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Dawsyn runs past doors and halls through the Glacian palace, past Izgoi who watch curiously as she passes. The iskra within her rejoices with each step, urging her onward, toward her ax, toward retribution.

She reaches her room, the door slamming into the wall before she can touch it, the chamber darkening as she steps within. Her ax glints from beneath a pillow and it seems to slide into her hand before she can truly grasp it.

But a hand stops her. Large fingers grip her wrist, and she wrenches her hand out of its grasp. She turns on Ryon, skirting around him for the door, and almost reaches it, but then his arms are around her, pulling her backward.

“Dawsyn,listen!”

But what possible reason could there be to listen.

No,she thinks.I’ve heard enough!

And perhaps she says it aloud, because he turns her around, one hand on her forearm, keeping the ax from reaching his person, and he crowds her to the wall, pressing into her firmly, his face pleading.

“Please stop! You will be killed.”

“AND SO WILL HE!” she bellows.

But he doesn’t flinch.

He does not cower.

“I cannot let you,” he says, and it sounds like an apology as much as an assurance. “Think. Justthink!It is not just your life and Adrik’s. Ruby, Baltisse, even Tasheem… they will all die defending you. And so will I.” His breath finds her cheek, her neck, and she shivers, despite the burning anger. The hot panic.

His thigh is pressed between hers, his hands pinning her arms to the wall. He uses his whole body to still hers. So very unbearably close.

“I will take you to the Ledge,” he says, voice low, desperate. “I’ll kill Adrik myself if you tell me to. But please. Don’t do this. Not yet.”

Those damnable eyes, so strangely deep, pierce hers. They bind her more thoroughly than his entire frame pressed to hers can. For a moment, it is just her heavy breaths, combining with his, her mind churning wildly with Adrik’s face, Tasheem’s, Ruby’s, Baltisse’s.

And then the people of the Ledge. The ones she had believed they would save.

All that she and Ryon did…

All that they have done, has been for nothing.

Dawsyn’s eyes swim, and then close.

She feels him release one of her arms, and then his fingertips are on her cheek. By degrees, her forehead lowers, and lowers, until it touches Ryon’s shoulder, skin radiating cold beneath his shirt.

She feels the iskra concede its pursuit and shrink away.

Silent tears fall down her cheeks, and her body becomes slack. Ryon becomes the thing to hold her up, rather than to hold her back, and he drops her other arm. There is a clang as her ax falls to the floor, but neither of them reacts to the sound.

Ryon wraps his arms around her. “I’ll go to the Ledge with you,” he vows. “We will save as many as we can.” But they both know it is not enough, and maybe that’s why he says again, “If you want me to kill Adrik, now, this day, I will do it.”

She does. She wants Adrik and any other who would follow his lead to die. She wants him to suffer for the way he manipulated Ryon, for the way he used them both to fight his battles and win his court. For the way he replaced a king who had intended no better.

But Ryon would die too. The Izgoi would not stop to listen to reason, and there would be no fighting their way out of a palace crawling with them. More bloodshed, more killing for the sake of yet another tyrant.

“Not yet,” she whispers.

Those words transport her, for a mere moment, back to the mouth of the cave where the waves crashed against rock below and the horizon beckoned them.Not yet,she had told him then, as she tells him now.

She lifts her head to see him. “We go to the Ledge,” she says. “Now.”

CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE

It takes moments for Dawsyn to collect her possessions, minutes for them to traverse a path through the palace to find the others, to explain their next course, to allow them time to bow out.