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“You know my wishes,” Yennes says. “They have not changed.”

Alvira says nothing. Only seethes at having been thwarted.

“I brought you here,” Yennes continues. “And I only bade you to leave the others, to let them go their separate ways. But if you will not abide that condition, then I will make it so.”

Alvira’s lips curl into a cruel, mirthless smirk. “Such a backbone you’ve acquired since we last spoke.”

Yennes falls quiet, awaiting the Queen’s answer.

I saved you,Dawsyn thinks at the woman.I trusted you.

“So be it,” Alvira says. “Let her pass.”

Carefully, Yennes passes through the barrier, the iskra parting upon her presence and then sealing behind her. The Terrsaw guards do not advance upon her as she approaches. They allow her to disappear within their folds.

Yennes gives one last parting glance to Ryon and Dawsyn before she vanishes from sight.

“Let us make way,” Alvira says now. She gives Dawsyn one last appraisal, her lips turning upward. “These vermin are near enough to death that we should not mind.”

Alvira pulls on her reigns and turns. The frontline of guards retreat with their eyes glued to the barrier, lest it fall. The Ledge-dwellers meander away, not bothering to glance back at Dawsyn. They leave her on the basin floor.

But the captain of the guard hesitates. Her horse paces nervously on the spot as she stalls. Her expression pained.

“When next we meet,” Dawsyn says, and she does not know if the words reach Ruby’s ears. “Run.”

As Dawsyn’s vision blackens there on the ground, so too does the Chasm, the light of the Terrsaw guards receding, taking away their captives. They herd them back to Terrsaw in much the same way they were first herded to the Ledge and Dawsyn’s last thought is to wonder which fate will prove worse.

The world blackens once more.

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

Beaten, broken and bloody, the liberators of the Ledge lie strewn.

The glow of the barrier that saved them is dulling, beginning to curl in on itself. Dawsyn watches it recede from her place on the ground. She follows the filigree of frost with her eyes as it diminishes, the glow eventually fading. She remains staring long after the Chasm is returned to its lightless void.

If the others are conscious, they do not make it known. She assumes they lie dormant as she does, paralysed by disbelief, the slow ruining of this failure quietly splintering them.

She is amidst collapse. She can feel every torturous degree of it. The slow-moving avalanche that builds momentum with every gained inch. Soon, she will be nothing but rubble.

So close to the end,she thinks to the sky, over and over. It is a loop she cannot break.How could we come so close, only to fail?

She still feels it – that other side is within her grasp, and yet it might as well be a thousand miles more. Her people are gone.

Dawsyn rolls onto her side and stays there a while. She listens to the gentle tap of her tears sliding off the bridge of her nose onto stone. She is struck anew with the thought of staying there on the ground, and never getting up.

Only there is no whisper this time to tempt her. No bodiless voice coaxing her to lay down and die, but for the one in her mind.

She hears a groan. It is, perhaps, the only thing more unbearable than her own pain.

“Ryon,” she mouths silently, and her lip trembles.

Then, as though she’d summoned him aloud, sounds of scuffling come from beside her. More sounds of pain. An arm encircles her. It wraps around her stomach and pulls her back into the hard, warm planes of a familiar embrace. She feels his breaths on the delicate skin behind her ear, his weight pressing into her, and despite the jolt of pain it sends through her shoulder, she is grateful. She is relieved.

It is far less painful to break here, in the safety of his arms.

Her chest gives way. Her sobs are noiseless, but she shakes with the might of them, and Ryon only holds on tightly. He pulls her in even closer when it seems all restraint is lost. He keeps her there and does not allow her to lurch herself over the precipice of oblivion.

“They’re gone,” she whispers hoarsely, pushing the words beyond the shuddering of her body.