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For the first time since their meeting, Ryon finally recognises her as not a woman diminished of spirit, but a woman unafraid.

A woman born of the Ledge.

Ryon reaches for his sword.

“Farra?” a voice impedes.

The name, so out of place, echoes through the chamber of Ryon’s chest. A name rarely spoken, and yet it is said aloud now, of all places. Of all times.

It is Phineas who speaks. With his wrists bound, he stumbles forward into Ryon’s periphery. His sights are set on Yennes, his expression aghast, awed. “Farra,” he speaks again.

Yennes’ lips press into a thin line. “Phineas,” she replies, as if the two were familiar with one another. As if they were acquaintances of old, meeting unexpectantly.

Ryon’s chest is amid slow collapse. His mind does not find sense immediately. It does not connect the pieces the rest of him already has. He hears his mother’s name and cannot fathom it.

Yennes is watching him, and him alone. It is a familiar stare. Curious and intense. Pained and uneasy. She had watched him often before they all became wise to her deceit.

No,Ryon thinks simply. He says nothing. He does not advance. Indeed, he could not will his body to move if he begged it. He is vaguely aware of his hand grasping his sword and the way it shakes. Somewhere outside of himself, he feels the warm touch of Dawsyn’s fingers, holding his forearm.

“You’re alive,” Phineas says, the words steeped in his own disbelief. And then he seems to remember himself, remember his company, and his eyes dart to Ryon.

Ryon only sees the woman before him. A woman who fled Glacia decades ago. A woman with skin like his own.

“Ryon,” she says now, her voice soft and breaking. He hears it still. Her hand lifts, reaches for him.

“Farra,” Dawsyn says. It is not a call, but an expulsion, as though she tests the name, and upon hearing it again, the woman before Ryon turns toward it despite herself. “Youare Farra?” Dawsyn asks quietly.

Yennes, the survivor, keeps her liquid stare on Ryon as she nods.

His mother.

She pulls in a deep breath, her attention on Ryon unwavering. “I am sorry,” she tells him, tears spilling over her cheeks, but she keeps her shoulders back, her chin up, and her hands do not furl together.

It is anger that strikes Ryon first. He can feel it burning in the centre of his stomach, slowly rising. “Humans cannot survive the bearing of a Glacian child,” he says. It is all he can think of to say, anything to deny what is standing before him. A dead mother is preferable to a traitorous one.

As though she can read his thoughts, his quiet seething, Yennes’ lips tremble, but she stares still. “I should have died,” she nods, agreeing with him. “Many times, I’ve feared it would have been wiser.”

Silence followed. Cold and wrenching. Ryon merely waited. He waited for something sensical to rise from the quiet.

Yennes sighed. “You took a long time to come,” she begins, voice uneven. “I laboured for hours. All through the night, and then when you finally came… I did not mind at all that I would die, because I had seen your face. I had held you against me and felt your warmth, your strong heart and I’d never felt so sure of something.” She almost smiles. Almost. “Dying didn’t seem such a great price to pay for you to live. I should have died.” She seems to say it to herself. Her voice recedes to a mutter. Her eyes turn distant.

“Your father saved her, deshun,” Phineas says now, his drawn face pleading with Ryon’s. “He carried her into the palace and he meant for her to drink from the pool, but…”

“But the brutes found us,” Yennes – Farra – says. The term ‘brute’ snags on his mind again, a word Yennes had used in his presence. A word only those familiar with the Colony would use. “They threw me into the pool instead and something within me still had enough strength to fight. The thought that my soul would linger here inside them… I could not allow it.”

The sick ire in his stomach only burns hotter. “And my father?” he asks, and perhaps she can hear the pain he feels, because she flinches.

“They took his wings,” she says, closing her eyes. “He went into the Chasm, and then–”

“Phineas saved you,” Ryon finishes for her, looking to the Glacian in question. The male nods, looking as ancient as he should.

“Your father loved her,” he murmurs sadly. “However foolishly.”

“Foolish indeed,” Ryon says icily. “I wonder if he’d have guessed we would one day find each other again, only for you to lie to me. Deceive me.”

“That is not–”

“Tell me, Farra,” Ryon continues, cutting her voice in two. “Why not tell me you bore me? I may have warmed to you, relied on you. Surely every worthwhile fraud knows the best manipulation is to make someone care for you?”