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Ryon does not take his eyes from the sky until only the trickling water can be heard.

Finally, Ryon’s wings retract, tucking close to his spine, twitching with urgency. “Hurry up and drink your damned water,” he spits at her. “We need to run.”

Dawsyn does not argue. His tone tells her what his words do not – danger is coming.

She bends quickly over the ice to collect water in her hands and drinks, downing great gulps. For a moment, Ryon does the same, although drinking very little before he stands again, the muscles in his neck straining.

She stands with him, her feet strategically placed, lest she slip. Ryon reaches out to her, his hand on her upper arm before she can spin away, and then he is dragging her.

When they are free of the cliff face, he places both hands to her back and pushes her. “Run!”

CHAPTERTHIRTEEN

They run for an age. They hurdle tree roots jutting from the snow, her dress snagging and tearing on thickets. She manages to keep pace with him, letting him break a path through the snow ahead for her to follow. Ryon does not vanish his wings, though she sees them snag on the wind, slowing him. They do not speak, but every so often Ryon throws a glance over his shoulder, marking her.

There is much that Dawsyn does not understand, but if there is something she knows well, it is the taste of threat, the smell of it, cloying in waves, permeating the air around them. Fear wafts like mist from Ryon into her. It pains her to have her hands so empty.

A noise reaches them; a distant ghost of something far away. It is deep, trembling. A horn.

“Fuck.”

Without warning, Ryon throws himself back onto her. Her body is suddenly surrounded by his. Her hearing is muffled by his chest, the smell of him fills her. She feels the rapid beat of his wings, and then her feet leave the ground.

As before, they dart like a spear into the open air, rising higher, higher. Then, Ryon spins them, pulling her tighter. There is a crack as his back hits a tree trunk. His feet find a thick branch and he lowers to his haunches, cradling her in his lap.

“Do not speak,” he hisses, reaching up.

He grabs a thin branch of dense pine needles and pulls it over them. The light fades.

For the second time in as many days, Dawsyn finds herself perilously high, held to the chest of a half-Glacian. But this time, she does not writhe, does not try her luck at slitting his throat, for the danger is here, upon them. She feels it in the way her tongue dries and her hands itch, and whether she wishes it or not, these arms are now her allies.

They come in flocks, not unlike the Selection. The gray skies fill with a dozen white-winged Glacians and then two dozen. Soaring, circling overhead and beyond, but never spearing toward them. Ryon and Dawsyn are not seen from the skies, for their pursuers look to the ground. Dawsyn hears them call to one another every so often, yelling for some to search the ridge or to land and search the ground.

Ryon gathers her closer and through his thin tunic, Dawsyn can measure the way his heart pounds. Hers sprints in tandem.

Glacian feet collide with the forest floor over and over and wings cut the wind above them, but after a time, Dawsyn forgets to listen. The Glacians search and search but find nothing and the minutes begin to lag. As time stretches on, her skin begins to warm. The arm around her waist feels less like a trap. The beating of her heart slows and so does his. The scent of fear is drowned by the scent of him and despite herself, her body unwinds. She bends where he bends, feels the places of him that yield to her and those that do not. He finds the empty spaces around her and fills them. Instead of feeling restrained, she feels held. And if having her in his lap is a discomfort to him, he does not show it.

At some point, the shouts and movement outside them fade, moving farther away. Then, finally, the forest is mercifully… silent.

Ryon releases the branch that cocoons them. “They’re gone – for now.”

Dawsyn has enough time to cling to his neck before he lurches off the branch. His wings catch the air as they fall to the earth, slowing them. He lifts her away from the ground, letting his own feet take the impact, landing with a dull thud.

Dawsyn removes her hands from him and finally opens her mouth to speak. There is an ocean of questions on her tongue, but Ryon speaks first.

“Not yet,” he says. “We can’t stop. Go.” He points downhill.

Dawsyn runs, her dress dragging, heavy and damp. This time, Ryon follows behind her, inches away.

“Almost there,” he huffs every so often. “Almost there.”

But it seems as though they are not, that they might never be, and Dawsyn is waning. Her body begins to scream for her to stop, to put an end to this relentless thrashing.

At a spot of no discerning marks, Ryon urges her sideways and they change direction.

“Up ahead,” he says, slowing. “Can you see it?”

Dawsyn sees nothing but the blinding white of the unending landscape, but then… there is something. A dark space. A bulging mass of obsidian. The closer they get, the better Dawsyn sees through the mist. A rock fall – great pieces of broken mountain debris, heaped upon a flat edge of the slope. Some of the blackened boulders are taller than Ryon.