Page 51

Surrounding them are twenty or so Terrsaw guards – armored men with swords drawn. From above, another dozen tip their bows over the edge of the parapet.

“Dawsyn, do not move.”

She gives him a long-suffering eye roll, her blade still indenting the skin of the guard’s neck.

“Put your weapons down – now,” says a voice from the throng of guards.

Ryon drops his to the ground and steps back. Dawsyn takes longer, her eyes narrowing as they travel across the guards, and Ryon recognizes her intent. She seeks a gap, a way through, a way out. She would fight through a garrison of armed guards rather than allow them to kill her where she stands.

“Last chance before you swallow an arrow,” the same voice says evenly.

This is not the Ledge. It is not a place where force wins. Ryon looks to the guards, sees how quickly they will be rid of this strange woman, like she were never here at all. He can only think in that moment of the sun touching her eyelids in the fields, and the way her hands slithered over the tops of tall grass as she walked and marveled. He did not bring her so far and risk so much to see her killed now, by the people she belongs to. Belongs with.

Ryon sees an archer’s arrow retract an inch, and the words spill forth. “She has escaped the Ledge!”

Silence.

The guards’ backs straighten in increments around them, their eyes rounded, swords still poised.

One guard steps forward, the one that seems to command the rest. Her shoulders clang against others and they step aside for her obediently. “Lies,” she says calmly.

“It is the truth.” Ryon looks to Dawsyn. “Tell them.”

With her blade still drawn and her other hand fisted in the guard’s hair, she nods. “I am of the Ledge.”

“Prove it, or I will order the archers above to stake your body in its place.”

Dawsyn frowns, her teeth bared. “How shall I prove it? Shall I show you the places where the talons cut me? Or do you want me to take you to the Ledge myself?”

The lips of the guard turn up in a promise.

“Her name is Sabar!” Ryon calls, moving his body toward Dawsyn’s.

A collective hush befalls the gathering. Some of the guards drop their positions, uncertainty warring with duty.

The leader among them, however, assesses Dawsyn, her eyes narrowing shrewdly. “Sabar?”

Dawsyn’s stare turns to steel. Her confusion, for once, plain. “Yes.”

The moment lengthens, the seconds bleeding together, and the guards do not move toward them. Some seem hesitant now, eyes darting to the palace doors. Their superior herself seems conflicted. Her jaw rolls, and her eyes flick from Dawsyn to Ryon. But the archers still wait, Dawsyn does not surrender the guard, and Ryon can only inch himself closer, hoping his skin can stand the impact of so many arrowheads.

The woman finally sighs. “Bring her inside.”

The guards move forward, but Dawsyn calls to them, “Stop!”

Ryon’s eyes swing to her.What is she doing?

“I’ll be walking through those doors without your assistance,” she says.

“Enough of this,” the woman calls. “Take her blade.”

The guards converge, and one lunges from her flank. Dawsyn drops the guard she holds at knifepoint, and her elbow flies back, finding the bridge of a nose. She ducks under the arm of another, and her leg kicks back to connect with another calf.

Righting herself, she shouts, “I said, STOP!” Her breath comes in sharp pants as the other guards, both those she has left on the ground and those who still stand, halt. “I will give you the blade, but I’ve had my fair share of unwanted hands on me, and I will not be allowing more.”

She stares solidly at the armor-clad woman before her, and lets the blade in her hand slip down, dangling by the hilt between her fingertips. Slowly, she lowers it to the stones at her feet and stands once more.

And Ryon? He can only stare, awed by the wreckage caused by a small person in such a small time.