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She speaks to you,Dawsyn thinks. “I am not Moroz!” Desperation leaks into her voice. “I want no fight with you!”

But Yerdos only laughs, and it sizzles against Dawsyn’s skin.

“What do we do?” Hector mutters, again and again. “What do we do?”

“Don’t move!” Ryon orders. Abertha has scrambled to her feet again, tears streaming down her face. “Stay down.”

“We cannot fight it, brother,” Rivdan says, and he does not try to keep the fear from his voice.

“Saint Yerdos,” Salem whispers. Dawsyn can hear his gruff voice, whispering to himself. “It is her.”

But the woman on the bridge no longer resembles a saint. She appears, from this distance, just a woman. She paces back and forth, her hands clenching. And though her hair glows fiery red and she moves with undue grace, she brings to mind an image Dawsyn has long since forgotten.

An image of Briar Sabar, stalking before their cabin on the Ledge, impatient for Dawsyn and Maya to return.

Dawsyn sees her guardian, hermotheronce more: red-faced, hands clenching, pacing with predatory deliberation. Dawsyn and Maya had been due back in the cabin by nightfall and the sun had retreated over the Face.

“Get inside,”she had said without further preamble.“And do not bother with excuses. One can only tease the thread of a woman so thin. You do not want to see me frayed.”

Yerdos looks like a woman frayed.

Avengeful mage,Esra had called her. Taken from her home by a king who slayed her clan and dragged her back to his castle.One can only tease the thread of a woman so thin.

Dawsyn rises unsteadily.

“Dawsyn! Stay down,” Ryon grunts, pulling on her wrist.

But, unbearably, Dawsyn slips his grasp.

“What are youdoing?”

Dawsyn does not quite know. She does not take her eyes from Yerdos’ form. “I… I must go to her.”

“Are you mad?” Tasheem splutters, choking on smoke. “Dawsyn, no!”

Dawsyn’s eyes water with the intensity of the heat. Her throat stings with each inhalation, but she draws breath to say what she must. “We’ve reached the end,” she tells them all, her eyes locking with Ryon’s. They implore her to stop. Beg her. “And there is no way out,” her eyes turn to the sky, so impossibly high above them. “And I’ve led you all here,” she takes in another rattling breath, and it is filled with the weight of regret. “And if we are all to die, better I make our souls right with this Saint before we meet the Mother.”

Before they can stop her or drag her back, Dawsyn hauls her ax over her shoulder, twists the handle in her palm, then closes her eyes and steps onto the bridge. A barricade tangles up the rock behind her the second her feet are free of the precipice. It is made of the same fiery rope Yerdos used to make the bridge.

Beyond the roar of flame and spitting magma, she hears Ryon bellow into the void. “Don’t you dare fucking die, Dawsyn!Do you hear me?”

But this time, she cannot bring herself to promise safe return.

“I’ll leave you my heart,” she says. But the words are whispers swallowed in smoke, and they are left behind her, unheard.

CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN

Yerdos awaits her, and the closer Dawsyn comes, the less afraid she feels.

Perhaps it is that she knows she will die, whether it be by the hands of this saint, or the Chasm she created. Her mind parts from the fear that bids her to run and she relents to whatever conclusion comes now.

She has walked all she can. Fought all she could.

And though vicious swirls of hatred and anger deep inside still leak into her mind like poison, she will not fight anymore.

She was wrong.

She has failed.