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There is a pause before Adrik answers. “The pair of you are well matched. Both prone to dramatics, I see. Come now, deshun! I had little choice. How else was I to ensure a way through the portcullises without the iskra to unlock them? With you and Dawsyn gone, someone needed to possess the magic to enter the palace. I did what was needed.”

Perhaps,Ryon thinks, though Baltisse will soon convey the truthfulness of the claim. “Dawsyn,” he says, and waits until her eyes meet his. He shakes his head once, watches her eyes flash indignantly, then sends a silent thanks to the Chasm that she takes heed. She lowers the knife slowly, her dissatisfaction clear.

“You will call for a meeting with the Council,” Ryon says, turning away from the man who so many years ago had filled his head with dreams of freedom. “We will meet in the throne room as soon as they can be found. I will not stay in Vasteel’s living quarters a moment longer than I must.”

With that, Ryon exits the room, eyeing Xavier as he passes; the man’s gaze is to the floor, arms full of cleaning rags.

CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE

“Will you find some rooms for the others? Please?” Ryon says in an aside to Tasheem.

There are some things Ryon needs to do before the Council meets, and he can’t have Dawsyn, Baltisse, and Ruby following him through the palace corridors. He must see to them on his own.

Tasheem’s eyes narrow in his periphery. “Why? Where are you going?”

“Please, Tash,” he mutters. “Will you? They could use the rest.”

A moment’s pause as the woman assesses him, and then nods. “And what of you?”

Ryon looks ahead, to where a spiralling staircase might take a weary traveller up to the bed chambers – it is an inviting prospect, fatigue beginning to burn brighter than his rage. But then his eyes move further down, to the corridor that leads all the way to the dungeons. “I’m to see an old friend.”

The recognisable tang of rust and stale air grows more pronounced the lower he goes. Of all the halls and corridors and rooms of the palace, this stairwell and the keep it leads to is the most familiar. He and Jorst both were put to the task of keeping the Ledge prisoners secure, bringing them to Vasteel each season, and dealing with the empty shells the pool left behind. Season after season, he would watch them fall into the pool’s clutches, and then send their unfeeling bodies into the Chasm. One after the other. He would bring them to the lip and nudge them over. Their limbs would spread wide as the wind caught them. They didn’t scream. The soulless never do.

Then Dawsyn came.

Ryon’s boot finds the keep’s stone floor. He sighs and takes a heavy step, exiting the stairwell. Ahead, a long row of iron gates secures the cells within. Dawsyn had been held in the very last of these. He remembers the first time she lifted her weary head to look at him, face marked and bloodied, hair hanging limp around her damaged shoulders. She’d regarded him with confusion, as most humans did when they first saw his Glacian frame and human skin.

And he’d regarded her with pity. How stupid of him.

He hates this chamber. It is visceral. He can feel his body tensing and twitching at each scent, each echoing sound of movement. Within the dungeon cells, he sees that the pure-blooded who were not fortunate enough to escape, but were lucky enough to live, are chained to the walls.

Ryon looks in on each, noting the prisoners as he passes. Kilter, Maars, Vellis… he knows them all, has been taunted and ridiculed by each at some point in time. Now their hands and talons are shackled, their skin mottled with inflictions of fights lost. They are slowly fading, becoming what they made of the humans they stole from the Ledge.

Ryon smiles. He and Dawsyn did this to them. They tipped the scales. They evened the odds. Whatever other foolish mistakes he made, at least he knows this.

In the last cell, sleeping with his head resting awkwardly against the stone, is Phineas.

His white skin looks grey, here in the dark. His ashen hair now gritty, bloody and untied from its usual binding.

He looks near death.

“Wake up, Phineas,” Ryon calls, and then, when the Glacian does not respond, he kicks the iron grid and lets it rattle loudly within its recess.

A heavy groan sounds. Phineas lifts his head as though it were weighted. His colourless eyes blink, struggling to find focus.

“You once told me not to turn your eyes from the foe,” Ryon says, awaiting the moment Phineas comes to and realises the peril before him.

Phineas peers blearily at Ryon, barely conscious. He expels a huff of air – derision. He lets his head fall back down. “You are no foe of mine, deshun.”

“Butyouare mine,” Ryon says, his tone empty of anger, of anything at all. “You gave my whereabouts to Vasteel. You chose to have me captured, rather than to simply lie, to protect a friend.”

“And allow you to tear down our kingdom?” Phineas rebukes, voice gravelled. He looks back into Ryon’s eyes now. “The one I had fought and challenged and bargained with until it finally opened a door to you. I taught you to fight, to serve the king. I barracked on your behalf every chance I could to save you from the Colony, and you squandered it.”

Ryon squats, so that his face is nearer to Phineas’s. His guardian. His father’s closest friend. But a brute, nonetheless. Still prone to the acts of a conceited race. “I squashed Vasteel’s court between my fingers,” Ryon murmurs, blood cooling. “I would sooner die in the fucking Kyph of the Colony, than serve your fallen king another day. Though, Idoowe you thanks. Without your persuasions, I would never have learnt all that I needed to know about the palace – all of its secrets, all of its weaknesses. Without you, I would never have been able to rip it apart.”

Phineas’s eyes cinch shut. He appears pained, yet resolute. “This place… still stands, deshun.”

“I am not your son,” Ryon bites. His tone is dangerously cold, his temper hastening.