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“We should camp here for the night,” he says to the group, who all show visible signs of relief.

All except Dawsyn.

As the others find comfort on the ground, against trees, or flat on their backs, Dawsyn hesitates. She looks down at her hands, which, Ryon now notices, shake. Coupled with the soot smeared over her cheek, her eyebrow, and the disarray of her hair, Ryon would almost call her… frazzled. She looks over her shoulder, back into the labyrinth of the forest. Then, in silent retreat, she slinks away.

Ryon watches her slip between the trees and tells himself not to follow. She has made it clear, after all, that he should leave her be, and he wants to listen. He wants to do what she has asked of him.

The last of her disappears into the forest and he runs his hand over his tired face.

Then he follows.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVEN

Dawsyn is fairly adept at skinning animals. Granted, Maya was always better, but Dawsyn still knows intimately the way the knife carves a path between skin and tissue, and she has the undeniable urge to do away with her own. She is a stranger to herself.

She walks through the forest, unable to sit still in her body. She has a desire to flee the parts of her she does not recognise, but it is no use. She walks and walks, but everywhere she goes, there she is.

She comes to a fallen tree and sits upon it. The ax on her back digs into her and she tries to adjust it, but she is too uncomfortable, itchy, aching, insatiably restless. With a cry she hurls it away, burying the blade into the soft ground with a dull thunk.

Her hands, cracked and blackened by soot, wring together. She drops her head into them.Fuck.

Her fingers tremble. They haven’t stopped since she placed them on Esra and allowed that strange power to find passage through her palms. A feeling unlike any other had washed through her, light and willing. It had filled her with warmth and wonder. It was something so contradictory to the way she had erupted on the Ledge, the iskra exploding from her palms. Even now, she feels those two disparities: the extraordinary glow and that darker matter. Is it as simple as the parts of the iskra that want to obey, and the parts that do not? Is it the difference between healing those she loves, and extinguishing those she loathes? Perhaps it is not the iskra that had killed Des Polson, but her own pitiful, destructive animosity.

She wonders if they’d left his body in the snow drift.

“Dawsyn?”

She turns at his voice and sees him standing a short distance behind her. She doesn’t bother to stand or move away. She is too tired. Despite herself, she can’t seem to find the pretence of dispassion.

When she says nothing to send him away, he comes closer. Instead of finding a place on the fallen tree, he rounds it, his heavy footfalls surrounding her. He squats down in front of her, leaving a large space between them.

For a moment they only stare.

She wishes she didn’t still want to go to him.

His fathomless stare implores her. “Tell me,” he bids, a whisper. It feels the same as his breath on her throat, his fingers on her back.

She closes her eyes, lets all that has transpired win the war in her mind. There is so much she could unleash. Adrik’s betrayal, the fire, the magic… Des Polson. A man she’d tried to rescue, and killed instead. Killing is what she is good for. Not saving. Not heroics. Of all the times she’s been betrayed these past months, the knife that runs deepest is her own, when she vowed to herself that she would do good in this world.

So much she could spill, but she condenses it to this one thing, one incessant thought that corrodes her slowly, consumes her. A thought with claws pierced so deeply into her flesh that it cannot simply be pulled out. It is the only one she can convey. The only one to be untangled from the rest.

“I can’t free them,” she says aloud, and a tear escapes. She feels it course along the curve of her nose. Then a hand is there, cupping her cheek, wiping the tear away.

She doesn’t want to see the way he looks at her, so she keeps her eyes shut, but it does nothing to mute his voice, and the way the deep timbre reverberates inside her own chest.

“It isn’t your duty to free them, malishka.”

She shakes her head. “I meant to save them, and I killed one instead.”

“You did not mean to,” he answers immediately, his other hand coming to her face.

“Salem’s home is gone. Esra is hurt, because of me.”

“Because ofthem.”

“Because ofme,” Dawsyn repeats, her eyes opening and delving into his. “And I have done…somuch worse in my life.”

“You had little choice.”