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“Why?”

“Because I fear you are moments from falling and I’m trying to distract you.”

Her breathing grows coarser by the moment and she knows he hears it. “He lived close by, not far along the Face. We grew up alongside each other.”

“And was he always just a friend?”

Was that curiosity?Dawsyn is too muddled to be sure. “No. Sometimes, we were lovers.”

“Sometimes.”

“When the need arose.”

He pauses. “Sounds romantic.”

She scoffs, but it sounds more like a wheeze. “And Glacians know romance? Do you bed each other among flowers between pillaging villages and drinking souls?”

He lets out a mirthless laugh, but otherwise ignores the question. “So, this Hector, he is someone you love?”

She considers it. “Not romantically.”

They fall back into near silence as they continue to plow through the forest. There are new noises here, some she has never heard before. The hooting sound of birds, the nattering of smaller creatures in trees.

“It sounds lonely,” Ryon mutters suddenly.

He says no more and Dawsyn wonders what a Glacian – half or full – would know about love and loneliness.

“What of your life? Did you have friends other than Phineas?”

“Yes,” he says.

Dawsyn waits, but he does not bother to elaborate. “Were they hybrids or…pure?” The term sits uncomfortably on her tongue.

“Mixed-bloods,” he says. “Trust me when I say that I was merely tolerated inside the palace and not at all liked.”

“Did you love anyone?” she asks and then slams her lips together. The question flew from her mouth; she is unsure why she asked it.

He chuckles. “When the need arose.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He sighs. “I loved the people who cared for me, sacrificed what little they had so that I could live, and that was a lot of people in the Colony. And there were females whom I cared for. But, no, there was no romance. We have that one thing in common.”

Dawsyn’s feet stop moving then, and a groan escapes her. She sees Ryon turn to face her, but he is blurry, tilting. The pounding that has been ever present since she woke increases, deafens her. Somewhere outside her body, she hears her name, perhaps more than once. But she is stuck in the dark and it feels like a friend.

CHAPTERSEVENTEEN

She wakes to the feel of rocking. It almost lulls her back into that sweet abyss where she hid. But there is something urgent that calls her to wake, so she clambers up and away from the dark and her eyes fight to open.

“Ryon?” she says.

His face hovers above her, looking away. She is close enough to see the way the hairs on his jaw weave and mat.

“That’s the first time you’ve said my name, girl.”

The feeling of being rocked comes from him. He carries her as he walks. She feels his arm under her shoulder blades, the other under her knees.

“Put me down.”