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Dawsyn lifts her hand and feels the reluctant tendrils of the magic, weaving down her arm, into her palms. They begin to glow dully, burning with cold, and she holds her hand to the lock. She gasps, relieved, as the frost forms, climbing over her skin to the iron, clenching it tightly. Dawsyn drenches it in that white-blue light and undoes its magic.

The portcullis rises, disappearing in its recess, and the racket of the tunnel falls silent.

Dawsyn herself stands, stunned.

“What in God’s green valley have you gotten yourself into, human?” that gruff voice asks.

Quite the question, Dawsyn believes, and she fears the knowing of it. She clenches her hand into a fist as she feels the magic recede in her, somehow dimmer, depleted.

“We must move,” she says quietly – to herself or to the Izgoi, it isn’t clear. She finds the chain of Baltisse’s necklace beneath her collar and brings it forward.

I hope you see this, she thinks.

It will take years for the Izgoi to concede that they were led into the palace by a human woman possessed with Glacian magic. It will take longer to unravel the tales spun to satiate the doubt of the mixed-bloods who would not hear of a girl wielding a power they themselves could not. Instead, they will say that the portcullises were torn from the stone, smashed to pieces – or in one case, opened by a particularly inflated Izgoi, who will claim that he had been willed to conquer the portcullises by a god.

It will be centuries before the tales evolve to tell of Dawsyn Sabar, granddaughter of a crown princess, leading a battalion of the Izgoi through the tunnel and raising the portcullises one by one with the palm of her hand. Until then, they will leave out how she was the first to step into the palace, the first to raise her weapon. They will not tell their children of how that ax cut through the stomachs and necks of Glacian guards who sought to fell her and failed.

Dawsyn rips the beard of the ax from the white flesh of the Glacian’s chest. There are only five in this hall. Five Glacians to hold a horde of bloodthirsty mixed. The rest, she assumes, must be surrounding their king.

In the distance, the sound of steel against steel reverberates to Dawsyn and her lot.

Ryon, she thinks.

The others have made it through.

She follows the echoes of battle through the web of corridors. She runs, and though the mixed-bloods could outrun her, they do not. They merely follow, accepting her lead.

The sounds and cries grow louder, more perverse as they get nearer, and then finally, they find the throne room once more, the doors thrown wide. Bodies litter the floor, blood spilling into the cracks and crevices of the tiled floor, spreading like veins.

And the Pool of Iskra… it has darkened.

The magic within churns like a whirlpool, so charged with the souls of the dead that it bubbles and hisses. Immediately, Dawsyn feels the magic within her – the magic that she stole – respond.

It pulls at her, begs her to join it, to reunite it with its origin.

A shout breaks the reverie. Glacians inundate them from the sides. They were waiting, Dawsyn realizes too late.

She parries the short sword of a female, her pointed teeth bared, and lets her immense weight carry her close, where Dawsyn’s dagger waits. Deftly, she plunges it into the Glacian’s torso and hefts it out, moving away as she falls.

A hand tightly grabs her, and she turns to level the offender with the butt of her ax, only to see Ryon, eyes burning down at her from above, his skin smeared with gleaming blood.

“You well, malishka?” he asks, a huff of breath leaving him as he impales his sword into a Glacian’s back.

Dawsyn ducks from the swing of a mace and regrips her dagger to slice the inner thigh of its holder. She hears the almighty shriek of the white male above and throws the head of her ax eye into his groin. Ryon pulls her away as the male crumples.

“Where is the King?” she yells to Ryon above the noise, letting her back fall to his side as she tracks the scramble of battle.

The Glacians were ready and waiting, but the Izgoi outnumber them by double at least. Some of the Glacians have begun resorting to flight, hovering above the fray to gain advantage.

The Izgoi are winning.

Ryon lets loose a gut-turning roar. Dawsyn whirls and sees the talons embedded in Ryon’s shoulders, trying to hoist him from the ground, blood spilling over his chest. Above, a maddened Glacian beats his wings and manages to lift Ryon a foot from the stone floor before being dragged to the ground again.

Cursing his wrath and gritting his teeth, Ryon hefts his arms, swinging his short sword around in a wide arc, and as it swoops over his shoulders, it slices through the joints of the Glacian who holds him. The hall fills with the Glacian’s wails. The white wings beat their last and then fail him, bringing him to his knees. The stumps of his legs bleed rivers down the steps and into the pool, its innards swirling in delight. Before the male can utter another howl of pain, the Izgoi descend and complete the dismemberment.

Ryon shudders as he bends to the floor, white talons rooted into his shoulders, now without a host to retract them.

Dawsyn rushes to him. “Ryon!”