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“When the time comes,” Ryon says. “Pick them off first.”

Adrik stretches his lips into an unconvincing smile. His eyes widen in something like disbelief. “You live, deshun,” he calls loudly, and his teeth seem unwilling to part. “Tell me, how is it that you always manage to crawl your way out of death’s clutch?”

Black hatred climbs Ryon’s throat. “It is no hardship. I simply give him your name and promise to bring you in my stead.”

Adrik’s gaze darkens considerably. A flash of wing appears over his shoulder, but it disappears just as quickly. “I should have kept you in the Colony, deshun,” he says now, voice cold. Gone is the careless tone. The only thing left is annoyance, a gnawing sense of irritation at being unable to foil this one recurring foe. “I’ve given you the misconception that you were worth more than your bastard breeding suggests.”

The comment does not rankle Ryon as it once did. After all, he is the son of a Ledge woman. If there is anything righteous in his blood, it was bred of her. “It was not I who put on a stolen crown and called myself royalty. That is a trespass only the two ofyoushare,” Ryon looks to Alvira as he says it, spotting the crown on her head, dull and tarnished in the dusk.

“Where is she?” Alvira asks now. Her watery eyes have lost their hardened edge. She seems almost untethered. Skittish. Her sights dart to every corner of the Fallen Village, to the forest beyond. They search frenetically and find nothing. “Where is the girl?”

Ryon smirks despite the gravity of the affair, despite the whisper of death swirling around their ankles. “Which girl?”

“Sabar,”the Queen spits. She alights from her horse clumsily. She paces to gain a better vantage of the land over Ryon’s shoulder. She barely takes heed of the Glacian beside her, the ones before her, the army behind. Every facet of her seems intent on finding Dawsyn. “I know she is here.Where is she?”

“Is she dead, Mesrich?” Adrik says, grinning hopefully, as though this one factor might cheer him.

“Of course she isn’tdead,you fucking imbecile,” the Queen rants, her breaths coming heavier, faster. “Ofcourseshe isn’t! DAWSYN!” the Queen screeches. “FACE ME NOW! DO NOT HIDE IN THE SHADOWS LIKE A COWARD!”

Ryon tilts his head to the side. He gives a huff of laughter to see the Queen’s cheeks ruddy, her eyes bulging with the force of her cry. “She will wait in the shadows until she is ready to greet you, Alvira,” Ryon allows, and he watches the flash of panic grip her momentarily. “I dare say she watches you now.”

The Queen’s mask is gone. Only a mad woman remains, her collar and bodice speckled with blood so dark, it could be ink. She blanches again and turns her back to Ryon. “READY THE ARCHERS!” she cries and Ryon hears the order passed on down the line, reaching into the hills.

His stomach jolts. “Where is your wife?” he asks, the attempt to distract made successful when Alvira’s shoulders bunch, when her feet halt in place. And Ryon needs no further information than that. He need only see the way the Queen’s chin drops toward the spattered fabric on her chest. “We expected to find Cressida in these hills,” Ryon continues, hoping fiercely that Dawsyn has found a way through the fence, that she is leading its prisoners into the trees.

Alvira turns to him, her eyes alight with hatred, with bitterness. “I am sure you did,” she says, her voice shaking with the force of her rage. Tears slip over her cheek, though she pays them no mind. Ryon is unsure if the Queen notices how she teeters where she stands, if she feels the shaking of her frame. “Did you and the Sabar girl laugh together, knowing my own wife was plotting to overthrow me?”

Ryon says nothing, he merely waits as the Queen unravels, ribbons of her unspooling at her feet.

She nods, as if to herself. “Yes. You must have. How you must have celebrated to learn of it! You must have thought yourself victorious before the battle had even begun.She made a fool of me,”she growls, spittle collecting at the corners of her mouth. “You made a fool of me,” she says, not to Ryon, but to the wind. She runs clawed fingers through her hair. “You abandoned me.” Alvira’s face collapses in pain for a moment. She breathes against the waves of whatever emotion tries to overthrow her, but they do not win. Soon, the lines on her face vanish, her eyes become dangerously large and unblinking. “I ran a knife through my wife’s heart,” she tells them all, detached and hollow. “I’m afraid she will not be here this night.”

Ryon wonders what colour her blood will be when they cut her, or whether she has bargained it all away to make her wretched deals. He wonders if it will be as black and cold as the heart that homes it.

Thunder rumbles.

It is the type of thunder that moves slowly, grows discreetly, until it eclipses all other sound. Until it shakes the ground beneath your feet.

Ryon raises his sword, fearing the battalion of men on the hills have begun advancing, but a thousand heads are turning to the direction of the sound. They look toward the south, where the first torches become visible. A handful of orange specks, that soon become a sea, spilling over the unoccupied hills.

Alvira and Adrik call for the men to halt, shouting incessant orders as the people come. As the sea nears, faces become discernible beneath torchlight. Men, women and children of Terrsaw, in their labourers’ clothing or noble attire. By cart or wagon or horseback or on foot. Hundreds and hundreds of them are added to the hills before the Fallen Village, some with knifes at their belt, but most without a weapon at all. They are not dressed for battle. They arrive in no formation, and as they spot the winged creatures in the failing light, they halt. Some scream and back away, unaware of the battlefield they have invited themselves upon.

Ryon sees Alvira dither, sees her try to retreat into the folds of her guards, and he means to call to her, but he is saved the trouble.

“Alvira!”comes Dawsyn’s voice from his back. And he looks to see her approaching him, her ax resting upon her shoulder. “Do not go so soon.”

CHAPTERFIFTY-FIVE

Two swings of her ax. Three. Four. Hold and breathe.

Swing again.

The pattern returns to her like a loyal friend, moving familiar muscles in familiar ways. She swings the ax into the unstripped timber posts, buried hastily into the ground. The fence is no match for those born on the Ledge.

Two posts are felled quickly, and it is all they need. They split with a weak-sounding crack. Hector catches them before they can clatter to the earth.

Within, Ruby waits, a crowd of her guards on either side of her, whispering fiercely among the crowd.

Dawsyn slides her arm through the gap and gestures for Ruby to hurry,hurry.