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“I’ve watched it closely for ten years, and still I do not know what magic lies there and I don’t believe anyone truly understands it. I can only guess at how it works. The only thing I know with certainty is that when a soul enters, it does not return.”

“Do you know how it takes the iskra? Does it drown them? Choke them?”

“I do not believe it does either,” Ryon says, bending on his powerful legs to retrieve fallen pecans from the dirt. “I believe it persuades them, coaxes the soul from their body. When I was close enough, I could hear the magic. It sounded like… like murmurs. And the humans… they were often entranced. Sometimes, I felt that way, too. Whatever magic it is, it has a mind.”

“But why does drinking the magic not harm the Glacians? Why don’t people drink from it when they go in?”

“There is a theory that was told to me by one of the councilmen in the Colony, and I agree with it. We think that drinking the iskra will allow you to consume its magic, but when a creature is submerged, they cannot drink from it.”

“Why?”

“What did the magic look like to you when you looked upon the pool?”

Understanding dawns as the answer falls from her lips. “Like liquid.” She remembers falling into the icy river. Did she not feel the burn of water as it found ways into her throat? She imagines drinking from the pool while submerged would feel like drowning. “They hold their breath when they go into the pool?” she asks.

Ryon nods. “I think the magic tricks them, convinces them not to drink. It allows the pool to take and not give.”

Dawsyn cradles the collection of edible greens in her hands and shrugs her shoulders. If Ryon is right, then the Pool of Iskra is nothing more than trickery, and tricks can be unraveled.

“I suppose, to defeat it,” Dawsyn says, “one must force it only to give.”

Dawsyn looks to the high sun. She wonders if she can bear to leave it now that she has truly felt its touch. “Where will we go from here?”

“Back to the inn. There are things stored there that I need to collect.”

“And my ax.”

“And your deadly little ax.” He grins. “No one on Glacia will ever believe that I’ve been saddled by an ax-murdering human girl.”

Dawsyn hurls a pecan at him, and he catches it before it can hit the place between his eyes.

“You will refrain from calling megirl.”

Amused, he gazes at her from beneath his eyelashes. “Or what?”

“Or I might decide I don’t want your hands anywhere near me.”

For a moment, the smugness of his face dulls. “The very worst way to punish me.”

She picks a small red berry from her stash and raises it to her lips, pushing it onto her tongue and chewing it with deliberate slowness. She does not miss the jump in his throat, the dilating of his pupils.

He scrubs a hand over his face. “Do not tempt me, Dawsyn,” he mutters darkly. “Dusk comes, and we’ve too much to do.”

“Then, hurry up and do it, Ryon. I’ll wait here and be as tempting as I desire.”

He bites back a smile and shakes his head at the ground, taking several paces toward her. “I cannot decide whether you are a curse or a dream.”

“Can’t I be both?” she asks.

“Evidently.”

“Which part tempts you most?” she pushes, closing the space between them, running her fingers along the edge of his collar. “It’ll be the first part I hide the next time you diminish me to names likegirl.”

His eyes trail her from the ground up, deliberately drinking every stubborn inch of her, lingering on her thighs, her hips, the swell of her chest, her throat, finally stopping to rest upon her eyes. It isn’t until the corner of his mouth curls into a grin that she hears her shortened breaths, her erratic heart.

“Every part tempts me, girl. Every inch. You can keep yourself from me all you like, but not one part of you won’t be branded to my memory.”

She narrows her eyes, bites down on her tongue, and then groans quietly. “Damned Glacian,” she says.