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“Yes,” he says immediately. “I am not human, Dawsyn. I will never be.”

“I am well aware.”

“My kind have doomed yours to the Ledge. Have you forgotten?”

Her breath stutters in her throat. She feels her hands clench. “Have I forgotten?” she asks him, and the remnants of desire that still flicker in her blood turn foul. “Which thing could I forget?” The words come with such slow-moving venom that Ryon drops his gaze, shame softening him.

She remembers the sound of Briar’s voice singing her to sleep through lips blistered by wind. She remembers the jut of her ribs and the lure of endless sleep when the food disappeared. She still hears the sound a skull makes when it cracks against ice, the sound of Maya’s last cry, the sound of Briar’s goodbye.

“Is there a way to forget, Ryon?” she asks quietly, binding the rage, letting her sorrow escape. Her shoulders slump. The words quiver. “Would you show it to me? I’d like to know it.”

And the look he gives her is not one she wants to see – pity, remorse. He cannot look her in the eye, cannot use his quick tongue to argue.

“I am sorry,” he says again, and his entire frame suddenly appears too heavy for him.

She does not want his apologies. “You lied.”

“What?” His head rises, startled.

“You told me that if I kissed you again, you’d bury yourself inside me.”

He stiffens. “You need to leave this be, girl.”

“And if I do not want to?”

“Then, we will both suffer,” he says, backing toward the door. “Like every other fool human who thought to bed down with a Glacian.”

Dawsyn watches his slow retreat, like she is a threat, a plague. “Like your mother?” She lashes out and watches it hit home.

“Exactly like my mother,” Ryon says slowly, his stare penetrating. And then he is gone, slamming the door behind him.

Dawsyn wouldn’t be surprised if he locked it, lest she set upon him in the night.

CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX

Dawsyn storms the tiny room for hours, throwing wood into the hearth and watching the embers flare. She cannot quell this newest ache in her, so different from basic desire. She wants to stalk down the hall, find Ryon’s bed. She wants to shout and scream at him. She wants to lie with him again, feel the strange warmth of a body meant for the cold. She is a fool to want it, to give in to the wanting, just as Ryon said. She should let it die, let it melt away until she does not feel it so keenly. She should have left him when she intended to. Instead here she is, wanting.

Eventually, she locks her door. She finds the bed and lowers her body to it, her nerves still writhing. It takes an eternity to find comfort, even longer to quiet her mind, but she eventually errs toward sleep. But as it is so often, her peace is destined to be short.

A crash shudders through her, splits her from within. Eyes wheeling, she hurls her body upward, her mind still on that edge between dreaming and waking. Her hands clutch the blade she keeps beneath her pillow, her fingers not failing her where her sleep-addled brain does.

Ryon throws himself into the room, his face wild. In a step, he is beside her, grabbing her shoulders, hauling her upright. “Get up! Go!”

“What- what is it?” she stammers.

He pulls her out of the room, the door now broken away from its hinges where he kicked it in.

“Glacians are overhead,” he growls, rushing both of them down the hall and onto the stairwell.

He takes them two at a time, and Dawsyn has to jump them to keep from tumbling down.

“How do you know?”

“I hear them.”

Dawsyn listens, but all she can hear is her heart in her throat, her feet thundering down the hall, past the dining room, and into a storeroom. Ryon slams the door behind them, his chest pressed to her back in the confined space.

“Move your feet,” he snaps.