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“If they had killed me or captured me, what would you have done?”

Ryon grins darkly. “They wouldn’t have found a chance to.”

“You had so much confidence in me? Even then?”

“No,” he admits. “I had no idea you were so violent. But I was already trailing you, already in the trees when they came along. I watched as you maimed them both. But when Kesh rose from the ground, I didn’t wait to see who would win. I could see you fading. I thought he might land his blow before he bled to death. Either way, there was never a question of whether Kesh and Theodore would manage to capture you. I would have been happy to have an excuse to tear their throats out, and as you so viscerally proved, you barely needed my help.”

Her bare foot slides against the side of his leg, and he stifles a sigh. How can such a simple touch feel so torturous?

She smiles knowingly.

“Do not smile that way, malishka. This table is hardly sturdy enough for that.”

“Malishka,” Dawsyn murmurs to herself. “What does it mean?”

“It is the old language. It means my one. In the palace, they use it to describe objects of great value. In the Colony, it is the name we give to someone significant.”

She smiles a moment. He can feel her mind turning it over.

“What was it like,” she asks, “to grow in the Colony as you did?”

He grimaces. She is as abrupt as always. “It was… harsh.”

“How so?”

He sighs once more, readying himself. “What you saw in the palace is a journey removed from the Colony. The mixed-bloods are given meager scraps. We do not need to burn wood or be overly concerned by blizzards, but we still need shelter, clothes, food. Vasteel controls it all. Lawbreakers go without their rations for a week, and many of the mixed die that way. It is forbidden for them to be on the slopes. We cannot use the forests below to harvest timber or hunt. The ones found there have their wings clipped and their bodies thrown into the Chasm for stealing from the King. So, they take what they are given, and they make do. The full-bloods are forbidden from mixing with those in the Colony, should they dull their purity. And the mixed-bloods are, of course, forbidden from the palace.”

“Except you.”

“Except me. If you are born to the Colony, you will die there, too.”

“Why not leave? If the mixed-bloods can survive in the warmth, why not escape, as you did? Surely, the King cannot stop them all?”

“Where would they go? No one has ever flown the seas and returned. We have no idea if there is anything at all out there to find. We cannot live in the valley. Humans are fearful and intolerable. The world seems big to you, but to us, who see it from the sky, it is miniscule. There aren’t enough corners to hide in. Fear is what stops them from leaving. Fear of the King. We might outnumber the pure-bloods, but they out-weapon us. The risk is too great, and the known always feels safer.”

Dawsyn chews on the inside of her cheek for several moments. “Why does he keep them? The King, I mean. Why bother to cage the mixed at all?”

“Why does any kingdom keep its poor, other than to keep the noble rich? But it is more than that. It is the iskra.”

“Iskra?” Dawsyn murmurs. “What of it?”

Ryon smiles tiredly. “You didn’t think humans were the only ones with souls, did you?”

Her eyes widen. “He takes iskra from the mixed?”

Ryon nods. “They prefer to use humans. The King devalues impure blood, but he isn’t fool enough to discard it. He knows the pure-bloods numbers will dwindle, and when that happens, he is loath to let the Glacian race die out completely. He is too proud, too controlling. At first, they used the mixed-bloods for their iskra in abundance. But then the females stopped birthing, the males could sire no children, and fear took hold. They started preserving all Glacian blood more carefully and sought the humans in the valley instead. But Vasteel keeps the mixed-bloods in the Colony, ready to drain them if it ever becomes necessary.”

“And the band of uprisers in the Colony? How did it begin?”

“With me,” he says. “I saw how I differed from the rest. My blood was neither here nor there. Not diluted enough or pure enough, but I knew it could get me close to the court, to the King. I was the only one in the Colony with a chance to climb out of it, and it couldn’t be wasted. The Colony has its own council of elders, and I convinced them that it was a chance for all of us.”

“So, they’ve been storing the weapons that Esra deals to you, and they will help you storm the palace when you make your return?”

Ryon meets her eye across the table and nods. His skin grows cold at the thought of what he will do, how deep he will sink, to tear the palace apart piece by piece.

“So, we kill the King,” she says simply.

And there’s a part of Ryon that wants to tell her,No, not you, but he has no desire to command her, control her. A stronger sense tells him this fight belongs to them both in equal shares. For once, even if it is the last, he feels the immense relief of shifting the weight of his millstone to rest between them so that they might bear it together.