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“Hush, Dawsyn. Let her pick.”

“When is it that she doesnotpick?” Dawsyn muttered.

Valma allowed Maya to climb onto her lap, and the old woman groaned. Each day, Maya grew heavier, and their grandmother grew weaker. The coughing had started. It would continue for another year before it would overcome her.

“Yerdos was a creature of the mountain–”

“Not a Glacian,” Maya cut in.

“No, not a Glacian,” Valma agreed. “Yerdos was a hawk, as large as a human. For thousands of years, she soared over the mountain, guarding all the living things upon it. It was a simple task. The Mother had given her a lush, green mountain, and she only had to ensure that none came to threaten it. Yerdos swooped at those who tried to lay claim to it, she scared away the humans that came to climb it. She succeeded. Her bird’s call was a clamour that could be heard all the way to the ocean, her beak was as sharp as a sword and just as unbreakable. No human nor beast dared to take her mountain.

“But then, one day, a creature came that was unlike any other. A creature with no talons or weapons, but that of fierce breath.”

“Moroz,” Maya inserts, her eyes expectant.

“Do you want to tell the story, child?”

“No,” Maya answered, rolling her eyes.

“Moroz crept onto the mountain so slowly, that at first, Yerdos did not notice. Moroz came in small scatterings of fine white powder, in mists and fogs. The creature crept higher and higher, and by the time Yerdos realised that her mountain was under siege, the animals had already begun to suffer. They dug below ground or left the mountain altogether. The plants were shrivelling. Soon, they were inundated with blankets of snow, and Yerdos couldn’t find them at all.

“Nothing Yerdos did worked. Her beak did nothing to Moroz, who was everywhere and nowhere. No matter how much Yerdos called, it was no match for the wind. Moroz would snatch Yerdos’s cries up and carry them away.

“Yerdos was distraught. Her mountain had been taken by something cold, unyielding. For the first time since she was granted the mountain, she left, soaring high into the clouds to consult the Mother, who perched at the very peak of the summit – a place no other could reach.

“The great hawk begged Mother for help. She told her of Moroz, and the death and destruction it had brought upon the mountain, and Mother laughed at her. ‘Dear Yerdos,’ the Mother said. ‘All seasons must come to a close.’

“Yerdos was furious. She screamed into the wind all the way down from the mountain peak. She plummeted down, her blessed beak as indestructible as ever. When she saw the mountain below, covered in snow, desolate and cold, she did not stop her descent. Instead, she collided with it. Her beak struck through the stone, and the ungodly sound of the rock splitting apart silenced all else. The mountain quaked as a crack spread the length of it, splitting trees and boulders, and inch by inch, the mountain separated at the point where Yerdos’s beak had pierced it.

“Yerdos still lives there, in the bottomless Chasm, nursing her rage. She collects the fallen, protects them, and curses Moroz for continuing to kill and destroy. Her hawk’s call, the one she once used to warn away her enemies, is still trapped in the wind of Moroz. It howls and screams, not to warn away her enemies, but to warn away any who might fall prey to the terrible cold that still grasps her mountain.”

Dawsyn was already approaching sleep, her eyelids giving way. But before she settled properly on her cot and turned her face toward the hearth, she heard Maya say, “Maybe one day Moroz’s season will end as well.”

“Perhaps.”

“And we will fight Moroz until then.”

Their grandmother chuckled. Not in a way a grandmother should, with crinkled eyes and tenderness, but with a dark knowing. An insatiable bitterness.

“No, child,” she said. “There is nothing to fight. The cold is not alive.”

CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE

There might come a day when Dawsyn does not fear the sensation of her stomach disintegrating as her feet leave the earth, but it is not this day. They glide over the black depths of the Chasm, flying within reach of its grasp. Dawsyn knows they must remain low to escape notice from the palace but hates it even so. So, too, should they keep their approach concealed from the people of the Ledge, who might see them and assume that they have come to select.

The lip of the Chasm comes before them, the treeline beyond it. The ice angles upward, away from the cliff edge, glistening threateningly. Suddenly, Ryon is holding her aloft. He descends gently, letting her feet settle on the snow.

And she is back.

The pine grove looms ahead, swaying precariously in the wind. The branches creak ominously as they bend beyond their scope, and it echoes down to them. Wind howls through the trunks, wailing its ancient sinister song.Moroz,Dawsyn thinks.

A great hollowness seizes her. Her mouth turns dry. As though commanded, her very being adjusts. Her toes curl inward, as though they would grip the earth. She leans away from the Chasm, she listens for the sounds of anyone approaching, so intently that at the swoop of wings and boots, she jumps.

The others land.

Baltisse unfurls herself from Tasheem with no small amount of distaste, her nose wrinkled. “Even the wind hurts here,” she calls, and makes to step forward.

Dawsyn grasps her elbow before she can, making the mage grunt indignantly. She turns to look past her furred hood, glaring at Dawsyn.