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She will succumb now.

Dawsyn’s hand around the ax handle is limp. She only holds it to feel something familiar. She keeps her eyes on the woman of fire. The mage. The saint. The hawk.

She is beautiful. And terrible.

Her auburn hair matches the flecks of her cheeks, her elegant neck slopes gently to her collarbone, her wild eyes are framed in pale lashes. Her black teeth are bared and her palms smoulder with the heat of her wrath. But, beneath the anger, she appears a young woman not long after reaching maturity.

“Moroz,” she says to Dawsyn and this time her voice does not echo around the chamber. It simply falls from her lips.

“I am not Moroz,” Dawsyn says again, lifting her chin just slightly. “I am Dawsyn Sabar. And I have not come to kill you.”

Yerdos smiles, but it is not the smile of the wicked toying with its plaything. It is a veneer that conceals uncertainty. “There is no hiding from me, Moroz. I can feel you.”

Dawsyn feels the iskra roil inside her, weak and afraid.

“It is the cold you can feel,” Dawsyn says. “Not Moroz.”

“The very same.” The words hiss into the air, sizzle into specks of ash. “One and the same.” She holds her palm up toward Dawsyn, fire dancing over the skin. “Ready yourself, Moroz. Let us see how the frost fares here.”

She waits for Dawsyn to lift her own palm. She wants to defeat Moroz as an equal.

But Moroz is not here.

Moroz is no one.

The cold is not alive.

Dawsyn takes her last look at the woman named Yerdos. A woman turned slave turned saint. She closes her eyes. She does not look into the depths of herself to find the iskra. She does not try to call it to her palms. Instead, she reaches into the corners of her mind. She tries to find the faint speck of glowing light, as Baltisse taught her to.

She thinks of Ryon’s hands, guiding her over the terrain. She thinks of his lips against hers, the sweet eclipse of her thoughts when she feels his breath against her neck. She thinks of his lips parting to reveal a smile. A smile the dark tried to deny her.

And there she finds it – that flickering spark. It strengthens with each thought, reignited by every stroke of remembrance. She feeds it more images, things she has memorised and safely guarded: the lines of his palms, the shape of his brow, the feel of his fingers laced with hers. The beat of his heart beneath her ear. She brings it all to mind. And knows that if Yerdos fells her where she stands, at least she will leave this world filled with thoughts of its greatest creation.

Dawsyn opens her eyes to the sensation of mage light, trickling down her arm. It is thin, weedy, but tangible. It collects in her palm.

She grips it tightly, lest it retreat, and then locks her gaze with Yerdos.

“Igniss,” Dawsyn says, and a small flame appears.

It flickers calmly atop her palm, as small and wonderful as the first time she conjured it. Useless in battle, pitiful beside Yerdos’ molten lake, but still beautiful.

Yerdos’ eyes widen. They lose the edge of madness. She stares at the flame in Dawsyn’s hand and her lips fall back over her exposed teeth. “Mage light?” she asks, almost whispers.

Dawsyn exhales, feeling the pull of her lungs as it strives for oxygen amongst the sulfuric air. Still, she manages to nod. “Yes.”

Yerdos’ own palm falls slowly, finally lowering to her side, where the fire recedes. “You are mage-born,” she murmurs. Her expression turns suddenly wistful. She watches the flame dance on Dawsyn’s hand as though it were something precious.

“I am,” Dawsyn breathes, and she allows the mage fire to sputter out in her palm. She cannot hold it anymore. She is so very tired.

“As was I,” Yerdos says. Her eyes turn distant. She does not seem to notice the heat that scolds Dawsyn. “I was born of a clan on the mountain.”

Dawsyn nods. She feels grief exude from Yerdos in waves. “I know.”

“My sisters. My family,” she continues. “We protected the mountain. And it guarded us. Provided for us.”

Dawsyn watches her carefully. “Kladerstaff,” she says. “He captured you?”

Yerdos closes her eyes. Tears fall down her cheeks and suddenly she is nothing but another soul who suffered and fought and lost. She is neither mage, nor saint, nor hawk. She is a woman, trapped in the throes of her own rage and sorrow, unable to break free of it. “His guards slit their throats as they slept,” she says. “I was a child. Too weak to stop them.”