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Ryon blinks rapidly. The pounding in his head begs him to shut his eyes again.

“Best you follow that call to sleep, night wing,” the person says. Perhaps a hairsbreadth from his cheek. “There’s nothing good this side of waking.”

Ryon squints, groaning through the splittingthump, thump, thump. He finds a woman tilting her head to the side, observing him shrewdly. Ryon rears.

“Easy,” the woman says, “lest you call death too soon. I smell it on you already.”

Ryon feels it. His stomach feels bowled. His limbs shake. Every remaining sensibility bids he return to that deep, dark well. But the woman’s palm is held aloft and in it dances the flickers of a seemingly source-less flame.

He exhales harshly. “Mage,” he utters, his voice weak, hoarse.

The woman does not nod her assent nor deny it. Instead, she acts as though he had not spoken, her eyes scoping the length of him unabashedly. Long, chestnut hair is braided away from her forehead before falling to her waist. Its ethereal beauty reminds Ryon of Baltisse and his heart tightens for a moment. She is young, no older than he on the surface, though perhaps far older than he could imagine. And although the mage is beautiful, her smile has an animalistic quality and she surveys him with predatory interest. She walks barefoot, and despite being dressed in fur and hide, her unprotected feet do not seem to perturb her.

“What happened to your wings?” she asks. She speaks in the old language. The language often favoured by Glacians.

Ryon looks reflexively over his shoulder, and it is only then he notices the way his arms pin to the dirt wall behind him, roots snaking out of the earth and wrapping tightly around his wrists. There are no wings to speak of. They remain vanished. Ryon doubts he could summon them if his life depended on it.

“How–”

“I see them,” the strange mage says. “Tucked away beneath your skin.” The final word hisses.

Ryon’s eyes finally track to his surrounds. They follow the light blaring in from a wide opening. Pine trees loom beyond it in the distance.

A cave,he thinks.

“What happened to them?” the mage asks again, her head tilting to the opposite side. She shuffles as though to see them better, despite their concealment.

“Let me go,” Ryon says feebly in the old language, his eyelids closing without his permission. “I have no quarrel with you.”

“Ah,” she says. “And yet you fought your way through our wards. What other reason could you have to venture so far, night wing?”

Ryon’s legs shake unbearably, they struggle to hold him upright to offset the strain on his arms. “I…” he begins, but his train of thought disintegrates. “I…”

“A surprise it was, to have three wings penetrate the wards at once. None so far from death. Was it protection you sought by coming here, where all are forbidden? Did you wish to be healed?”

Ryon shakes his head, feeling it loll onto his chest. “Three?”

“Your company,” the mage answers. Suddenly her fingers are at the cusp of Ryon’s chin, lifting it upward. “Another night wing. The fire wing.”

Tasheem,he thinks.Rivdan.

“The last time we found you in our territory, you almost did not make it out alive, Ryon Mesrich,” she whispers.

Ryon shudders. Despite the years between, he remembers the encounter well.

“It was only the generosity of our sister that allowed you to leave with your skin intact. You were a boy then.” The mage inhales deeply, as though to discern his scent. “Far more spirited.”

Ryon groans. His legs shake and his shoulders protest. Every muscle screams.

“Where is our sister?” the mage says now. “Where is Baltisse?”

But Ryon does not answer, he has already turned limp. His mind carries him beneath the surface once more, into that sweet, dulling abyss, where he does not have to think of pain, or Baltisse, or wonder where Dawsyn is, if she is not with him.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE

Yennes spent the night in a squalid back alley behind the tavern.

When she banged the knockers of three separate doors and asked for a bed, the occupants threw the doors back in her face. It may have been the sick that soiled her clothes, or the way she swayed where she stood. In any case, the reception was reminiscent of one she might have received on the Ledge.