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The palace – or the depths of it at least.

Dawsyn sends a small grin to the floor. It worked, just as he’d planned.

“The only way in,”Ryon had told her,“is to let them lead the way themselves.”

And so they did.

With unceremonious violence, she is thrust from the tunnel and into a dim hall. With several Glacians in front and several behind, they follow the weave of stairs spiraling up, up. Somewhere behind her, Ryon is being hauled along, but when she looks over her shoulder, she is confronted by a wall of white flesh and tarnished armor.

“Move, girl!” A hand slams into her shoulder, and she almost topples.

She wants nothing more than to meet Ryon’s eye. She needs to see him. The floor beneath has a cold that already seeps through her boots and into the soles of her feet. The walls smell as they did the last time she was held captive in its confines, and she wonders if this small victory – entering the palace – will only doom them to its clutches.

They have come so far – too far – for it to mean nothing, to have made no difference.

On and on and on they walk until, finally, the hallways widen, the arched ceiling soars, and the sounds of many begin to clamor over the walls, echoing down to their ears. Voices, wings, clanging steel – it comes closer and closer until they come to stand at the very spot Dawsyn stood on her last journey through the palace.

Great oak doors tower before them. Doors that will lead them to the King, to the Pool of Iskra, and standing there is none other than Gerrot.

“Open it, old man,” Iman ahead tells him.

Gerrot blanches, not at the command, it would seem, but at the sight of Dawsyn. At the girl who wore his late wife’s blood as she died. The girl of the Ledge – the one who escaped.

“Open it!” Iman growls down at him, and a vicious shove sends Gerrot reeling.

Gerrot relents. His watery eyes give Dawsyn a final pitying glance. His frown deepens, but he guides his shoulder into the doors, pushing them inward.

A congregation of white Glacians crowd the room. The tables are ignored. Instead, the court clamors for space near the throne, shouting, hissing, quarreling. The tension – already unbearably thick – becomes tangible as Dawsyn and Ryon’s captors lead them in. One and then another and another turn to see the girl of the Ledge standing there, Ryon beside her, each shackled. Like a wave, they cease their disputes and turn their attention from the throne and the King who possesses it. They lay their eyes upon the half-Glacian and the human, the very source of their disquiet.

Silence blankets the hall. The only whispers come from the great pool between the parties, churning in sluggish circles, its strange, luminous glow casting shadows beneath the Glacian eyes that follow them.

“Ah,” comes the voice – a voice that gnaws.

The pompous inflection, it festers in her ears, bends her fingers into claws.

The Glacian King.

Vasteel.

He stands from his throne, forcing the many gathered near him to step away. His ashen hair does not hide the mad glint in his eye. Dawsyn only remembers his callousness, his self-importance. What he was weeks ago has fallen away, subsided to rage. The King is ravaged with it. Roping veins tense along his arms. There are shadows beneath his eyes that border on bruises. Vasteel cannot seem to help the way his teeth bare themselves, lips quivering. “Finally, one of you could manage what the rest could not. Iman… am I to take it you found them?”

Iman nods, and Dawsyn feels the other Glacians surrounding her shuffle and huff in irritation.

“Why, Ryon, you are slippery indeed. Do you know the force I expended to look for you?”

“I know of five of them at least. Though they’re no longer alive to confirm it.”

Vasteel’s cheek twitches. The whites of his eyes grow dark. “Yes,” he says quietly, dangerously, “I heard. They were some of my finest noblemen, Ryon. You had me rather vexed.” His oily, deep voice, so carefully controlled, is beginning to erode, cracking between words. “Tell me what you had planned, Ryon, other than to lead your allies of the Colony to overthrow me. Were you intending to hide in a cupboard and jump out at an opportune moment? Do you have poison to taint my drink? What clever thing has been thrown to the wind, Ryon? I am dying to know.”

Ryon says nothing. His jaw snaps shut, only the glint in his eye giving way to his thoughts – impatience, bloodlust. Even without the armor of the Glacians, he is menacing. Wild.

They seem to know it. They clamor around him, gripping him tightly. They must smell what Dawsyn smells, hear what she hears – the violence that leaks from his pores, the pulse that begs for slaughter. She wonders if ever a creature has looked upon another with such fervent hate. She can see it now, how he’d lunge for Vasteel’s throat, tearing it from his neck, if given the chance.

“Such a conniving traitor you are,” Vasteel continues, striding closer, his frame quaking with hate. “Such a vile waste of your life… the life Igaveyou.”

“You gave me a cursed life,” Ryon says, his voice frighteningly serene.

“I plucked you from the slush in the Colony and gave you a home, a purpose, despite your worthless father… your wretched mother–”