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“Human skin,” Dawsyn implores, turning to gesture to the others. “But wings that might free you from here. They will take you to the valley, away from this mountain, should you wish it.You will be safe there!” Though this last part, Dawsyn knows, cannot possibly be guaranteed.

“Allow them to take us?” Polson asks, eyes unable to leave the sight of those wings.

“Yes.” Dawsyn nods. “You will be free. You will not be harmed!”

A great pause ensues, and all hold their breath. The people of the Ledge watch with quiet panic as the Glacian-like creature before them bides his time, not swooping to attack, not sinking his talons into the shoulders of the selected. Dawsyn begins to hope. Perhaps it is enough that the Glacians she brought here are different. Perhaps it is enough that they do not attack and take as they undoubtedly could. Perhaps…

“Lies!” Polson calls, and his voice, tremulous with his conviction, seems to only heighten the fear. “All of it!”

“I do not–”

“It is not enough that we stand prone before our stoops each season, willing to sacrifice ourselves to these beasts? Now they come to take us all at once!”

“No.”

The people stir at his accusation, and the wind grows wild.

“They will have us go with them willingly, so they might consume us as they please.”

“Stop,” Dawsyn begs, feeling the shift in the undercurrent.

“And Dawsyn Sabar will be spared, it seems, so long as she helps them–”

“If you stay here,” Dawsyn interjects. “You willstarve.A new king sits on the throne, and he will come. He will take as many of you as he can.”

The wind grows fierce. Howling now. Moroz awakened.

“So, the danger has not passed then, as you said,” Polson says.

Dawsyn realises the mistake too late.

“As I thought,” he sneered. “The freedom you spoke of was alie.”

Dawsyn closes her eyes. Prepares to beg if she must. “Please. Listen to me. If you stay, you will starve. You will be taken!”

“We have always starved.”

“You needn’t–”

“And we have always been taken.”

“You’re a fool.”

“And you are atraitor, of the worst kind!”

“I want tosaveyou!”

“Perhaps most here have forgotten what the Sabar name means,” Polson says acidly stalking toward her. “But I, girl, have not. And I answer to no damned royalty, neither here, nor in that fucking Glacian kingd–”

But the man can say no more, for Dawsyn holds up her ax, the bit aligned between the man’s eyes. The slightest movement will see him split in two.

Dawsyn shakes, her entire being trembling with pure, desperate rage. She feels the iskra, snaking a leisurely path up her torso and down the arm that holds the ax. The magic walks freely, unlocked and unchallenged. It surfaces through her palms and over her fingers, along the ax handle. She welcomes it.

Polson’s eyes turn from enraged to panicked as the magic creeps toward him, bridged between its host and him by way of the ax.

“If you remain,” Dawsyn says, her voice barely heard as the wind whips the powder into a frenzy, their legs and bodies and faces sliced by the fierce squall. “You will die.”

But Polson does not take heed. Instead, in that moment, he raises his blade to Dawsyn’s abdomen, meaning to shunt it into her stomach.