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A short, shocked yelp leaves Dawsyn’s lips as they plummet, the cloud misting into them, through them and then disappearing altogether.

As soon as Ryon reaches the break, he pulls up, wings outstretched.

Dawsyn’s stomach catches up and she curses loudly. “Do that again, and I’ll kill you.”

“Terrifying,” he says. “Though, I doubt you will. We’re almost there.”

Hesitantly, Dawsyn turns her head and looks over her shoulder. The land has returned.

The staggering scope of the world lies beneath her, stretching to the very corners of her sight on all sides. It is endless. The hills roll like waves, the mountainside rising like a beast from the earth behind them, its base edged with rocks like jagged teeth that exceed the height of the forests around them – the Boulder Gate. There are rooftops ahead. Small as thumbprints.

More than these things is the color. Light falls to the world, not harbored by the heavy mass of cloud, and the land is aglow. The forests are not an endless mass of snow-laden pine, but many hues of green and amber and orange, the likes of which she has never seen. The rippling shine of water glints at her and she spots the folds of a tangled river, weaving along the land.

And farther out – a place where land gives way to glass, disappearing to the horizon – is what must be an ocean.

It is unending, this world. And bright. And whole. No Chasm divides it. There is nothing that could ever be so big as to claim it. How could there be?

Ryon’s shoulders ripple and tighten. “Get ready.”

Suddenly, he banks. The world tilts. She should shut her eyes again to quell the bile of her stomach, but she cannot. The sun shines too much, the ground stretches too wide and she does not want to miss seeing it. She never imagined there could be so much.

They circle gently, lower and lower. Maybe Ryon took her oath to murder him seriously, or maybe he just wants to give her time before they meet the land again. Either way, he does not plummet to the ground, the way Dawsyn suspects he wants to.

His feet mold to the earth easily as they land – earth that is not burdened with snow, but rather patched with it. It lies in shallow piles here and there. The remaining ground is brown. Some is even soft with bundles of green shoots… grass.

Ryon sets her down and she unfolds herself, thankful to find that she does not fall. She feels the weariness of her body, willing her to bend to the earth and stay there. Instead, she leans to touch her fingertips to the sprouts at her feet, marveling.

“Is this the valley?” she asks Ryon, her voice cracking.

“Yes… and everything else.”

“Everything else,” she echoes, eyes misting at the sight of something new. Something other. She thinks of her grandmother, weaving her hands in the air to describe the way plants could push through the earth unimpeded, and she swallows.

She wonders if her grandmother would think it a blessing or a curse, to have been guided into the valley by a being meant to keep her out.

The cold itself, Valma Sabar would say, if she were to look upon him.

The half-Glacian. The one to place Dawsyn on ground that yields.

The one with warm skin and light hands.

She looks up at his face, brilliant in the sun’s light, and cannot see any trace of the cold clinging to him.

“Thank you, Ryon Mesrich.”

CHAPTEREIGHTEEN

“These are the outskirts of the Fallen Village,” Ryon says, his wings collapsing into his spine.

“Fallen Village? You mean the one the Glacians raided?”

“Yes,” Ryon nods. “There is a place on the other side of it… an inn.”

She rises from the ground. “What is an inn?”

Ryon frowns for a moment. He seems to consider her. “A place to sleep in exchange for money.” He stalks away, stepping purposefully toward the tree line before them. Dawsyn follows, wondering whatmoneymeans.

They enter the shade of the small forest and Dawsyn’s eyes go round, darting from one tree or plant to another, so different from the pines of the Ledge. The hostile season still shows its wear on the land, new leaves only just beginning to unfurl. She imagines some of these would bear fruit later in the fertile season. The only fruit she has ever tasted came half-rotten or dried from the Drop. She imagines what it must be like to pick it at one’s own whim, whenever hunger struck.