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“I owe you my thanks, for that,” Ryon dares. His voice is deep with insolence – a velvet glove, thrown to dirt, baiting Vasteel to duel. “Without your charity, I would never have learned the ways in, and the ways out. I would never have imparted all that I know to the Izgoi. You even handpicked me to take to the slopes. You sanctioned my very escape.”

“Ah, but you did not succeed in your mission down there in the valley, did you, my friend? You did not manage to turn the Queens against me and convince them to join your revolt.”

Dawsyn looks between them, uncertainty dawning on her.

Ryon’s smile is menacing, humorless. “The Queens? They’d be worthless allies. I’d no sooner trust them than you.”

Vasteel’s dark laugh bounces off the arched ceiling. “Such lies, Ryon. You really are a depraved mongrel. I should have thrown you into the Chasm the moment you came to be – after you broke your poor mother’s body.”

Ryon ceases to move. “What?”

“You’ve been destined for meaningless destruction since your conception, half-breed. Did you not know? Your mother, a human girl of the Ledge, died to bring you into this world, just as all the others do.”

“You killed her,” Ryon says blankly, a regurgitated sentence, suddenly weightless. “You took her iskra. You threw her into the Chasm.”

“I did,” Vasteel says, a manic grin stretching his sunken cheeks. “But she was dead before we threw her in. Glacians were never meant to fuck the humans, Ryon. Their bodies cannot sustain an infant so powerful. You bleeding hearts, you call us callous? We kill for survival. We kill as all living things must do in the cycle of life and death. But you? The mixed? You’ll kill for a moment of carnal pleasure. And your father? He knew it too. He fucked that poor girl, and he knew his seed would kill her if it took. And then there was you. You can stand there and think me a villain, Ryon, but evenInever killed my own mother.”

Slowly, torturously, Ryon’s gaze shifts to Dawsyn’s. Dawsyn can see it there – the truth blooming within him. She wants to spit at Vasteel and take him for a liar, but something has come into place for her hybrid, something that he understands that she cannot. Pain cloaks him, slumps his shoulders, caves his chest. His eyes cloud, and then they shutter. They block her out.

“Ryon?”

“He’s busy, dear. Drowning in the bitter truth, I’m afraid.” The Glacian King is practically exultant, his madness unchecked.

Dawsyn wonders how long Vasteel has waited to wreck him with this revelation, to break him. She feels a murderous, new desire awaken within, and her hands clench behind her back, searching fruitlessly for the handle of an invisible ax.

“Lucky for you, my half-breed, I’m about to ease the suffering. The pool has been running a little dry as of late. It could do with some Glacian iskra even if itisbastardized.” Vasteel’s colorless eyes glint with hunger. “Bring him to the pool,” he calls. “The girl, too.”

“Ryon!” Dawsyn calls again, frantically now.

He does not look to her. He does nothing but limp along as the Glacians prod him toward the King, the pool.

Dawsyn gasps as a sharp nudge into her spine propels her forward. She steps heavily upon the stone, eyes beseeching the back of Ryon’s head.

Look at me, she thinks.Look at me.

“Bring him to the edge.”

Anticipation stirs among the watching noblemen. They rumble and fidget with hunger, with a kind of fervor as Ryon is jostled to the lip, the pool circling before him.

That unnamable substance within seems to know it will be fed. It reaches out, spreading to form a landing place, soft and enticing. It emits breath – Dawsyn can hear it. It is the exhale of a lover, the breeze between branches. It makes her want to come closer to hear its whisper.

Ryon now looks to the pool like one looks to a sanctuary.

“Ryon, look at me! LOOK AT ME!”

“He won’t, young one,” Vasteel jeers, his glittering eyes drinking in Ryon. “The pool speaks to him now. He will not hear you.”

Panic clusters in her chest, fills her throat. He cannot hear; he cannot think clearly.

“It will take a huge amount of concentration,”he told her in the Colony.“This will not work if we can’t keep our heads and shut out the noise.”

It isn’t going to work.

“RYON!”

But his chin remains on his chest, his wrecked stare toward the pool’s call. He is unreachable, even by her.

“I hope it is painful, half-breed, and once we’ve fished you out and thrown you into the Chasm, I hope you feel your bones obliterating within.” Vasteel curls his lip. “A mongrel who tries to take my kingdom deserves far worse.” With that, the Glacian King flicks his white fingers.