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“I can feel it,” Dawsyn tells him, her hands shaking with the consuming dread of it. “I feel him fading away. I cannot explain it.”

Salem eyes the frost that coats her palms, glowing in the night. “You needn’t explain it to me,” he says. “But tha’ boy loves yeh,” he sighs. “Bloody well told me enough times. If Ryon heard yeh’d fizzled yerself out tryin’ to reach ’im, I don’t reckon he’d survive it.”

Dawsyn turns away until she can be sure her voice will be even. She swallows whatever desperate sounds her lungs wish to release. Then she admits that which her grandmother always warned her against.

“Do you think I’ll fare any better if he dies first, Salem? If he leaves me here?”

“Lass, I–”

“I will not survive him,” Dawsyn says, walking away. “I can survive many things… but I won’t survive that.”

Dawsyn leaves them standing around the fire Hector made and trudges through deep snow into the shadows. Squalls bite at her eyes and face. It finds ways to her skin through her clothing.

She can source the mage light with ease now. It is not hard to imagine warmth, safety, love. No, it is no longer hard to imagine love.

She reaches for the sense of arms encasing her, of kisses caressing her cheek bones, her temple, her throat. It only takes a heartbeat to bring that spark to the forefront of her mind and will it to expand.

The iskra and mage magic coalesce like old friends reuniting. They balance perfectly between warmth and cold, light and dark.

To fold, she must simply imagine the place she wishes to be and let that place expand in her mind. She must imagine it unfolding before her and so it shall be. Therein lies the magic’s limitation – she cannot bring to mind a place she has not been.

Dawsyn breathes in deeply, feeling the burn of frost in the back of her throat. “Please,” she utters to the air. “Baltisse. Guide me.” She closes her eyes.

She pictures a familiar warren – one where Ryon had stashed belongings in his once-regular trips down the slopes. It is one of the only places on the mountain she can remember with any detail.

She feels the magic expand in her and then abruptly retract. The bones of her limbs condense, her chest sinks inward. Time and space fold and she feels an instant of excruciating, unbearable pain. But she manages to hold the image in her mind, and when space expands, abrupt relief rushes in.

The image within her mind becomes her surroundings. She lands on all fours with a graceless thud, her hands and knees sinking into the snow. She gasps against the protestations of her stomach, but at least manages to hold onto its contents.

It worked. The warren is before her, unchanged since their last acquaintance.

But he isn’t here.

“Fuck,” Dawsyn huffs shakily, spitting bile. She stands on unsteady legs.

No footprints mark the snow in any direction she can see. The warren entrance is piled in fresh snow. The mountain breathes fiercely down the slope and beyond her, and she knows there is no one here but her. “RYON!” she shouts anyway, though it hardly travels.

There is no reply.

Dawsyn lets her head fall back on her shoulders, closing her eyes until her breaths ease. She can feel the depletion of power like a tapped well, painstakingly refilling ounce by ounce. It will take all night to replenish. She cannot afford to burn out.

She clambers toward the warren and begins to dig out the snow covering its entrance. Her fingers are gloved and ineffectual, so she takes the axe from her shoulder straps and uses its wide blade.

When the hole is deep enough, she stomps at the edges with her boot, then lowers herself through.

“Igniss,” she says, and a weak flame unfolds in her palm. Her breath seizes in her chest at the sight of the place. She remembers those nooks in the tree’s underbelly, where Ryon’s supplies are still stashed. A knife. Burlap draw-string bags of dried food – likely fouled now. She remembers waking to the crackle of weak flames, to the same smell of fresh earth, and the imposing form of a Glacian, staring at her intently beneath hooded eyes. Wary eyes.“Relax, girl. You are safe.”

Dawsyn swallows. How little they knew of each other then.

There is a small array of kindling and dried pine needles spread across the ground, likely disturbed by an animal of some kind. She gathers them together now and expertly lights them.

She has no food. The fire will soon consume these meagre twigs. There is little left of her power, and she is tired. But she curls up beside the little flames and gathers her cloak tightly around her. She closes her eyes and sees Ryon, thick brows raised in amusement. He smirks as she taunts and threatens him, his eyes subtly drinking her in.

Dawsyn smiles back. “I’ll find you,” she murmurs aloud.

Dawsyn repeats the process for three days. She rests and folds. Rests and folds.

The exhaustion she feels after each journey begins to feel lighter, less consuming. Soon, it begins to feel like stretched muscles. She finds she can grit her teeth and push beyond it. She needs less and less time to rest in between.