Page 140

The first is that there is no other way to destroy the pool.

The second is the surety that there will always be someone willing to use it, as long as it still exists.

The third is that her own life is not such a great sacrifice.

And the final certainty is that Ryon will never allow her to make it.

They fly to Glacia knowing the task ahead won’t be clean or even quick. It may take weeks to find a way into the palace, maybe more. Rivdan and Tasheem shake their heads doubtfully. “It will be a hive, Dawsyn,” Tash says. “Every member of the Izgoi will be within its walls.”

“It’s the only path left,” Dawsyn tells the others, not meeting their eyes. “Killing Adrik is the only chance we have left.”

“And if we fail?” Hector asks, his hand gripping Esra’s. Dawsyn wonders if she shouldn’t have left them all behind. Kept them from the relentless pursuit of danger.

But she looks around at them, her friends: Rivdan and Tasheem, who abandoned their home to help her; Hector, who was dragged into their circle of bandits; Abertha, who she cannot look at without seeing Maya; Esra and Salem, who have suffered much and offered her more comfort and affection than she ever deserved… and then Ryon, who chose to tether himself to someone such as her, knowing she would drag him over precipices.

She cannot abandon them now. She is past the point of pretending she’d rather court loneliness.

No. She’d rather this. Or rather, she needs them. A terrifying proposition.

“If we fail,” Dawsyn says, swallowing. “Then we’ll know… we’ll know we took every measure. We turned every stone.”

“And you would be satisfied with that?” Hector pushes, eyes narrowing. “With letting fate decide what happens to people like us?”

Dawsyn’s eyes flicker to Ryon’s before she can bid them not to. He is staring at her intently, awaiting an answer she cannot possibly deliver with any measure of honesty. No matter how her tongue tries to shape the words, they will never sound true. Not to her. Certainly not to him.

But it is not time to break her promise. Not yet.

“No,” she finally says, opting for a modicum of honesty. “I won’t be satisfied. But there are worse things to live with. I will learn to live with this. Perhaps the future will bring us another opportunity, another path.”

“A path you needn’t walk,” Rivdan says now. “It is not your burden, Dawsyn. You only think it so.”

Dawsyn grimaces, for how many have said the same? How many have told her to set down the weight she carries? How to tell them that she’ll feel it still, despite the distance?

If not me, then who?She wants to shout it, bellow it.

Instead, she gives a thin smile. “Wherever I go, I won’t be walking,” she says. “A hybrid once made me a promise and I intend to make sure he keeps it.” She turns to Ryon and finds him looking straight through her.

“I’ll take you there now, malishka,” he says, voice hollow. “Just ask me.”

It is so ardent that she looks away again. She sheaths her ax. “Not yet,” she says, unable to bear the feeling of being turned inside out. How remarkable and dangerous it is, to be seen all the way through.

“I, for one, will be opening my own tavern, if anyone was wondering,” Esra says, slinging his arm over Hector’s shoulder. “Called,Well Hung.”

“No one was wonderin’, Es.”

“I’ll be getting the fuck off this mountain if I can,” Tasheem shudders. “If I ever come back, it will be too fucking soon.”

“What will you do, Bertie?” Hector asks, nudging the girl with his elbow. “Once all this is over?”

Abertha considers for a moment. “I want to see the valley,” she says, looking surreptitiously at Dawsyn. “I want to see where we came from.”

Dawsyn wonders if it will be possible for someone like her to make a life in the valley and leave their origins behind. She hopes so. She prays for it.

She listens to each of them, making their plans to carry on. They sound to Dawsyn as fantastical as walking through the Chasm, as unlikely as a pool of dark magic. She wishes she could feel the draw of contentedness that they feel, the nearness of peace.

To her, peace feels idealistic. Naïve. How nice it must be, to feel its proximity.

“Come,” she says to them, though her boots are heavy. Already, she wishes to turn back. “We can celebrate in Esra’s godforsaken tavern after the task is done.”