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“No, she is well enough,” Hector says, his hand running over the surface of the table. “She visited with the Roths’ last night and had to stay once the blizzard came. It was unexpected this time. I fear she might need to stay another day.” And indeed, he does seem to fear it. His eyes worry at their corners, flicking to the cabin door again and again.

Dawsyn knows he is not afraid for his mother’s well-being – she will be perfectly kept at the Roths’ – but there will be a price to pay for their hospitality, for the food the Roths will give her, for the heat she will absorb from their wood, and Hector has nothing with which to pay. He lost the claim on his pine to the known bastards of the Ledge, and he and his mother have been walking a thin line between starvation and exposure this last month. Hector had to burn their last table. Dawsyn suspects they will need to burn this new one, too.

“You can stop looking at me so pityingly,” he says to Dawsyn, sitting beside her by the hearth. “I made a deal with the Polsons. I’m giving them a quarter of our wood next season.”

A quarter? Too much. Yet she supposes he must trade it.

“And how much have they given you in return?”

“Enough.” He grimaces. “Thank you for the table. Mother will be relieved.” And there is genuine gratitude in the upturn of his lips, the blush rising along his neck.

He ladles steaming water into a mug for her as the blizzard worsens outside. They say no more. As children, they did little else but talk. Dawsyn supposes they have run out of things to say. Certainly, they have run out of the happy things. There is no lingering childhood wonder glossing their eyes. The time has long past since they could conjure curiosity in each other about what lay below them or towered above. For hours, they traded ideas like currency between them, imagining faeries that guarded the woods, witches that cast spells from their snow burrows. The well of imagination they drank from, debating the realms of the Chasm and the beasts on the other side, has long run dry. But here she is, stooped before his hearth, savoring its warmth, savoring his company. Whether he talks or not, he will fill the void of silence she has suffered in these past years. He will break the drought between touches.

When Hector looks to Dawsyn, he sees an ally, a person he knows and understands, better than any other on the Ledge. She is the type of friend who will haul a handcrafted table through the beginnings of a blizzard for him without demanding repayment. She is his friend, and he is hers, and friends are in short supply on the Ledge.

Lovers – even shorter, and neither Dawsyn nor Hector are immune to desire.

“You’ll need to stay tonight. The blizzard will carry you to the Chasm if you step outside now,” he says.

“I know.” Dawsyn nods.

“I suspect you planned it that way.”

And perhaps she did. Maybe in the loneliest hours of the night, while she carved, she was also plotting, but not consciously. Despite what company Hector might offer, no blizzard would be worth it. But the space between now and the last time she touched another human has been long, has left her starving.

They sit wordlessly for a few more moments while she drains her cup, then she stands and shucks off her boots and coat. Without further warning, she sinks into his lap.

He was expecting her, waiting for her. He grabs her waist and their lips collide.

Hector has never been one for stalling. His tongue slides along her bottom lip as his hands lift the hems of her layers. He pulls them up over her head and discards them, returning his hands to her body at once.

Dawsyn pulls at the drawstring of his pants, loosening them as his mouth sinks between her breasts. Now they are standing. Hector backs her onto his cot, pulling away the remaining clothes between them and then slides his body onto hers, pushing inside her.

Dawsyn and Hector have never known anything but the need for haste. Always, there is something they should be doing, someone who could interrupt at any moment. Today, as the snow and wind beat down their door, it’s not necessary to rush, but they still do. Their coupling is a product of need rather than real want or desire. It curbs the ache.

Hector pushes into the warmest depths of her over and over. He hisses at the feel of her walls wrapped around him, and races against her responding thrusts. Her hips lift to meet his, then give way to him. His lips slide along her neck and she moans, her pulse quickening, her belly heating. The spark in her core ignites. As his speed increases she becomes a flame, combusting suddenly, brightly, then extinguishes just as fast. There and then gone.

Hector follows soon after, groaning his pleasure into her neck, his hips stuttering with the force of his release. Together, they collapse.

There is no tenderness between them in the aftermath – there never is. No awkwardness either. Theirs is a dance well-rehearsed.

The bare length of Hector’s side runs along hers and their chests move in time. Soon, they will put on their clothes and act as though nothing more transpired between them than friendliness.

But today, there is little need to hurry.

He stares down the length of her, shoulder to hip to feet, and then to the ceiling. He seems… introspective.

“It is a year since Father was taken over the Chasm,” Hector says eventually, his voice trailing away at the end.

Dawsyn’s stomach shrivels. Of course. She should have realized. The first year is always the hardest. “I’m sorry,” she says.

Hector rises and collects his clothes. “It’s OK,” he mutters.

Dawsyn watches, wary.

“I wonder what a fool my father would think me, losing our pine to those morons.”

Those morons are the Levisons, a family of brothers, a pack of wild wolves. Hector told her of the day he’d lost his allotment of trees, of how the Levisons had held a knife to his throat and re-marked his pine with the Levison signature. Dawsyn wanted to go to their cabin and set it alight, but Hector wouldn’t agree to it.