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He is a shadow. His bare chest and arms hold bruises that make her stomach turn over. Every breath seems laborious. He trembles with each pull, moments from collapse.

Tasheem and Rivdan are worse. Rivdan lies sideways in the snow, and Dawsyn is not certain he is alive at all. Tasheem sways, blood dripping from her mouth.

The ecstasy that had filled Dawsyn is gone instantly. In its place, she is filled only with cold certainty.

She tears her eyes from Ryon and looks at Roznier beside her, who smiles radiantly down at her clan and has the righteousness to speak of peace. Dawsyn’s ax is within her hand in a moment. It is at Roznier’s throat in the next.

Silence falls. Quickly and terribly.

There is only one who breaks it, and it comes in the form of gentle melodic laughter. The mage named Samskia runs her finger down Ryon’s cheek and watches Dawsyn with glee.

Roznier turns slowly toward Dawsyn. Her eyes flit down to the ax blade, as though it were a curiosity and not the thing piercing the skin of her throat. “Interesting,” she murmurs, then looks at Dawsyn anew, her eyes filled with flames. “Though, not intelligent.”

Pain grips Dawsyn then, curling her insides upon themselves and reducing her to a squirming, screeching ball on the ground. The ax falls beside her head.

“Do not pick it up, Dawsyn Sabar,” Roznier says from above. “Baltisse may have taught you tricks, but she has not taught you enough for this.”

Dawsyn pants, struggling to raise herself from the ground. “Let him go,” she grunts, then again, louder. “Let himgo!”

Roznier looks at the Glacians, ten of them at least, in various states of decline before the fire. She raises her eyebrows, clearly at a loss in understanding her pleads.

“Dawsyn,”Ryon says, his voice reed thin. She can barely hear it. But she gets to her feet and staggers toward him. There is no thought connected to the action. She simply knows she must go to him. Fix him. Now. She stumbles, crawls, falls.

She rounds the fire in moments and crashes to her knees in front of him, shuddering at the extent of his injuries and the deep, dark circles around his eyes. She presses her hands to his face; ignores the way they shake.

He leans into her touch, closing his eyes.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she tells him, the words breaking as she releases them.

He smiles weakly. “I’ve been waiting.”

Dawsyn presses her forehead to his and closes her eyes. She finds the light is already there waiting. Already joined by the iskra that will seep out of her and into him, repairing everything that threatens to tear him away from her.

“Ishveet,” Dawsyn says, and the magic gives way. It floods into him, as though it knows how interlaced their existences are. As though his healed parts are hers as well. The magic pours and somewhere outside of herself she can feel white light encasing them. Blocking out all else.

When it fades, Dawsyn opens her eyes, and they find his – bottomless and familiar. Saturated in adoration. “Hello, malishka,” he whispers.

CHAPTERFORTY-FIVE

Ryon hears the word whispered around the clearing, rising to the strange moon above them “Malishka?” They say, passing it between them. A question.

But Samskia cackles again in her deep timbre, watching Ryon and Dawsyn exultantly. “Did I not tell you, night wing?” she says to Ryon. “I told you your woman would find you this night!”

“What is this?” another mage demands. Ryon recognises her. She was here the last time he had become ensnared within the mountain clan’s traps. A tall woman with black hair.

“A fated pairing, Roznier!” Samskia says and she makes to approach Dawsyn. Ryon tries to move his hands to come between them, but his wrists remain bound. His strength may have returned, but the tangles of roots still rise from the earth and bite into his flesh, holding him there.

Dawsyn pulls a blade from her side and holds it in line with one of Samskia’s eyes. The mage merely turns cross-eyed, completely unperturbed. “Unbind him,” Dawsyn says, promising death in every syllable.

“She is foul-tempered, night wing,” Samskia says in the old language. “I relish the foul-tempered ones.”

Dawsyn does not drop her blade nor her sights. “What is she saying?”

“That you are… spirited.”

The mage called Roznier tsks. “Lower the blade, Sabar. There is no need to fight.”

“Cut him free,” Dawsyn repeats, “and I shall do whatever you wish.”