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“She was dying,” Dawsyn utters. She is unsure if he hears.

Ryon growls again, standing and then lifting Dawsyn onto her feet easily. “And many more might yet die,” he states. “Should I expect that you will sacrifice yourself to save them all?”

Dawsyn does not answer. In truth, her mind is still blanketed by that numbing haze, but she hears his question and thinks:Of course. Of course I will.

Perhaps her silence says enough. Ryon grips her face in his hand, and though his tone is rough, his fingers are controlled. They lock her jaw in place. “We’ve a lot to talk about, you and me,” he says, so low and dangerous, it makes her shiver. “But if you care for me at all, you will consider what it might do to me, should you burn yourself out.”

Rattled, she nods. She wonders if she has ever submitted so quickly to another.

“Mother help me,” he mumbles to himself, eyes leaving her face. He drops his hold and stalks away from her, leaving her to stare at Hector’s outline.

And behind him, the form of another rising.

“Yennes?”

The woman’s lips move, but the words she mouths are soundless.

Dawsyn sags, her lips stretching into a grin.

“She is well,” Hector says, his hand around Yennes’ elbow, ensuring she remains steady. “What happened?”

“Yerdos,” Dawsyn answers coarsely. “Yerdos had her.”

Hector frowns. “The hawk?”

It makes Dawsyn laugh, however wearily.

Yennes weeps quietly and when Hector holds a torch a little closer Dawsyn sees the woman’s clothes are drenched in red.

She goes to her, wrapping her own shaky arms around the woman’s frame. “All is well,” Dawsyn breaths, relief washing through her. “The Chasm should know it can’t have you that easily.”

Yennes’ splutters a weak laugh and for a moment she buries her face into Dawsyn’s shoulder.

An unfamiliar sense of pride fills Dawsyn, to have succeeded, to have accomplished this much.

Yennes’ pulls away and her lips fight to form words. “I’m sorry,” she manages.

“Your mind wasn’t your own,” Dawsyn says, more gently than she knew herself capable.

“The voices… they have lived with me. All this time.” When Yennes opens her eyes again, Dawsyn can almost see the ghosts in them, lurking beneath the surface, tormenting Yennes long after she left the Chasm, and reclaiming her when she appeared within it once more.

Dawsyn thinks of the slithering whispers that plagued her own mind for just a few days and cannot imagine the torture of it making a home there, year after year. Dawsyn thinks of the iskra within Yennes’ blood, keeping Yerdos and her madness at bay.

“They won’t speak to you anymore,” Dawsyn tells her, brushing her cheek with the pad of her thumb. “You’ll banish them.”

She tells Yennes about Moroz and how they will use it to rid them all of infection.

Yennes smiles at her as Dawsyn speaks. It is despondent, and does not hold for long, but Dawsyn is calmed by it. Once more, she feels the awakening of true hope. Despite her waned magic, she feels, for the first time, powerful enough to defeat this Chasm and deliver each one of them to its end.

Surely it exists. Some innate knowledge tells her so, and if these obstacles were made to keep them from finding it then they will lay them to waste.

“Yennes, you and I can cure the rest, we must–”

But her words are swallowed by the sudden uproar of voices, shouting from the south. Dawsyn stands abruptly, reaching for her ax.

Hector pulls forth a dagger and stares in the same direction – into the interminable darkness that roars back to them. A collection of angry shouts and the contact of flesh.

“For fuck’s sake,” Hector growls. “How can they possibly muster the energy to fight now?”