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“Now, tell me,” Abertha bids, continuing through the drifts. “How does one come to find themselves intertwined with a Glacian?”

Dawsyn huffs a sad laugh. “Do you have any understanding of what it is to fall in love?”

Abertha blinks at her.

“No, I didn’t either,” Dawsyn says. “But rest assured, it was not something I could prevent.”

“But why him?” Abertha’s curiosity seems genuine, and it betrays her youth.

Dawsyn thinks carefully, then shakes her head. “It was not something within my control. When we were first acquainted, I thought him no different than the pure-blooded Glacians. I might have walked away then wholly intact. Now… it feels like parts of me have been carved out.”

“What changed?”

Dawsyn thinks of the slopes and how her heart leapt with each quip, each cutting word and its counter. She thinks of how it thrilled her to challenge him. How, after seven years in solitude on the Ledge, she found herself leaning into the companionship, rather than away.

She thinks of the inexplicable magnetism between them and how difficult it was to ignore. She thinks of how he watched her, wherever she went, and how difficult it was not to stare at him. The sly touch of his fingers along hers, the secret pass of a hand on her hip. She thinks of the way the warmth of him made her shiver with newness. How the circle of his arms feels impenetrable. How she breathes for the next moment she finds herself in their embrace.

“I learned we were not so different,” Dawsyn says, smiling unknowingly. “He is a difficult man to ignore.”

“I will not deny you that. He is quite… magnificent. In bed sport too, I’d imagine?”

“If your thoughts keep wandering to Ryon and bed sport, I may have to cut off the rest of your toes.”

Abertha smirks. “Love to see you try.”

Dawsyn does not say anything more. Her eyes instead are fixed on a spot downhill, where the pine trees grow closer together along the slope. They look almost purposefully placed. It reminds Dawsyn of the pine grove on the Ledge, where the saplings were planted in rows.

“Dawsyn?” Abertha says, stopping alongside her. She skirts their surrounds, looking for any imminent threat.

“Do you see that?” Dawsyn asks, nodding downhill.

“The cedar trees?”

Dawsyn’s gaze is not concentrated on the trees themselves, but rather the haze that seems to hang in their midst. Where the rest of the mountain is clear and virginal, the copse of cedars in the distance seems… distorted.

Abertha, however, seems perturbed not by the strange fog, but by Dawsyn. “I suppose theydoseem to have grown closely.”

“Not that. Themist. Do you not see it?”

Again, Abertha only squints, then gives Dawsyn a perplexed look.

Dawsyn grits her teeth. “It is rightthere.”

“I don’t see any mist, Dawsyn.”

“Go back to the others,” she says stiffly. “I will return soon.”

But Abertha follows her down the slope, her footfalls slightly uneven. “Where are you going?”

“There is mist among those trees. And yet the rest of the slope is clear of it.”

“I see no mist, Dawsyn. Slow down!”

But Dawsyn feels seized by something she cannot name. She trudges through the drifts without minding the snow that slips into her boots, her stare fixed upon that odd cluster of cedar, so uniformly placed in their unnatural line, almost as though they were grown deliberately.

A division.

A gate.