pastures and oceans and warmth, and he was not the only one. Many in the Colony had long ago grown tired of the confines of the mountain. Many had longed to know a place away from the precipice. In at least that sense, they were no different to those imprisoned on the Ledge.

Ryon, raised in the Colony by the good of the mixed-blooded alone, would see them free to choose where they could settle, and it need not be within grasp of Glacia.

Another flicker of annoyance ran through him, cooling his blood further. How quickly Adrik dismissed the freedom of their kind, detaining them to the mountain.

But Adrik did not lead the mixed.

“The mixed will one day be free to choose the course of their lives, whether the Queens are agreeable or not,” Ryon says easily, though his eyes narrow. “I am not so willing to give up that cause.”

“A waste of your time, Mesrich, I say,” Adrik barks, his hand waving dismissively and sloshing drink to the floor.

“I need to speak with you and the Council alone, Adrik,” Ryon says above the talk and laughter, the room having long since returned to their discourse.

Adrik waves him off yet again. “They are busy, deshun. Drink with us. There will be time for talk later.”

Time to talk later, as the people of the Ledge cut their wood and scrape for food. As the human slaves within these walls bring drinks at Adrik’s whim. As the gathering in this room grows louder, rowdier, while the members of their Council return to the Colony to undo all its wrongs.

Ryon watches Adrik reclaim his seat behind the King’s desk, raising his feet atop it and throwing his head back in careless mirth, an oddly assuming position for one who played little part in the defeat of the court.

Ryon remembers the night of the siege, and the absence of Adrik in the throne room. Ryon, Dawsyn, Tasheem, and the Izgoi had overwhelmed the pure-blooded, cutting them down one by one. Adrik had left them, taking to the palace halls in search of King Vasteel himself, only returning once the bloodshed subsided. And now here he sits.

A man hollers from the corner of the room, knocking a sconce from the wall as he raises his chalice. “Tasheem!” he calls, eyes hazed with drink. “Fetch more wine for us! We are poor, weary fighters!”

Another few of them roar amenably, holding their own cups aloft.

But Ryon’s blood abruptly turns to ice.

With careful calculation, Ryon strides across the room, pushing his comrades aside as he goes, until he is immediately before the man with the dumb tongue and empty cup. His hand closes around the man’s throat. With a force far greater than he intended, he hurls him backward over his plush chair, the crack of his head against the wall sending the entire room into a deadly silence.

Their laughter now dead, breaths shallow, the faces in the room sober in increments as Ryon turns on them. “I hate to turn this into an argument of rank,” he says, barely tempered. “We were once all in agreement that the ruling of Glacia would not fall to just one, but to the many. However,” Ryon continues, stepping through them, watching them shy away, “if it must, then I will remind you that Tasheem has my authority to pull you apart, limb from limb. And I will gladly help her do so should any condescend to her again.” Ryon takes a crystal chalice from a stunned Izgoi and throws it at the wall opposite. The resounding shatter makes them all flinch. “Put down your drinks. Get the fuck out,” Ryon says evenly, voice barely above a whisper.

But they hear it.

Every one of them.

His wings extend, appearing of their own accord, stretching high and wide. “Now.”

The gathering stands as one, eyes averted.

Each man darts around Tasheem who lingers by the door and takes their leave, all but the one lying crumpled on the floor, the one stupid enough to speak down to a member of the Council.

Ryon shoves the overturned chair aside and bends to the male, who groans, a hand clutching his head. “Xavier, isn’t it?”

Xavier’s eyes widen in fear as they find Ryon’s, and he nods.

Ryon promptly grabs the man’s shirt and heaves him upward. He tightens his grip as Xavier’s feet scramble to find purchase, his toes just barely touching the floor. “You owe your esteemed Council elder an apology,” Ryon tells him, watching closely as Xavier’s face grows increasingly red. “And then you will find some rags to clean up the mess in here. Tasheem will be the one to ensure you miss nothing.”

He shoves the man toward the exit, watching with repulsion rather than satisfaction as he mutters an apology to Tasheem, and scuttles away.