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Dawsyn’s eyes are glued to the man in the depths of the cellar, the man Ryon lifts into his arms.

A scorched body. A dress melted and blackened, catching on the splintered wood, its lace ripping away.

Esra.

“Dawsyn!” Ryon shouts. “Dawsyn, help me,please!”

But there is no help to give. There is nothing to be done.

“Dawsyn, get Salem.Get Salem, now!”

Salem?

Someone slides down the rubble beside her. Rivdan. He takes Esra’s body from Ryon and summons his wings. He is gone a second later.

Ruby and Tasheem are suddenly there, huddling around the open trapdoor as Ryon reappears a moment later, his arms flexing, teeth gritted as he hauls another body upward.

Ruby and Tasheem grab Ryon, hauling him out, and with him comes Salem.

Salem’s body, though slack, is not blackened or bloody. His eyes are closed, his limbs hang like that of the dead. There is soot around his mouth and nose, but a sound comes from him. Small gasps, a ragged pull through his lips. He is alive.

Dawsyn stumbles.Alive,she thinks.

One lives,she thinks.

Not both, but one,she thinks.

Not as bad,she thinks, her mind stroking and hushing the pieces of her threatening to break away, cooing lies to quell its imminent collapse.

It isn’t enough. She can feel her chest cleaving by inches.

Before she can convince herself to move, to do something, Tasheem takes flight with Salem.

Ryon comes to Dawsyn. He pulls her to his chest, wraps an arm roughly around her back, and his wings appear.

He takes her out of the fire and smoke.

And there is nothing to do but hold on.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-FIVE

On the Ledge, the people wait outside at the beginning of each season.

No one is exempt. Babies are layered and carried to the stoop, the sick are propped up between members of their houses, or if none remain, they prop themselves in their doorframes.

One, and only one, need venture further than the stoop, out onto the Ledge, idle game.

Every so often, there is a household that fails to leave their cabin, sometimes out of necessity, but more often out of defiance. One such household was that of the Polson’s, which stood close enough to the Sabar den that Dawsyn could see the roof through weak fog.

At the close of the hostile season in Dawsyn’s thirteenth year, her grandmother took the place at the head of the family and her kin watched on from the stoop. The sky above was still, undisturbed. It would not remain that way for long. The Glacians would come.

Dawsyn looked over to Hector’s family, his father stood ahead of him and his mother. She nodded to him, and he to her. Her eyes skirted further then, along the Face, coming to the Polsons’ cabin.

“No one has come from the Polsons’,” she mused aloud, brow furrowed.

“What?” Briar asked.

“The Polsons have not come out,” Dawsyn repeated, pointing to the cabin, where no one graced the threshold. Not Helena Polson, or her daughter, June. Not Des Polson, who should have taken his place beneath the sky, praying not to be reaped, like everyone else.