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The Terrsaw guards nearest to her break from their steadfast positions. They look amongst one another, their understanding of this battle now changed. Who are they fighting for? For what cause?

“It is over,” Dawsyn says loudly. “And we need not heed to the whims of this pathetic King and his contingent.”

“Ah,” Adrik calls to her. “But you are wrong there, girl. We Glacians must drink after all. I insist on it. We may retreat today if the need arises. But know that we will return in larger numbers every week,every dayif we must,and we will take any human in reach.” Adrik turns to the people of Terrsaw, his voice ripping across the distance. “WE TAKE THE LEDGE PEOPLE NOW,” he roars. “OR WE RETURN TO TAKE YOU ALL!”

Rivdan laughs, a low rumble that does not fail to reach Adrik’s ears. “You were always far-reaching, Adrik,” he says. “I used to think it optimism. Now I know it is only stupidity. How exactly do you propose to take them all?”

“I am theKingof Glacia,” Adrik says righteously, his chin lifted. “And the mixed-blooded that I liberated from the Colony will do whatever I ask of them!”

Rivdan grins then. It is only just visible beneath his unruly beard. He raises his fingers to his lips and whistles once. It is loud and piercing, and at its sounding the reverberations of wings rent the air.

The sky fills with them, hundreds, rising from the trees, and flying toward them. They circle the sky above and Dawsyn watches with her heart in her throat as the archers on the hills change the trajectory of their arrows, tracking the mixed-blooded in flight.

“They do obey their liberator, Adrik,” Ryon says, his expression blank and indifferent. “Though it was never you. Was it?”

Adrik’s mouth gapes as he watches the mixed come to land behind Dawsyn, stretching in a line on either side of her, unsheathing their weapons threateningly, their steel flashing.

And the first lines of Terrsaw guards begin to back away, unsure now, unwilling.

Alvira stumbles forward, madness seemingly having claimed her. “The Ledge-dwellers are beasts!” she screeches, and she hardly resembles the regal Queen her people recognise. “They belong on the mountain, with the rest of the Mother’s base creatures! I will not allow them on this land! I will not allow an ax-wieldingsavagetotake the throne!”

Dawsyn only smiles. She takes the ax from her shoulder and turns it over in her hand. She does not miss the way it makes Alvira recoil. “If I wanted your crown, I’d have passed this ax through your neck and relieved you of it upon our first meeting,” Dawsyn says. “It is what we savages do.”

She raises her ax over her head then, holding it there, and she does not turn to watch as the survivors of the Ledge, the ancestors of the Fallen, move from the trees to join her. But she feels them. She sees it in the eyes of the army before her, in the eyes of Alvira and Adrik. She hears it in the cheers of the Terrsaw civilians. They cry and chant at the approach of the Ledge-dwellers, battered and bruised but returned to the valley. Returned to their own kind.

“Iwillrelieve you of your head now, Your Majesty,” Dawsyn says loudly, cutting through the cheers renting the air. “Unless you surrender.”

“Enough of this!” Adrik calls, summoning his wings. “Give the order!” he commands Alvira.

And Alvira, with lips that shudder with the force of her rage, bares her teeth, then shouts. “ARCHERS! FIRE!”

And the arrows rain down.

They are impossible to see against the night sky. There is only the repeated sound of strings released, and then the pending silence before they land.

“Take cover!” Ryon shouts, but there is nowhere to hide, nowhere to take shelter out here in the open. And though the guards nearest to them have become reluctant, frightened even, the archers atop those hills have not heard the declarations of a maddened Queen. They fire upon her order.

Dawsyn does not duck as the arrows fall. She does not turn her back and run, nor lift her hands to shield her face. Instead, she feels all the blistering heat in her mind combine with the burning cold of her core, and she lets it all out. She allows it to obliterate.

She sends her power into the air, picturing every one of those arrows splintering down to their shafts, and she roars as it escapes her. She wills her body not to splinter with them.

The smell of burning wood fills the air as the arrows explode. All at once, they shatter mid-flight, dropping shards of wood and metal arrowheads harmlessly down to the ground.

Silence follows.

Alvira gapes at the sky, then looks at Dawsyn, shock marring the hatred she is made of.

Dawsyn feels her limbs become lead and her lungs struggle for breath, acutely aware of how empty she is of any remaining power.

Ryon, too. He moves backwards toward her, his swords raised. “You have one last chance to end this now, Alvira,” Ryon says only to her. “You cannot win this fight.”

“That is where you misunderstand me, half-breed,” Alvira says, her maddened eyes set on Dawsyn. “I do not intend to survive another day, if I must surrender this crown.”

And Dawsyn sees it then, that there will be nothing said or done that could dissuade her, nothing could ever satiate the need for power.

“KILL THEM!” she roars to her army, her voice echoing along the hills.

But the army does not heed the call. It rustles with confusion, the men on the frontline unwilling to move forward.