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“Ah,” Alvira breathed. “And you wish to be its liberator?”

Yennes considered the question. It was not exactly what she wished. Each day since leaving the Chasm, her mind had waged a war against her memories – it clawed at her with remembrances of Glacia and the Ledge that made her shudder. It tore her in half with other wretched invasions – longing, sorrow… regret. People she’d left behind. Faces she would never see again.

Sometimes, she was thrown back into that ocean and she hoped to simply drown this time.

She was no saviour. No liberator. She was the outer layer that remained of a once stronger woman. She was a shade of someone far more familiar than the failing consciousness that inhabited her now. Whoever this person was, she was no heroine.

“I cannot return there,” she told the Queen, shaking her head. “I’m… I cannot go back.” It was the truth. And to think of those children, those babies, those men and women that remained was to bring tears falling to her cheeks. “But I must do what little I am still capable of,” she continued. “I must offer my help. And in return, I ask you for yours.”

Alvira tugged on the folds of her dress, hesitating. “And what would you have me do?”

“Take your soldiers to the mountain,” Yennes said. “And fight.”

The Queen shook her head slowly. “If only it were so simple a remedy.”

“There are children up there,” Yennes said. Surely it would be enough to persuade anyone.

“And there are children here, too. Children who would be orphaned should their parents die in a pointless battle against superior creatures.”

Yennes sighed, frustration brewing hot and fast. How easily this queen disregarded the plight of her own people – a forgone conclusion. “There are those in this valley who told me about your deal with the Glacian King. It was you who condemned my people. Myparents.Was it not?”

Alvira tilted her head to the side. “Most people in this valley are hapless, mouth-breathing fools. It is why they do not sit where I sit.”

Yennes tasted acid. “I had found it difficult to believe that one could be so callous toward her own people. I thought I might find you repentant.”

“Oh, I have regrets,” Alvira said evenly. “In fact, I have found to be a queen is to be perpetually sorry for miracles I could not weave and to constantly defend those I did.”

Yennes’ chest rose and fell with barely tempered ire. “So, I am to take it that those people on the Ledge are counted among your miracles? That they should remain there so thatyoumay remain?”

“Ah, so we understand each other,” Alvira said. “And now we must discuss whetheryoumay remain.” Her eyes swept over Yennes once more, pausing on her palms before shifting over the rest of her.

Yennes balked. “Whether I may remain?”

“Indeed,” the Queen said. “I’m afraid you pose rather a large threat.Glacianmagic? Well, if the people of Terrsaw thought such a thing existed, they would be moved to stamp it out. Fear runs errant when those beasts are merely mentioned.”

Yennes swallowed. “I am no threat. I came here tohelp.”

“And what a helpyou could be to me,” the Queen agreed. “I have been looking in every crevice of this kingdom for the very brand of help you might offer, in fact. And so, you see, thereisa way I can repay you for your services to the palace.” The Queen smiled kindly at her, as though she were offering something charitable. “I can allow you to live peacefully here, in this valley, where you need never think of the mountain again. Where you needn’t return. No one need know of your…abilities, or hunt you down in our forests. In return, you can rid my wife of that which slowly takes her from me.” At the mention of the Queen Consort, Alvira’s jaw twitched, her eyes turned distant. When she spoke next, the words did not bear the same barbed edges. Her voice was softer, less controlled. “If you were to save her… I would be forever in your debt.”

Yennes thought of the life she was suggesting, one forced into silence, into hiding. One where she could languish in sunshine while the mountain loomed behind her, a constant reminder of that which she had failed to help.

Surely, she had not survived this much, journeyed so far, for it to amount to nothing.

“No,” she spat, and the word imbued her, fortified her. This was right. She felt it at her core. “I won’t accept such a wanting deal.”

“Wanting?” Alvira asked coldly.

“If I cure the Queen, you must act to free the Ledge,” Yennes declared.

“And if I make no such promise?” the Queen questioned, her eyebrow rising.

Yennes lifted her chin. “Then you must hope your men return with that mage you sent them to look for, though I hear they are difficult to find.”

Alvira’s eyebrow rose. “I’m impressed,” she said. “You have quite a bit more spine than I’d guessed.”

Yennes smiled, despite herself. Perhaps her old impetuousness was returning.

Alvira turned her head. “Guards!”