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“We continue down the path,” he says in lieu of anything serviceable.

“And when we grow too tired? Half are sick. More will become sick still.”

A tendril of panic unspools in his stomach to hear her resolution waver.

“We carry on,” he says firmly. “Whatever ails them, it does not seem so sinister. As long as they remain on their feet, there is hope.”

“I feel it,” she whispers to him. It is a secret breathed into the fabric of his shirt. “This infection. It has hold of me. It speaks.”

The panic blooms. Avoicespeaking to her? Cajoling her? “What does it say?” he demands. For a moment, she is silent, and Ryon thinks she won’t relay it, that she’ll crawl back within the armour she has forged and withdraw.

But then the words come.

“It wants me to surrender,” she confesses, the way a starved man speaks of supper. The words curl with deep yearning. It is a voice Ryon does not recognise in her. Not in this human, so impervious. So strong.

“Yennes said the Chasm was not empty,” Ryon growls, his pulse jumping, muscles tensing. “Perhaps she spoke of more than one threat.”

Dawsyn nods, pulling her body away from Ryon’s, likely feeling how cool his blood has become.

“Do not heed it, malishka,” Ryon says suddenly, taking her jaw in his hands, angling her face to his. “Do you hear me?”

She turns her cheek into his palm, then nods.

Too easy, the submission comes.

“All right,” she says, though her voice is a faint imitation. “Time to march on.”

Ryon stays to the middle of their convoy as they journey, as he has done each day. He cannot see Dawsyn who leads, or Tasheem who herds the stragglers. Indeed, he can only see the faint outline of those closest to him.

But he hears them all. The straggled breaths, bodies hitting earth as they stumble, the pained cries as they glance their shins and knees along the hazardous path, littered by invisible traps.

And the coughing. The coughing is all around.

“I can hold that awhile, Ryon.” Yennes appears at his shoulder. He can just make out the familiar profile of her face. She taps the torch in his hand.

His arm has been growing weary from holding it aloft. Ryon passes it to her. “Thank you.”

“No trouble.” Her words always seem so muted, so hesitant around him. And he cannot help but feel uneasy around her in return. Perhaps it is her innate furtiveness, her skittishness rubbing off on him.

“Tell me,” she says in a voice that could be aloof if it weren’t so timid. “You grew up in the Colony, or the palace?”

Ryon is taken aback by the question. “You know of the Colony?”

“Tasheem and I have spoken some.”

Ryon hesitates a moment. “The Colony,” he relents. “I made my way into the palace when I was full-grown.”

A pause, and then, “How did you manage it?”

He sighs. It isn’t a tale he enjoys telling – one full of deception, fouled remembrances, old ties. Even more unpleasant, that he should tell it to a near stranger.

But Yennes was a friend of Baltisse. Someone she had trusted enough with Dawsyn’s life. Yennes has aided them greatly, helped Dawsyn, closed his wounds. His distrust in her is irrational at best. She deserves his leniency.

“I had a… friend,” he begins. “A Glacian noble. He trained me to fight, looked over me as I grew. He eventually persuaded the King to permit my entrance into the palace. As a servant.”

Yennes is quiet, but he can feel her practically vibrating, absorbing each word. “And that was what you wanted?” she asked. “To leave the Colony?”

“It was what needed to be done, to learn the ways to tear down the palace.”