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“Fucking God above! DAWSYN! Is it you? You look simply disgraceful.” Esra comes crashing down the stairs in a sweeping velvet gown with embroidered roses along the hem.

“Esra!Mind yer bloody mouth!”

Esra trips over the last few stairs in his apparent eagerness so that Ryon has to hasten forward to catch him.

“How many times will you fake a fall into my arms, Es?” Ryon grunts.

“As long as it takes, love. I’m not growing younger.”

Esra rights himself. He then flings his arms around Dawsyn. Despite herself, she smiles at the sound of him, the feel of his arms around her.

“I am so sorry for how very dreadful we all are,” he says into her ear.

She remembers how his face became ashy and drawn when she last saw him, tears carrying the rouge away from his cheeks. He, more so than any other she knows of in the valley, has no need to apologize.

“Don’t be,” she says. “Just give us the knives to cut down the King.”

Esra holds her at arm’s length, his wide jaw slackening at Ryon and Dawsyn both. “Are the two of you now allied?”

Ryon smirks. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Ugh! The two of youreekof lust. It’s revolting!” Esra wails. “Dawsyn, darling, I swore I’d cut the tits from the woman who stole my Ry away from me, but because it’s you, I’ll leave yours where they are. Just know that I am always here, should the two of you ever require a third–”

“ESRA!” Salem shouts.

“Salem, your mouth can be heard from Glacia. Do shut it.” Baltisse descends the stairs, coming to stop upon the last. Her blonde hair trails for miles over her shoulders, and those burning eyes, amber and feral, fall immediately to Dawsyn. “Though he has a point, Esra. You are – and I mean this deeply – an insufferable shit.”

“Tizzy! Our Ryon has been swept off his feet by this here Ledge girl.”

“I’m overflowing with happiness,” she says tiredly, “but if you call me Tizzy again, I’ll sell your tongue for grain.”

“If I could pick my allies again,” Ryon intervenes, shaking his head, “I’d choose better than a maniac, a lunatic, and a drunk.”

“Aye, but I don’t see no queue to help aid yer quest, yeh winged squatter.”

Dawsyn turns her eyes among them as they continue their squabble, watching the light that pricks their eyes as insults fly and land. There is an inexplicable warmth to it. A part of her wants to stay here, in a murky inn somewhere in the woods with this mesmerizing collection of strays.

“Esra, yer mouth needs a fuckin’ exorcism–”

“You’re leaving so soon?” Baltisse asks, her low voice somehow surmounting the loud timbre of men. The mage’s gaze is once more fixed upon Dawsyn’s, the amber of them swirling languidly. “For Glacia?”

“Tonight,” Ryon confirms, and Baltisse moves her focus to him.

The amber turns molten gold and roils wildly as thoughts travel from Ryon’s mind to hers on whatever magical path she possesses. Dawsyn wonders what information he must be giving her to make her jaw tighten the way it does, to make the fingers on her hand curl like talons.

“This plan is folly,” she says aloud.

“I had no idea you were a fortune-teller.”

“I needn’t be to know what lies in wait. There are too many ways for you and her to die to be able to come out of this living.”

“You told me yourself, Baltisse, the girl is very difficult to kill, and I agree.”

“You’re willing to challenge it? Perhaps I’m no fortune-teller,” she says, descending the last step until she stands close before him. “But I know how quickly you’ll turn to dust if something happens to her.”

Ryon sighs, and it seems a great weight comes to rest upon him. It carries his eyes, his chin and his chest downward. “As do I,” he returns, “but I will not sift through her choices and dispose of the ones that make me afraid. They are not mine.”

A wry grin stretches slowly along the mage’s lips. “So be it,” she says.