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“How many guards will leave with you?” Ruby asks.

“Six.” Alvira stares intently at the former captain, daring her to argue, wanting to see if that streak of rebellion still resides.Call me selfish for taking so many,she thinks. But Ruby only nods once more. Alvira continues, “I will take the provisions we need, though without the encumbrance of the slow walkers, I suspect we will end our journey in another day.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Do not tarry,” the Queen warns her. “Our friends in Glacia will be waiting for word.”

“We will put the slowest of them on horses or in carts,” Ruby says, ever-pragmatic. “We will rotate them out and walk through the nights.”

“Good,” Alvira says. “Do not fail.”

Ruby bows her head a moment, then turns on her heel, approaching the first guard in sight to relay the Queen’s orders.

“Fenrick,” Alvira calls now, ushering another guard to her side, though this one has not left the saddle of his horse. A fair boy, no older than sixteen by her estimation, though the armour always tricks the eye to see a grown man. Fenrick lowers his head briefly.

“I trust that you’ll watch the former captain with a steely eye,” she says quietly. She does not allow the boy’s gaze to drop from hers. “The witch as well.”

Lifting his chin, the boy nods. Young men’s egos are so easily stroked.

“Should she appear to divert from the course, you will kill her.”

Again, the boy nods. He puts his fist to his chest. “I will, Your Majesty.”

Queen Alvira leans to pat the boy on the shoulder and then trots on, trusting that the bodies filling her path will scatter as her horse nears.

Soon, she will be rid of this fucking Chasm and back in the arms of her wife. Back in the safety of her palace.

CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE

In his youth, Ryon had been beaten often enough to warrant days of bed rest. He recalls the sensation of minced insides – so battered and sore that he was surely nothing more than pulp beneath the skin.

He feels as such now, ambling along the path. So pitifully tender that he cannot separate the aches.

Tasheem and Rivdan walk ahead of him somewhere. He can hear their low grunts, their tormented breaths. He wonders how much they regret the decision to join him all those months before. Ryon imagines most fates now look more attractive than this.

Esra and Salem stay close by him. They drag their feet as unwillingly as he does, and they fall often. Abertha and Hector help to prop them up when needed. Their bodies are more intimate with the pains of exertion and starvation, and they seem to bear the journey with more grit. But when Ryon catches sight of their faces in the torchlight, he is struck by how gaunt they have become.

Another day and their bodies will begin to fail them completely.

Another day and no amount of determination will help them stand. They will simply wither away in this basin with their useless wings, along with Dawsyn and her expended magic, all of them unable to climb out of the hole they have sunk themselves in.

“Ahead,” Dawsyn’s voice calls, croaky and frail. “Just ahead.”

She says it often, though Ryon is not sure to whom she speaks. Perhaps to herself. She seems convinced that this unknowable end is near. It is likely a shield she holds between herself and the possibility of no end at all. The possibility of failure. After all, rage can only propel a person so far, Ryon knows.

He worries. He worries for what will become of her, what she will have left, if this end should not appear.

Then again, the torment will be short-lived. This Chasm has hovered and bided its time. It will soon swallow them whole.

He hears Dawsyn, but he cannot see her. Her pained breaths are closer than they were before. Perhaps she has slowed, or he has lengthened his strides. It is difficult to tell in the haze of hunger and weakness. The trails of thought run together.

“Ryon?” she says. He has never successfully snuck up on her.

“I’m here.”

He reaches out until his fingers glance off her shoulder, to keep from colliding with her.

“Walk with me,” Ryon says. And he takes her hand in his, feeling the sharp edges of her broken fingernails and the grit caked onto her palm. His hands are no different. “Have you had water?”