Chapter 31 · Edge of the Bleak Chasm

The chute spat me out headfirst into a snowbank, and I couldn't breathe.

Smoke was still in my lungs. Silver grit burned my throat like I'd swallowed a handful of nails. I rolled onto my knees and coughed until I tasted blood.

Behind me, deep in the rock, Vane roared.

I felt it before I heard it. The bond he'd sworn was dead yanked at my ribs like a hook in the meat. Two years of phantom burn, and now it screamed.

"Don't," I told myself. "Don't look back."

I looked back.

The chute mouth was a black hole in the ice, breathing out ash. Orange light flickered way down in it. Then it flickered out, and that was worse.

I got up. My legs were shaking. My wrists still had red rings where his iron cuffs had sat for weeks.

The Bleak Chasm opened ahead of me, one long crack in the world. Wind came up out of it like something alive. Past the far edge, past the black pines, was the southern frontier. Free. I'd dreamed about that line for two years.

There was a footpath along the lip, maybe three feet of packed ice.