CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
C HAPTER T WENTY- T HREE
Beaten, broken and bloody, the liberators of the Ledge lie strewn.
The glow of the barrier that saved them is dulling, beginning to curl in on itself. Dawsyn watches it recede from her place on the ground. She follows the filigree of frost with her eyes as it diminishes, the glow eventually fading. She remains staring long after the Chasm is returned to its lightless void.
If the others are conscious, they do not make it known. She assumes they lie dormant as she does, paralysed by disbelief, the slow ruining of this failure quietly splintering them.
She is amidst collapse. She can feel every torturous degree of it. The slow-moving avalanche that builds momentum with every gained inch. Soon, she will be nothing but rubble.
So close to the end, she thinks to the sky, over and over. It is a loop she cannot break. How could we come so close, only to fail?
She still feels it – that other side is within her grasp, and yet it might as well be a thousand miles more. Her people are gone.
Dawsyn rolls onto her side and stays there a while. She listens to the gentle tap of her tears sliding off the bridge of her nose onto stone. She is struck anew with the thought of staying there on the ground, and never getting up.
Only there is no whisper this time to tempt her. No bodiless voice coaxing her to lay down and die, but for the one in her mind.
She hears a groan. It is, perhaps, the only thing more unbearable than her own pain.
“Ryon,” she mouths silently, and her lip trembles.
Then, as though she’d summoned him aloud, sounds of scuffling come from beside her. More sounds of pain. An arm encircles her. It wraps around her stomach and pulls her back into the hard, warm planes of a familiar embrace. She feels his breaths on the delicate skin behind her ear, his weight pressing into her, and despite the jolt of pain it sends through her shoulder, she is grateful. She is relieved.
It is far less painful to break here, in the safety of his arms.
Her chest gives way. Her sobs are noiseless, but she shakes with the might of them, and Ryon only holds on tightly. He pulls her in even closer when it seems all restraint is lost. He keeps her there and does not allow her to lurch herself over the precipice of oblivion.
“They’re gone,” she whispers hoarsely, pushing the words beyond the shuddering of her body.
“Shhh,” Ryon says, his lips in her hair.
“They left,” she mumbles. “Ruby… Yennes–”
“Will pay,” Ryon interjects, though his voice is a croon, said to appease her. “I’ll make them pay.”
“Alvira… she’ll… she’ll kill them.”
“We do not know that.”
“I did this,” Dawsyn says now and here lies the crux of her failure, the core of her torment. For no one else slung half-truths and false promises. She sees Nevrak in her mind and hears his accusations and he was right. He was right.
“It is done, malishka,” Ryon tells her. “It’s done now.”
“You told me it was a mistake,” Dawsyn continues, squeezing her eyes shut as new pain washes through her. Shame. Regret. “And now they are at the mercy of the Queen, and they have no idea what she’ll do.”
“Stop, Dawsyn.”
“I – I should have told them,” she cries quietly, her chest heaving. “I have killed them all.”
“Enough.”
“I tried,” Dawsyn says, louder now. Her hands grip Ryon’s arms. They claw at them. “I tried to save them!” These last words are unleashed. They ricochet. The echoes build in her mind, in her belly, until every part of her begs for release and she screams. She beats her head to the ground and roars her devastation into the dirt.
All of it was for nothing.
All of it.
Ryon waits until the scream tapers and turns to pants, to sniffling. He waits until her nails retract from the skin on his arms, and when she is finally quiet and still once more, save for the tremors that come unbidden, he rolls her over.
She cannot see him. He is merely a series of shadow. But she can picture him. She imagines his brown eyes, pulling her apart and fracturing her senses. She can see the short, tightly curled black hair that one can lose their fingers in. She sees the scruff that lines his jaw, his chin, the slope of his nose and indents of his cheekbones. She could draw the curve of his eyebrows from memory.
That is how often she has looked and memorised and marvelled. She knows him by heart.
“Ruby betrayed us,” he says. “Yennes, too. Alvira. Cressida, Vasteel, Adrik. These are the ones responsible for the fate of those people. It is not you who should shoulder their blame.”
“I promised them safety.”
“And you were the only one in fifty years brave enough to attempt it.”
Dawsyn swallows the fresh wave of emotion that threatens to pull her back under. She lifts her shaky fingers in the dark and finds Ryon’s lips. She traces them.
Then she presses her mouth to his, and for a moment, she is transported out of the Chasm. She feels his breath mingle with hers, the soft, safe warmth of him surrounding her.
“Your wings,” Dawsyn says when they part, though she cannot bear to move further than an inch. “Will they heal?”
“Ah,” Ryon answers, his voice a low rumble. “You needn’t worry. I have the benefit of travelling with a mage who loves me.”
Dawsyn smiles weakly, though he cannot see it. “I do,” she says. “Love you.”
“I know you do.”
Around them, Dawsyn can hear the others beginning to rise and move. She hears the stones scatter with their footsteps, the pained grunts as they fight their fresh injuries.
She expended her magic when she healed Yennes, moments before the woman betrayed them all. How cruel fate is, to twist the knife ever deeper.
“Ugh. My fucking ears are bleeding, Salem,” comes a voice, louder than the sombre occasion could ever warrant.
“A taste o’ yeh own medicine,” a harsher voice grunts. “Me ears’ve been bleedin’ from the sorry second we met.”
“The old man lives,” Esra replies dryly. “Hurrah.”
“Ow! Fuckin’ trousers are full o’ stones.”
“The only rock-solid thing they’ve ever rubbed up against, no doubt.”
“Mother almighty.”
Suddenly, a flame illuminates the dim. A halo of light erupts from a torch. Hector’s face stands in its glow. He replaces the flint to his pocket, and squints at the faces surrounding him.
Tasheem and Rivdan are awake. They sit alongside each other, stooped over bent knees. Salem and Esra continue to bicker as they lumber to their feet, seemingly unhurt.
And there, just behind them, is the form of another. A face obscured by shadow.
“Who’s there?” Hector says suddenly, seeing the figure in the same moment Dawsyn does. He thrusts the torch threateningly in their direction, a blade sliding into his palm from his sleeve.
The figure rises slowly, unsteadily, then steps forward. Her untamed, auburn hair gives her away immediately.
“Abertha?” Dawsyn asks, her voice cracked, but loud enough that it travels.
The girl nods, her eyes remaining on Hector’s blade.
He is already lowering the weapon. “Bertie,” he says. “You remained?”
The girl looks around at their group – at Esra and Salem shaking pebbles from the legs of their trousers, to the wounded Glacians barely able to sit upright. And then she looks to Dawsyn. “Yes,” the girl says, her voice purposely firm.
“Why?” It seems unfathomable to Dawsyn, that she should still be here.
Abertha takes a fortifying breath. “I do not know where that path leads,” she says, nodding upstream into the gloom. “But I can’t imagine why you would lead us away from Terrsaw, unless there was something there to be avoided.” She chews on the inside of her cheek for a moment, glancing at each of them in turn. It is the first time her nerves show. Eventually, her eyes find Dawsyn’s again. “You saved me twice. I’d bet you could manage a third.”
Dawsyn wonders if the girl can see the fresh moisture in her eyes, or if the Chasm has at least given her the mercy of discretion.
She remembers seeing Abertha play in the snow drifts as a child, closely guarded by her mother. She would watch from the grove for longer than was wise, haunted by visions of Maya playing those same silly games. She quickly learned to avoid crossing the girl’s cabin. She learned to avert her eyes, lest Maya fill her mind once more and suck the will from her body. Those first years alone offered no reprieve, no solace. Her only chance was to keep her mind on the work, her eyes on the Chasm, and pray the hole inside her closed.
Even now, Abertha stirs the ghost of Dawsyn’s sister, who would have been of similar age, had she been born to a different corner of the world.
“I do not know if there is another end to find,” Dawsyn says. She will tell it all to this girl. She will do what she should have done all along. “We have not seen it.”
Abertha’s eyes do not leave Dawsyn’s. The girl waits, shrewd and patient.
“But I know what there is to find in the opposite direction,” Dawsyn continues. “I know that the Queen of Terrsaw… she does not seek to offer you sanctuary in her kingdom.”
“Why not?” Abertha asks forcefully. “Tell me.”
And Dawsyn does. She tells the girl the tale of Princess Valmanere Austrina Sabar, who fled to a village on the outskirts to warn them and was swept up in the raid of the Glacians. She tells Abertha of the bargain Alvira struck with the Glacian King and of the fear that guides her plans. She tells Abertha of the plan she concocted to find another place – any other place – big enough for their people to occupy, without the threat of Glacians or Queens or the cold.
When she is finished, Abertha’s mouth hangs open. And strangely, after all she has heard, the first thing she utters is, “You’re royal?”
The others chuckle meekly and it serves to warm Dawsyn, if only slightly. “So I’m told,”
“Right.” Abertha squares her shoulders. “Then I should like to follow you.”
Dawsyn shakes her head. “It may be to your own detriment.”
“So be it. If I’m to follow one royal or another, it will be one from the Ledge. We should make haste.”
Dawsyn sighs. She does not know how they can simply stand and walk on. They are battered, wilted versions of themselves. Each time they rise, something comes to cut them down. She cannot even begin to reach the mage power, nor the iskra. Both hide like whipped animals – abused and indignant.
“I’m not dying in this hole,” Tasheem says from her spot, though her face is pinched with pain. “If those fuckers want to launch themselves into enemy territory, so be it. But I’m seeing the sky again,” she says, turning her face upward.
Above them, the thread of light weaves an uncertain line into the distance, then disappears.
Dawsyn sighs. “To the end,” she says, though she is not filled with conviction, nor determination. No. It is the last vestiges of survival that cling to her now, propelling her forward. Idleness is her enemy, as it has always been.
It is close, she thinks to herself. Around the next bend. And yet, her legs do not allow her to stand.
“Come, malishka,” Ryon says, wincing as he stands beside her. “This is no place to give up.” He proffers a hand.
Dawsyn shakes her head at the ground, pulling rattling breaths through her teeth. How utterly stubborn they must all be, to return to the path. “First,” Dawsyn says, “someone pull this fucking arrow from my shoulder.”