Page 65

Dawsyn shifts, and his hand dives down in the dark to the ground. His fingers latch around something unseen and he heaves. A small trapdoor opens toward them, and he grabs her wrist as though he intends to fling her into its indeterminable depths.

Dawsyn wrenches it free. “I’ll do it myself.”

She sits and lets her legs fall over the edge. She lowers herself through the opening and finds that the tips of her toes scrape solid ground. Without hesitation, she drops to the cold stone floor, the dank smell of mildew assailing her.

Ryon follows, the cellar ceiling not high enough to accommodate him. He reaches up to pull the trapdoor shut, and all at once they are swallowed by complete darkness.

But for their heavy breaths, there is silence. Dawsyn cannot see the hand that she lifts before her. It’s the kind of darkness that only comes from inside the earth, from being buried alive.

“They’re looking for us?” she says into the oblivion.

His voice answers, wired and anxious, “Yes.”

“Why?” she whispers. “How? What about the temperature?”

“They can bear it for a short time.”

Dawsyn shudders. “Long enough to find us?”

He sighs from his corner, and Dawsyn can imagine the look he wears – frustration, loathing. “Yes.”

Dawsyn bristles. “And knowing this, you thought it wise to stay so close to the mountain?”

“I never imagined they would bother to leave, that they would still search.”

“What does it mean that they are here?”

“It means that they know I did not die.” His voice falls heavily, weighted in bitterness.

“What about Salem? Esra–”

There is clashing from above, muted by the walls of their hiding place. Heavy feet fall upon the floors, several pairs. The splinter of glass sounds. The thundering grows distant as someone or something ascends the stairs to the landing. Clanging rings down into their hole. Whoever they are, they are turning Salem’s home inside out.

She feels Ryon come to her, his fingers tracing her jaw and then falling over her mouth.

“Do not make a sound,” he breathes.

More glass shattering, as though windows are being kicked through.

Where is Salem? Esra? Baltisse?Dawsyn can hear the murmured growls of the Glacians who wreck and spoil above, but there are no shouts, no screams. She slams her eyelids closed and prays that they have hidden away.

Every fiber of her detests sitting in this hole, doing nothing while white beasts stalk above. She might as well be back on those forsaken slopes, buried in a warren, hiding like a rodent. She turns her blade over in her palm. She wants to slice them, cut the limbs from their bodies. But even if she could do so, it would only signal their whereabouts like a beacon, and the rest would come.

Ryon feels her tighten in increments, and as though he reads her, he whispers, “Let them look. Let them find nothing, and they will go.”

She shudders as his cool breath falls across her face. She can practically hear the throb of his pulse, racing as quickly as hers. For all his rationality, she smells the tang of violence in his sweat and guesses that he thirsts for blood as much as her.

The Glacians continue their rampage, and with each given second, Ryon’s fingers against her lips become icier. At first, she attributed it to the cellar, the exposed floor, but the minutes pass, and Dawsyn begins to shiver. Her lips ache with the cold. She pulls his hand away and finds relief at its absence. His skin is like ice to touch – like a Glacian’s.

The groan of wood under heavy feet grows distant. There is one last clanging as something falls heavily to the floorboards, and then all is silent from above.

They wait some time before moving, ears pricked. The moments slide past, and the silence holds.

Her blood slows, and her spine slouches. She rests her forehead in her hands. “We cannot stay here,” she whispers. “I won’t hide like a rat all my life. We need to leave.”

Ryon groans, “I will not leave until I’ve done what I mean to.”

Dawsyn laughs her derision, her bewilderment. “You expect to slaughter an entire court, but you will not crawl out of this hole to defend Salem’s home?”