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“Old enough to remember more,” Dawsyn accuses. “You knew that Valma Sabar was Terrsaw royalty.”

Nevrak levels her with a derisive stare. His lip curls. “Course we knew,” he says, and the plurality catches Dawsyn off guard. “She came screaming into that village while it burned, got snatched up just like the rest of us. Knocked the crown right off her head.”

Dawsyn bristles at the resentment in his voice. “She came to warn you all,” she says. “To tell you to run.”

“And it was too fucking late.” Nevrak’s tongue flicks over his lip, jaw rolling. “Likely it was her frumped-up skirts that slowed her down, and she got herded up that mountain just like the rest of us, weeping and pleading with the Glacians the entire way. Woman had never known a day of discomfit in her life.”

Bile crawls up Dawsyn’s throat. Nevrak’s description is much like the one Dawsyn would give Alvira or Cressida. But never Valma. Her grandmother was the opposite of pomp and privilege. The image of bravery. Even Dawsyn’s imagination cannot conjure a realm that would have seen Valma Sabar stooping to beg for mercy.

Dawsyn wants to argue, to reject the insult to her grandmother’s name, but Nevrak is speaking freely now, his eyes glazed with memory, and she resists the urge to stop him.

“We were thrown on that Ledge with nothing but a few scraps of food, and the fighting started straight away, as you can imagine. The princess stopped it. Started decreeing laws and ordering folk about. They all listened to her at first,” Nevrak comments. “She was royalty, after all. Bossy. Put her nose in everything. Wanted everything divided fairly,” Nevrak chuckles, as though it was unthinkable. “Thing is, up there on the Ledge, people soon figured royalty didn’t mean a fucking thing. Weeks went by and there was no sign of King Sabar’s calvary. No one came to find us, to save us. And here was another Sabar, still dangling her rank and dishing orders. They got sick of her mighty fast, I’ll tell you. At some point, a fellow challenged her,” Nevrak’s tone turns darker, dangerous. “She’d hoarded some food for herself, or so he’d said. He demanded that she give it up,” Nevrak shakes his head. “When she refused, the man fisted her hair, and dragged her to her feet. He pulled her all the way to the Chasm, kicking and screaming.”

Dawsyn’s palms grow icy at the thought.

“Some folks tried to stop him, but even more held ’em back. They were angry at the entire monarchy, see? The palace had failed them, failed to rescue them from the Ledge. People were dying in the snow each day, and still no one came. I think it were pure frustration. We were all maddening more ’n more each day. That man pulled your grandmother all the way to the ice, and just as he was about to let her slip over, she pulled a knife out of nowhere and shunted it into the base of his mouth. Pushed it all the way to the hilt. We watched him sag onto the ice, and it carried him all the way down and into this fucking hole.” Nevrak shakes his head, the memory still confounding him. “He weren’t the only one to try and take their vexation out on her, either,” he continues. “It became clear that the Ledge had no leader. Your grandmother slunk away just as the rest of us did. We armed ourselves and stayed vigilant. Trusted only a small few. I don’t remember a single person deferring to her after that day. She weren’t royalty, just a prisoner, as we all were. And we all knew that only the lucky few would survive that place. Only the hardiest. The most pragmatic. Your grandmother knew it, same as the rest of us.”

Dawsyn shakes her head, swallowing that unnameable emotion that threatens to weaken her voice. “And not one person thought to mention to me, or to my sister, that we were the granddaughters of a crown princess?”

Nevrak chuckles darkly then, ending on another forceful cough that bends his back. “And why would they bother themselves to? The last time I heard someone refer to your grandmother’s rank, I had not a single hair on my chest, and she tacked their hand to a tree with an ax,” Nevrak shrugs. “She gave up the title long before you lived, girl, and we heeded her warning. The Ledge has no royalty.”

Nevrak nods to Dawsyn and falls back, allowing her to walk on ahead with her torch, with her eyes squinting into the dark, with her mind on the Ledge and her grandmother, where she’d denounced her own title with a blade.

A princess made a monster.

And now a monster made a princess.

CHAPTERFIVE

Thirty years before Yennes re-entered the Chasm, she was pulled from its mouth.

The sea had clawed for her ankles, the tide ravenous. It strained to take her into its grasp, beneath its surface. An hour she had stood there at the tips of the tide’s fingers, warring with fear. And all the while, the voices that filled her sung of different paths.

They had taunted her since she’d found herself in the Chasm’s basin. They had followed her here, to the very end.

Slice the limb, rid the ache.

She had run from its call. Run until her feet bled, until her chest felt torn to shreds.

Cease your breath.

“How?” Yennes had said aloud. Days, she’d spent in the Chasm. Days of torturous sameness. Of darkness. Of whispers for company. But there at its edge, facing not a safe harbour, but an ocean, she felt the first tremors quake within her. She was so tired.

Whatever valour she’d been made of before had been leeched from her. Now she cracked.

She could not cross the ocean.

Cease your breath,the Chasm whispered to her, from a refuge deep within.

“How?” she asked again, eager to be shown any end to her suffering.

Go into the water,it bid her.

And suddenly her mind was filled not with the thrashing of water on rock, nor the hammering of her own blood, but the burnt horizon, where the orange bled to tender pink. The world turned silent but for the whispers that bid her forward.

The water is warm, it waits.

Where before the water seemed frenzied and vicious, it now slowed. She could see the careful undulation of each wave, each ripple that grew and peaked. It was suddenly beautiful. Gentle.