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“Near you?” Ryon asks. “They stand little chance.Istood little chance. That entire journey down those slopes with you was torture.” Dawsyn’s fingernails scrape the back of his neck, as he speaks, and he shivers. “Yet, I want to return to those days with you. If I were able, I would.” It is the truth. There have been so few days that have belonged to him and Dawsyn alone. Their beginning seems like a luxury now, time wasted.

Dawsyn shifts, pushing her face out of his periphery and into view. “I want to tell you something,” she says. “But I – I lack the ways to say it.”

“You lack nothing,” Ryon says and means it.

They are coming to land. The Boulder Gate awaits them below. The treetops have thinned. There isn’t a hope that their descent has been left unseen. There are too many of them.

It is with urgency that Dawsyn speaks. The moment Ryon’s feet touch the ground, the words come, and he does not put her down.

“When Baltisse taught me to use the mage magic, she described a light that existed in my mind, something that was shrouded, dim. I’d never noticed it before. Baltisse told me that to find it, I must think of something that brought me happiness, but no memory was strong enough. Nothing of my childhood on the Ledge came close. The only thing that worked… was when I thought of you.” As with anything Dawsyn says, the words are weighted. Sincere. They ring with significance. Ryon does not dare interrupt. He prays she’ll say more.

“It is onlyyouthat I think of when I need to find it,” Dawsyn continues. “There is nothing else strong enough, no other feeling that casts the same light. The magic grows warmer, brighter in your presence. If you depart this world before me, I will never find that light again, because the love I feel for you… it is the ruining kind. I won’t survive it twice.”

Ryon wonders if she has any clue the gift she has given him. They are words enough to eclipse any suffering that might find him next, words enough to win wars.

Ryon tries to speak around the emotion banking up in his throat. “Will you make a deal with me?” he asks her. “It won’t be for your ax this time, I swear it.”

She grins. “Yes.”

“Let’s live through this last fight,” he says, “so that I can fly you away and make you my wife.”

He’d never dared to dream it until just then, in that second, but suddenly he wants it with every fibre of his being. He wants it more than he wants Adrik dead, more than he wants Alvira thwarted.

He wants only Dawsyn Sabar to be his. And he wants to be hers.

Still in his arms, Dawsyn winds hers tighter around his neck. “What makes you think I’m looking for a husband?”

“You just declared your undying love for me.”

“Love and marriage are not the same.” Dawsyn smiles. “What if I tell you no?”

“Then I will ask it each day until you finally give in.”

Dawsyn laughs, the sound of it never failing to make his heart race. She deserves a life of laughter, of love.

“Very well,” she says. “But no rings.”

“No rings,” Ryon agrees. Mother knows they have brought them enough grief. He presses his forehead to hers, savouring the warmth of her eyes. “Do not die,” he says to her once more and vows silently that it will be the last.

Her eyes fall to his mouth. “I never do.” She presses her lips to his, clinging to him with that same fervour he felt the first time she kissed him.

When they part, her feet are set on the ground and all around them the other mixed-Glacians land in the valley for the very first time.

“Stay close to me,” Ryon tells Dawsyn, and it is more for his own comfort than for hers. “Please.”

“Always.”

CHAPTERFIFTY-THREE

The sun barely glances the shoulders of the mixed before it begins its descent, shrouding the valley in shadow. They prowl quietly, slowly through the thick brush of forest that precedes the Fallen Village, but even from this distance the clamour of armour and voices and wings can be heard.

Dawsyn looks behind her, to where Esra, Salem and Hector follow, resolutely ignoring her bids for them to remain behind, near the safety of the Boulder Gate. They all stalk through the darkening forest now, crude weapons in their hands, bodies alert and ready.

“Salem and Esra cannot join this fight,” Dawsyn whispers. She does not know whether the words are intended for Ryon, or for herself.

Ryon merely takes her fingers for a moment, cradles them tenderly in his palm, then lets them go. His silent way of telling her that it is not her choice. Not her life. “I have my eye on them,” he says. “Rivdan and Tasheem will be near.”

Dawsyn is accustomed to the slow approach of death. It has stalked her many times before this one, following her into the fray. She has always traipsed forward with her ax before her, breaths steady, even. No threat seemed greater than the one before. The probability of losing did not sway her path. It did not weight her feet, as it does now.