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It gives him pause. She can feel the cold radiate from him.

“Salem will thank me when he no longer has to dig holes below his inn in case the full-bloods come to call.”

“They only come to callbecauseof you, Ryon. Those Glacians search foryou. You are willing to put your friends in such danger?”

His voice comes as a snarl. “I have little choice,girl. Better here than in the open, than in the Mecca, where I put more people at risk. If you think I am unaware of the target on my back, you are mistaken.”

“Why come here at all? Why not try to take the court from within?”

“I have my reasons, and they are no business of yours.”

And Dawsyn glimpses it then – the hoard of things Ryon has kept her from knowing. Suddenly, she is keenly aware that he has a plan much more complex than he’d have her believe. Something more than a lone warrior and his swords.

She cannot see him in the dark, only his outline forms the shape of him when she squints, but she still juts her chin and narrows her eyes when she says, “I won’t stay within their reach. I am leaving. Will you come?”

She has no inkling of whether his eyes grow round in fear or if his brows pinch the way she has seen them do when defensive, but when his voice comes, it is quieter and laced with uncertainty. “I cannot.”

He will not deviate from the course he has set. Dawsyn hears it in those two words. However much Dawsyn detests the King of Glacians, it pales beside the wrath Ryon has nurtured. She imagines he will likely never put anything else before it, not the lives of his friends, not the people of Terrsaw, certainly not her.

She pitches forward and moves around him, keeping her head and shoulders bowed until her hand finds the trapdoor. She holds her blade in her teeth and pushes it open. Weak light pricks at her eyes, but she finds a hold on the wooden slats and heaves herself upward, out into the storage cupboard.

She winces as a piece of broken glass cuts into her palm. Around her are the upturned jars, crates, and bowls of food stores. Ryon follows her out and looks around, his eyes flashing dangerously at the mess.

He stands, slams the trapdoor closed, and storms past her, throwing the door of the storeroom open.

Salem, Esra, and Baltisse stand on the other side, and all three balk.

“God above, Ry! Yeh scared the life from me,” Salem says, clutching his forehead. “Is Miss Dawsyn all right?”

“I’m fine,” Dawsyn calls, stepping out of the darkness. “And you all?”

They nod.

“Salem is a paranoid prat. He has about a dozen trapdoors in this place,”Esra says, running a hand over his head.

“Yeh’re fuckin’ lucky I do.”

Baltisse only stares around, anger prowling in her bottomless eyes.

Several of Salem’s tapestries that adorned the walls now lie on the floor, tattered. The front door has been removed. It lies on the ground outside, as though thrown there. Glass turns the wood to glitter as the moonlight finds it. Holes in the wall replace what were once small, stained windows.

The dining room is worse. Broken chairs, upturned tables, the liquor smashed along the floor.

“I’ll be needin’ another supply run, Esra,” Salem says, eyeing the empty shelves, his voice no louder than a murmur. He looks depleted.

“We’ll right it,” Ryon tells him, clasping the man’s large shoulder. “It will be back to normal by sunup.”

Dawsyn looks about and remembers the cabins she saw flattened on the Ledge, the collapsed roofs and broken doors, and thinks that perhaps the valley is not so different.

As the others begin to pick up the pieces of Salem’s lifework, Dawsyn backs out quietly, fading into the hallway and up the stairwell.

She finds her room, its door now lying upon the floor, the embers in the hearth sputtering, and looks for her ax. Urgency fills her throat. Did the hunters find it? Take it? No, it is there beneath her straw mattress. Throwing her knife to the bed, she finds the halter Esra lent her and throws it over one shoulder, hooking the neck of her hatchet in its loop against her spine. She replaces her knife to the sheath at her thigh and pulls her skirt over it. Her cloak hangs beside the mantel, left to warm overnight. In the dull light by the fireplace, she dons it, tying it at the base of her throat, and looks round the small room.

She will not stay within reach of the mountain. She will not hide below again. If Ryon is so set on squandering his freedom for vengeance, then she will no longer keep his company. She has spent a lifetime scrapping for her place in the world, and she is owed her rest. She wants the lands her grandmother spoke of, the world she painted in Dawsyn’s mind. It is not here – not in this inn, not with him.

CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN

The others do not hear it when she leaves. They’re absorbed in the aftermath of the Glacians’ raid. She hears Baltisse hissing her plans to tear their arteries from their throats and stew them, and Ryon consoles Salem and tries to apologize. Dawsyn feels a spasm of regret at that – at accusing Ryon for the wrongs of his kind.