Page 74 of A Legacy of Poison and Lies

Zylah held out a hand, stealing back her tea canister with a small tug on her magic.

“You’re getting better at that.”

“I’ve been practising.” She cleared her throat. Scrunched her face in frustration. “Had been. Not for the last two weeks… because I’m too stubborn to ask you for help.”

“Youarestubborn,” he said softly. He pulled his gloves back on, fingers flexing as he fastened the fur-lined leather at the cuffs. He was waiting for her to keep talking.

Patient. Always patient, and it urged her to say, “Thank you for not giving up on me, for sticking with me all this time.”

That look shone in his eyes again, the way his face seemed to soften only when he looked at her. “Time is the only thing I could give you, Zylah.”

That wasn’t true. He’d given her so much more. His friendship. His trust. But something about the way he’d said it, the sadness in his tone, cracked her open a little bit more.

“Truth number four,” he said, his throat bobbing. “After Adina died, I couldn’t let myself feel anything. And for a while, it worked. To just be hollow, empty.”

Zylah’s breath caught. Despite the hooded coat, she felt bare, exposed, like he could see right through it to the hollowness inside her, like he knew just how empty she’d become.

“But then I realised I was just delaying the inevitable.” He was frowning, fingers buried into his mare’s mane. “The moment when everything would rush back in. And I think the point isn’t to just leap past it, anyway, but to figure out how to make room for it all. The grief, the sadness. The instants of happiness, however fleeting.”

“Like it took more energy to keep it all shut out than it did to let it in,” Zylah whispered.

He nodded, just as a loud crack split the air. Just as Holt’s horse fell off the side of the path, pulling him with it.

“Holt!” Zylah screamed, her mount lurching forward past the crumbling path.

Snow and rocks kept falling, the horse whinnying in disapproval, but to the mare’s credit, it didn’t bolt. She slid off the moment it steadied, throwing herself flat against the snow to peer over the rocky ledge, panic bubbling up her throat. “Holt!”

Nothing but endless grey stared back at her, not even a hint of the canopy she knew was below them. She swallowed down a panicked sob, searching for a way to climb down, a foothold that could withstand her weight. More rocks fell, and Zylah held her breath, straining to listen, just as a gloved hand reached up from the grey.Holt.She didn’t dare reach for the horse to help them. She grabbed hold of Holt, pressing her body into the snow to anchor them both as she held on.An anchor. That was what he needed.

Zylah grabbed the thickest dagger she had, the one she kept tucked into her left boot and slammed it into the ground beside Holt’s hand. “Here,” she called out, wrapping his fingers around the hilt so he could use it to secure his grip. Snow began to fall, a gust of strong wind burning at Zylah’s cheeks and obscuring her vision, but she ignored it. She heaved at his coat as he crested the ledge, her fingers fisting into the fabric as he hauled himself up to solid ground inch by inch.

Another piece of rock gave way, and Zylah was pulled down with him for a heartbeat. Her dagger disappeared into the grey right before roots and vines erupted around her, weaving through the rock and snow, anchoring her to the path. She knew without asking that Holt had made them.

They pulled themselves back up to solid ground, Holt huffing a laugh as he rolled onto his back like he hadn’t just fallen off a cliff, and Zylah collapsed into the snow beside him.

“You’re really sticking to this wholeno evanescingthing,” she rasped, somewhere between laughing and crying.

For a few seconds, she truly thought he’d fallen. That she’d have climbed down and found him bloodied and broken on the rocks below.

Her heart was beating so loud in her ribcage, she was certain he could hear it.

“I saw movement in the canopy, I couldn’t,” Holt said, pulling himself up to look down at her. What he’d shared, in those moments before his horse had fallen. Zylah swallowed. She didn’t know how to tell him what it meant that he knew. That he understood.

His hand reached up to her face, fingers gently brushing the snow from her hair where it had escaped her hood, his eyes searching hers. “We need to get out of here.”

“The horse?”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to risk recovering anything with magic, either—better for it to look like a trader accident. We’ll have to make do with what we have.” He uncoiled to his feet, pulling her with him before she had the chance to protest their lost belongings.

Kopi landed on her mare’s head, a quiethooannouncing his arrival. “Good of you to return,” Zylah murmured, stepping away from Holt and brushing more snow from her clothes.

A shrill cry rent the air.

Zylah’s attention snapped to Holt, a chill dancing down her spine at the sound. Where there was one, there were undoubtedly more of them, and there would be no chance of fighting them up here, not when the path was so narrow, so vulnerable to breaking away beneath them.

Holt didn’t wait to listen for more of them, murmuring instead to their mare and urging her to follow, his fingers tugging loosely at her reins. It moved tentatively at first, as if it were testing the stability of the earth beneath its hooves, but then another chilling scream carried to them on the wind, and it was all the encouragement it needed to pick up its pace.

With the snow falling harder and the wind slamming them into the rocky rise beside them, Kopi tucked deep into her hood, Zylah led the way along the path.

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