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Arms encase her. They barricade her from the frigid gusts of the sea. At first, she tries to struggle out of them like trapped game, but she is spent. Her energy wanes, and she sinks into his warm hold, lets his fingers find her face, lets her back meet his chest, lets him bear her weight and cradle her until the anguish peaks and breaks, ebbing away.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her once more.

For what, she cannot be sure, but his voice is so saturated in sincerity that she can only assume he means he is sorry for her, for all of them, for the world. For the way it was mapped and drawn before their time.

“I am going to fix it,” he tells her. “I will fix it.”

CHAPTERTHIRTY-FOUR

Eventually, she sleeps. Her sobs turn quiet, and her breaths even. Time means little there on the hill where Ryon holds her, the tempest creeping toward them at his back. He is hesitant to move her, but the palace will be looking for them – the woman who tried to slay the Queens, and the man who grew wings before their eyes. A Glacian.

They will be hunted by both kingdoms now.

He carries her down the steep decline to the beach, letting his wings soften their landing. The sea tries and fails to touch the stacked rock, edging weakly to the shore before being dragged back again. The shore is dry here; the sea tides will not reach far unless a storm comes to guide it. The high hills are pockmarked with a hundred caves and alcoves, and he and Dawsyn are not strangers to tight places. They can sequester there until it is safe to move again. To where, though, he has no inkling.

He spots such a cave high above. Its mouth is large, large enough that he will not need to scrunch his body into itself to enter it. He flexes the muscles of his shoulders and his wings widen, lifting high before beating heavily toward the sand and stone.

Dawsyn stirs as they come to land again, her eyes blinking. But they are glassy, unseeing, and even when he lowers her body to the unforgiving floor of the cave, she remains limp, curling onto her side, sagging with her grief. It is the smallest he has seen her.

Ryon wonders which wretchedness plagues her mind most.

He watches Dawsyn, her borrowed clothes overly large and enveloping her, her feet tucked high. The damp tresses of her midnight hair halfconcealing her face. There is no ax at her back, no show of cold disinterest, just a human girl so battered and war-weary that her body has given way to its sufferance, curling inward. And he can do nothing.

He must do something.

He crawls from the cave. He imagines that even through the haze of sorrow, she feels the cold and so he looks for kindling. Better than this uselessness he feels. Better than being the observer to her slow breaking. He finds himself unable to bear it.

Soon, he has found enough dry wood and sea grass to light a fire, and he stoops over his work, trying again and again to conjure a spark. He swears under his breath as he struggles for minutes, hours.

When night has settled, smaller hands come over his. Dawsyn crouches beside him, her face still dull and expressionless, but she takes the useless bits of stick he holds, and she throws them to the pile on the floor. Instead, she takes up another piece of wood, rearranges the dried grass, and starts the task anew, her hands so practiced that they can find a spark where his cannot.

But there is a quiet unravelling of his lungs to see her upright, and only then does he become aware of how panicked he had become.

Hesitantly, Ryon speaks. “How old were you when you first did this?”

It takes a moment for his words to penetrate the fog around her, but slowly her lips form a low response. “Young enough that I do not remember.”

“You must have done this thousands of times,” he tries again. Anything to thaw her.

“I was the one to teach Maya.”

“Your sister?” he asks.

She nods mechanically. “Briar’s child. When she was five.”

Ryon casts his eyes to the now-crackling flames. He wonders for a moment if he shouldn’t press her, but he knows better than to think her fragile. “I imagine she was as fierce as you.”

“More so,” Dawsyn answers, and there is a small twitch in the corner of her mouth as she says it, the ghost of a smile. “She was hell-bent on doing what she wished even if it meant nearly dying. In a way, I was surprised she lived as long as she did on the Ledge. Many were not as fortunate.”

Ryon waits. He does not want to stir her. Her darkened eyes stare into the flames, and she seems to drift as she talks.

“The only person she listened to was our grandmother, and even then, it was only because she could throw a knife faster.

“There was a time in the fertile season, when Maya was six or so, she followed me into the trees. I had been sent by Briar to strip bark for kindling. She could move like a wraith. I didn’t know she was trailing me until I was deep in the grove, then she jumped out and scared me. I was taking her back, and we ran into a couple. I do not remember their names. A man and a woman so hungry that you could see their skulls beneath their cheeks. The man held a knife to my back while the woman shoved her hands into my pockets. Maya started shouting and shoving her back, and the woman hit her. And then, in the next second, they were both dead. One moment, I had his disgusting breath on my face and her hands on my body, and the next, they were face down in the snow, my grandmother’s knives in the back of their heads.

“Gran was standing about twenty paces away. She called for Maya to get up off the ground before she wet her coat, and Maya kicked the woman in the ribs for good measure on her way past. It was my job to retrieve the knives and clean them. I’d seen a lot of people die by then, and it still sickened me. The color of blood on snow would stay on my mind, sometimes for weeks. But Maya? She was back out in the woods the next day, following me like a pest, singing about faeries.” Dawsyn gives the flames a final stoke and then lays her stick down on the cave floor. “She was too big for that place.”

Ryon watches the light skit across her throat, her shoulders, and catch in her eyes. “The anger you feel?” he tells her. “People will use it to ruin you. Do not let them.”