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“You should have told us you were cut.” Dawsyn closes her eyes against the thumping in her skull. “Surely you knew better.”

Abertha looked suddenly uncomfortable. “I saw what happened to that blonde mage in the Chasm. I didn’t want you to use your powers if you were depleted. It was only a cut.”

“A cut that can become easilyfouled.As you ought to know.”

“I wasn’tawareit had fouled,” Abertha bites, oddly petulant. It strokes a long-gone memory Dawsyn can’t quite reach. Her mind is addled enough.

“And were youawareyour boot had split at the sole?”

“My boot?”

Dawsyn holds it aloft. The frayed stitching dangles.

The girl looks mystified. “No. I was not aware.”

“If tha’ fever set in early, she won’t’ve felt a bloody thin’ beneath the ankle, Dawsyn,” Salem offers from somewhere behind her.

Abertha shakes her head, baffled. “I will mend it before we continue.”

“We will not be continuing for a while,” Dawsyn utters, scrubbing her face.

“What? Why?”

Dawsyn takes a breath. She grips her knees and flexes her fingers, preparing. “You are frostbitten.”

Abertha’s eyes widen, then she sits up, staring down at the deadened flesh of what was once her toes.

“Can you heal them?” Hector asks Dawsyn in a hushed voice. “Once you are rested?”

But Dawsyn healed the other toes, and if it were possible to restore dead flesh, she imagines the magic would have made its mark on the ruined ones. She turns to Hector and lets him read the answer in her eyes.

Hector’s face falls.

“Perhaps in a day or so,” Abertha offers. “Once your magic returns?”

Dawsyn looks back at Abertha and works her face into a smile. “Of course,” she says.

Abertha sighs, then chuckles incredulously. “Thank the Mother. I apologise, I am normally more vigilant. But I am grateful to you, Dawsyn, truly.”

“As I said,” Dawsyn answers, quietly taking a blade from inside her cloak. “Do not thank me.”

She waits for Abertha to grin and look away. Then she grits her teeth. “Hold her.”

Hector leaps forward, throwing his full weight over the girl’s legs.

And Dawsyn takes the knife to Abertha’s toes, pressing the blade all the way through flesh and bone until it meets the ground.

CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE

Ryon awakens with a groan.

His shoulders scream, the tendons torn and throbbing with a menace he has never met. But this cave he knows. It all comes crashing back to him.

“Awake again,” says the same voice as before – low and melodic. The mage with the braids tips a clay cup to his lips. “Drink, night wing,” she says.

Ryon splutters at the liquid forced passed his lips. It burns, leaving his throat scorched. “Ugh,” he moans, his head swimming. “Riv?” he mutters. He is not sure if the word fully forms. “Tash?”

“Your fellows are alive, though they have fared worse than you,” the mage says in the old language, choking any reply Ryon could give with another wash of the hot, fiery liquid.