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Dawsyn keeps pace behind him, letting Hector lead through the trees. The sound increases as they travel.

Around the next trunk, there is a disturbance in the virgin snow. A drift crumbles inward, and something within its depths disturbs it further, eroding the sides inward. A dreadful cry comes from within.

“Esra!” Hector and Dawsyn shout as one. “Stop!”

There is a short pause in the onslaught of pained grunting, and then, “Hector?” Esra’s voice calls.

“Stop moving, Es,” Hector orders, side-stepping his way down the embankment of snow to the hole Esra has made for himself. “You’ll only be buried.”

“Already… fucking… buried!” comes Esra’s panicked reply. Dawsyn can hear the stress is his voice, the breathless quality to it.

“Fucking Mother above,” Dawsyn grunts, coming to a stand-still beside the hole. She can just make out Esra’s face below, half covered in snow. The rest of him is already buried beneath a foot of it. “Aren’t you dead yet?”

“Unfortunately… it seems the Mother will not bless me… with death’s sweet release,” Esra says. He sucks in each breath with great effort. “Though you may as well leave me here in this grave, Dawsyn… I am not far from it.”

“You’re not dying, Es,” Hector admonishes. He digs fervently, pulling the snow away from the small hole like a madman.

Dawsyn does the same, carefully avoiding placing her feet anywhere near the edges.

“I am dying,” Esra argues weakly. “Dawsyn… darling… move your face out of the way. You look awful. If I am to look my last… then I want to look at Hector.”

“You’re notdying!”Hector says. His face mottles with exertion.

Esra’s eyes close as they dig low enough to reach him, to hook their arms beneath his shoulders. Sinking their feet into the snow to leverage themselves, they haul Esra out of the hole, inch by inch.

“Leave him there,” Dawsyn orders when Esra is part-way out. His legs are still buried in the drift, but she can reach his chest, and that is all she needs.

As she did to Hector, Dawsyn finds his skin and lays her hands upon it. “Ishveet,”she says, and feels that same outpouring of power. It flows into Esra and quickens his blood, it warms his heart, mends what was broken.

As the bright light fades, Dawsyn opens her eyes to find Esra’s warm complexion as it once was. The cracks in his lips have sealed, and the cuts on his cheeks are no more. The places where his cheekbones had begun to cut into the flesh are now round, and though the scars along the right side of his face remain, the rest of him is as it should be.

“Heavens,” he says, gripping his chest. He breathes deeply, seemingly relieved to be breathing at all. Then he shivers. “Fuck my arse its cold.”

Hector grabs him. He hauls the man out of the hole until his boots are free, and then lifts him to standing.

“Easy, boy! Let me–” but Esra’s indignant protests are cut off when Hector presses his mouth firmly to his.

“Well, that’s one way to shut him up,” Dawsyn pants.

Hector holds Esra’s face gently in his hands and when their lips part again he keeps his forehead pressed to Esra’s. They share breath and Dawsyn grins to herself.

“Do not speak of dying again,” Hector commands, but his voice is anything but gruff.

Esra smiles, then wraps Hector in his embrace. “Of course not, my love. It was all jest.”

“You were crying like a baby,” Dawsyn reminds him.

“I love you, dear Dawsyn,” Esra says. “But sometimes I think you ought to have remained on the Ledge.”

Dawsyn grins again. “Come,” she says. “We do not have time for Hector to realise his feelings now. We need to find the others.”

“I swear to the Mother, if that hawk-woman spat Salem into a gorge, I shall never forgive her.”

Dawsyn begins traipsing her way down the slope. “Oddly sentimental of you.”

“Sentimental? Ha! The half-wit wagered that Hector would kiss apig’s arsebefore he’d kiss me. I told him that if I won, I would drop my trousers, and Salem could kissmy–”

“Kiss him again, Hector,” Dawsyn interrupts, quickening her pace. “Now. For the love of the Mother.”