Chasm (The Glacian Trilogy, #2)

by Stacey McEwan

“I will not listen to one more person discredit me in favour of a man.”

But like Salem, Esra does not get to finish the sentence before he ends up flat on his back, groaning soundly. “Argh, not my arse again! It has known enough suffering!” Dawsyn sighs and steps over him. “When will the day come that you men learn to say less?” “Oh, I hope it never comes,” Baltisse replies, smoothing down her fur sleeves. “What a bore.”

And he understands now, why wars are so often won and lost upon the promise of mercy, because here is his heart, wrenched outside of himself, twisting before him in the snow, and he’d give entire kingdoms to ease the torment.

you truly without words, Baltisse?” She narrows her eyes. “I want to be sure my words won’t ignite a war the second I say them.”

Ryon becomes the thing to hold her up, rather than to hold her back,

“I deny your assignment of them,” she says, shaking her head. “It is not love that you feel.” Ryon’s tone turns acidic. “What other name should I give this torment?”

“I’ve been plagued by the thought that you may never forgive me, that you may never see the truth. All of my loyalty, every last bit, lies with you,”

“I know everything seems irretrievable, but you will see, this is the part of the story where the heroes rise from the dust and renew their energies to the task ahead.”

All things find a way back home.

He’d take yeh, no matter yer faults, because he sees yeh clearly. And I think,” – Salem sighs – “he deserves someone who’d do the same fer him.”

The noise of hatred always dilutes injustice, makes it too easy to disregard, but she still heard it.

A guard’s role is easily replenished, but… so is a Queen’s.”

But there’s a strange curse that comes with power.” She sighs. “The one who has it becomes nothing without it.”

But the laws of magic have always been the same: you do not ask for more than what nature will readily give, or you will invite destruction.

“And so, there it is, Dawsyn Sabar. A very good reason to cut off my hands, weight my feet, and sink me to the bottom of the ocean. And you’d be right to do it. I only ask that you let me undo some of the wrongs I was party to beforehand. In the meantime, you can trust that I’ve had many lifetimes to soak in the worst of my sins. I’ve laid still while the guilt has peeled each layer of skin from my body. Every morning, I rise knowing I was born for destruction, but I continue now to choose a different course,”

You were born as Cazriel Sabar was born, and I see his unflinching mind in your own. You were not born for destruction, or for the Ledge. You were born for Terrsaw.”

Dawsyn feels her fingers aching with cold. She feels the iskra stirring darkly while the light in her mind grows warm in response. She is too filled with revelation, too filled with inherited duty. Dawsyn feels she could combust. A million pieces of Sabar and Ledge and Terrsaw and iskra and mage and Dawsyn, spreading farther and wider while divided than she ever could whole.

“You are wrong,” she says to Baltisse, ignoring the roiling within, the pull in so many directions. “I am Ledge-born.” Baltisse first looks wary, but then she hears Dawsyn’s thoughts – the tenor of forgiveness. “And I am like you. I will rise each day and choose my own course.”

“Dawsyn, I’m sorry to tell you that you were not exactly the very first person to escape the Ledge. There was just one other before you.”

“Do not pay him any attention. His mind is a storm and he’s exceptionally nosey. He can barely stand not being involved.”

“Well, Dawsyn. You both succeeded and failed. Congratulations.”

“I fear I may love you,” she tells him, her smile gone, finality in its place. And what she means is, I couldn’t stop.

“I think we were unavoidable, you and I. Do you feel it?”

“I’ve seen men do a lot of strange things to make peace with a small cock,” she jeers, pointing her ax at his crotch. “But I’ve never seen one grow wings and demand to be called a king.”