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“And if I should fail?” Dawsyn queries.

“Then it shan’t be the greatest failure at the hands of a mage,” she says, her lips quirking sadly. “And when you meet Baltisse across that bridge, please tell her that I… I am sorry,” she says pleadingly. “And tell her thank you.”

“Thank you for what?”

“For finding you,” Roznier says. “And seeing what you were.”

Before Dawsyn can take apart the words, she feels a warm touch upon her forehead. The last thing she sees is Samskia’s benign smile over her shoulder.

And then everything folds inward.

CHAPTERFORTY-SEVEN

Dawsyn unfolds onto the very incline she had been on that morning.

She gasps as her lungs expand again. Samskia smiles back at her, teeth unnaturally white in the dark. Above them, the moon casts its strange-tinged glow.

Seconds later, Ryon appears. And then Tasheem and Rivdan, all escorted unfolding by the hand of a mage, who quickly disappears once they have delivered their burden onto the slope. Dawsyn can see the hazy barrier of their magical wards ahead.

But Samskia remains. She tilts her head and peers at Dawsyn. “Vey ty sosud yerd iskra,” she whispers.

Dawsyn does not understand it. Cannot begin to fathom the translation, but she feels a lick of heat along her spine at the utterance and it ignites the spark in her mind. She blinks, her mind repeating the tangle of sounds back to her, like an echo.

“What does it mean?”

Samskia only gives her a conspiratorial grin. She turns to where Ryon kneels in the snow, bending to kiss his cheek.

Then she is gone.

Tasheem stands, shaking snow from her woven hair. Rivdan curses and vomits onto the incline.

“What the fuck was that?” Tasheem spits, bending to rest her hands on her knees.

Dawsyn barely hears her words. Her attention is saved for Ryon, who is here, alive.

She goes to him, and he catches her, there on the ground in a clumsy embrace. She holds him tightly, feeling the slide of his stubble against her cheek, the warmth of his breath on her neck. She feels his heart thump between their layers and sighs.

She remembers the last time she set eyes on him, in the Chasm. Both desperate and half-crazed with exhaustion. “I’ve been looking for you,” Dawsyn murmurs once more, so that only he can hear.

His broad shoulders heave with the weight of his own relief and he wraps her up tighter, pressing his lips to the skin beneath her ear. “What took you so long?”

Dawsyn closes her eyes and escapes to the peace of it all, that he is here. That no danger surrounds them.

But Ryon sighs. “The promise that you made–”

“Not yet,” Dawsyn tells him, unwilling to think past this moment. There will be a time to speak of it, to plan and devise and fight about what is to come. But it will keep.

She pulls back and peers at him properly, losing herself in his warm eyes, in the long lashes that frame them, in the lines and shadows of his face. “If you nearly die again, I’ll not forgive you.”

His lips quirk. He presses his forehead to hers. “Yes, you will.”

“Ryon?” comes a voice from higher up the slope. Esra’s. Dawsyn would recognise it amid a blizzard. “SALEM! They’re HERE!”

“Fuck me,” Tash says beneath her breath. “SHUT UP, ESRA! YOU’LL CAUSE AN AVALANCHE!”

Ryon groans and helps Dawsyn stand. “Perhaps we should have left her with the clan.”

Dawsyn smirks.