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“How…?”

“Dawsyn?” Hector gasps, rising before her. He blinks, as though she might dissolve in an instant. His eyes run slowly from her boots to her crown, and they remain wide. His mouth hangs open.

There is a cut on his forehead. It leaks blood through his eyebrow and down his nose. Beneath the faint bruises beginning to blossom, he appears gaunt. Sallow. But his hair is the same shade of brown-blonde and the curls still hang in his blue eyes with obstinacy. He still stands as tall, his shoulders hunched just so.

She is immeasurably relieved to see him alive.

A man Dawsyn knows as Des Polson steps forward, a crude knife outstretched. He is advanced in years, with a beard that reaches his chest. But Dawsyn does not mistake him as slow. She once watched the man fell a bird at twenty feet with that blade. “Well, well,” he says hoarsely. “And justhow, pray tell, did you manage to find your way across that fucking Chasm, girl?”

The rest can do little more then watch on, their bodies tight with tension, eyes wide, ears keen.

This is her chance. The only one she will get.

And there is so much to tell.

So, she sticks with the most pertinent, the most practical, and hopes it is enough.

“I come with good news, in fact,” Dawsyn begins, her voice uneven, her ax still raised. “The Glacian King… he has fallen… and you may be free.”

If the silence was loud before, it is now just as thick. It stretches across the Ledge, brings curious onlookers to their cabin stoops, all beholding the Sabar girl, the selected, the first one of their kind to be taken and returned.

And then they laugh.

It starts with Polson, who lifts his chin to the sky and lets out a bark that reverberates through the rest, and then it spreads. They laugh at her – with disbelief, with distrust.

“Get your things, lads and ladies. Let us hop over the Chasm, then, and see this freedom!”

Dawsyn’s eyes slide to each of them in turn, their faces a mixture of wariness, mirth, bitterness. Already, they have stopped listening. “I was there when Glacia was conquered!” she shouts, attempting to drown the sounds of their disregard. “And I learnt much that we could never have guessed. I’ve been to the valley, to Terrsaw!” her mind stutters. “I’ve… I’ve learnt thetruth!”

“Have you now?” Polson asks. “And just how did you find your way back?”

She is losing them. Some have even turned their backs on her. She can think of only one thing that might give them pause, if her presence is not proof enough.

Baltisse,Dawsyn thinks.Tell them to come.

“I was carried over the Chasm,” Dawsyn answers. “By a half-Glacian.”

“Were you indeed?” Polson smirks.

“She was,” calls a voice, from a distance none too great.

From the grove steps Ryon, his footing strangely sure on the drifts. Behind him come Tasheem, Rivdan, Ruby, Gerrot and Baltisse. So many strangers to the Ledge, whose people have not seen an unfamiliar human in fifty years.

With deliberate slowness, Ryon summons his wings, and they stretch wide and sure. Undoubtedly Glacian.

Fear, sudden and suffocating, grips the Ledge at the sight of those wings. Wings that signal an immediate knowledge in the people here. Wings that have snatched and stolen their sisters and brothers and parents. Their lovers and children. Wings that command the wind and the clouds, whose sound lives in each of them, for it has always preceded destruction, death, grief.

But the people on the Ledge are also well versed in their meaning. And so, at the unfurling of those wings, even black ones such as these, the humans stand still. They do not run, but remain frozen, save for the wind that stirs their clothes. For when the Glacians come to the Ledge, they come to select their prey.

And the prey that runs is always hunted.

Dawsyn moves, coming to stand between her allies and her people, turning her back on Ryon and the rest, a show of trust.

Hector is the only other one to move, raising a hand as though he might stop her, viscerally reacting to the sight of her so vulnerable to the Glacian at her back.

“Not all Glacians are alike,” Dawsyn begins, trying in earnest to make her voice louder than the squalls. But a storm comes, she can smell it, feel it on the back of her neck. The wind is growing stronger. “You need not fear these. The white beasts who flew over the Chasm each season have been defeated! These are mixed-blooded Glacians, more human than not, and they suffered similar torment at the hands of the pure-blooded who ruled us.”

“Their skin…” a woman mutters in awe, her voice quickly swallowed by a gust.