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“Shhh,” Ryon says, his lips in her hair.

“They left,” she mumbles. “Ruby… Yennes–”

“Will pay,” Ryon interjects, though his voice is a croon, said to appease her. “I’ll make them pay.”

“Alvira… she’ll… she’ll kill them.”

“We do not know that.”

“I did this,” Dawsyn says now and here lies the crux of her failure, the core of her torment. For no one else slung half-truths and false promises. She sees Nevrak in her mind and hears his accusations and he was right. He was right.

“It is done, malishka,” Ryon tells her. “It’s done now.”

“You told me it was a mistake,” Dawsyn continues, squeezing her eyes shut as new pain washes through her. Shame. Regret. “And now they are at the mercy of the Queen, and they have no idea what she’ll do.”

“Stop, Dawsyn.”

“I – I should have told them,” she cries quietly, her chest heaving. “I have killed them all.”

“Enough.”

“I tried,” Dawsyn says, louder now. Her hands grip Ryon’s arms. They claw at them. “I tried tosavethem!”These last words are unleashed. They ricochet. The echoes build in her mind, in her belly, until every part of her begs for release and she screams. She beats her head to the ground and roars her devastation into the dirt.

All of it was for nothing.

All of it.

Ryon waits until the scream tapers and turns to pants, to sniffling. He waits until her nails retract from the skin on his arms, and when she is finally quiet and still once more, save for the tremors that come unbidden, he rolls her over.

She cannot see him. He is merely a series of shadow. But she can picture him. She imagines his brown eyes, pulling her apart and fracturing her senses. She can see the short, tightly curled black hair that one can lose their fingers in. She sees the scruff that lines his jaw, his chin, the slope of his nose and indents of his cheekbones. She could draw the curve of his eyebrows from memory.

That is how often she has looked and memorised and marvelled. She knows him by heart.

“Ruby betrayed us,” he says. “Yennes, too. Alvira. Cressida, Vasteel, Adrik. These are the ones responsible for the fate of those people. It is not you who should shoulder their blame.”

“I promised them safety.”

“And you were the only one in fifty years brave enough to attempt it.”

Dawsyn swallows the fresh wave of emotion that threatens to pull her back under. She lifts her shaky fingers in the dark and finds Ryon’s lips. She traces them.

Then she presses her mouth to his, and for a moment, she is transported out of the Chasm. She feels his breath mingle with hers, the soft, safe warmth of him surrounding her.

“Your wings,” Dawsyn says when they part, though she cannot bear to move further than an inch. “Will they heal?”

“Ah,” Ryon answers, his voice a low rumble. “You needn’t worry. I have the benefit of travelling with a mage who loves me.”

Dawsyn smiles weakly, though he cannot see it. “I do,” she says. “Love you.”

“I know you do.”

Around them, Dawsyn can hear the others beginning to rise and move. She hears the stones scatter with their footsteps, the pained grunts as they fight their fresh injuries.

She expended her magic when she healed Yennes, moments before the woman betrayed them all. How cruel fate is, to twist the knife ever deeper.

“Ugh. My fucking ears are bleeding, Salem,” comes a voice, louder than the sombre occasion could ever warrant.

“A taste o’ yeh own medicine,” a harsher voice grunts. “Me ears’ve been bleedin’ from the sorry second we met.”