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“No, I—wait, maybe.”

Iryana felt the weight on her waist jerk, then get lighter. Iryana grabbed the rope and pulled upward, trying to keep it taut.

“Shit,” Misha cried. “I’m stuck!”

Iryana forced herself to look down. “Oh gods,” she moaned, trying to focus on Misha and not the drop below them. Misha was clinging to the side of the cliff; her feet perched on a large jut of rock. Iryana’s vision spun. Shaking her head and blinking away the terror, Iryana realized Misha’s problem. The rope had gotten tightly wedged between two rocks.

“Can you pull it out?” Iryana asked.

She watched Misha tug on it, but each pull seemed to fray the rope more. Misha’s eyes grew wide as the moon, her breathing speeding up. Iryana tried from her side, but it wouldn’t budge.

She fought to keep Misha from seeing her panic.

With the rope now wedged tight enough that Iryana didn’t need to worry about bracing her, Iryana slowly dropped to her knees, and then onto her stomach. Hadima and the others hissed for her to be careful.

As low as she could get, Iryana pulled off her glove and reached toward Misha. Her sister pushed off the ledge under her, trying to grab Iryana’s hand. She wasn’t even close.

“Climb a little higher!” Iryana ordered desperately.

Misha tried, but her hand slipped and she shrieked. But she tried again, making it a little farther. She slipped again, falling backward. Her hands flew for the rope around her waist, and then she smacked back into the cliff.

“You can do it, Misha!” Iryana called down.

“I can’t,” Misha screamed, and sobs wracked her shoulders.

Iryana slid, pushing her upper body off the ledge so she could try to see a better way up for Misha, but some of the rocks overhung others and she couldn’t pick out a path. She sucked in the frigid air, eyes wide.

“What’s she saying?” Hadima demanded, barely audible over the wind.

“She can’t climb up,” Iryana called back, her voice cracking.

“Don’t abandon me,” Misha cried, the sound mostly snatched away by the wind.

“Hey, look at me!” Iryana shouted, her heart breaking.

Misha’s teary, bloodshot eyes landed on her.

“I’m not abandoning you, okay?”

Misha’s lip quivered.

Iryana had spent so much time climbing up to the Dovaki Post, but Misha hadn’t.

“I’ll climb down, help you find your way up,” Iryana told her, feigning confidence. “I climb things like this all the time. It will be easy.”

“Stop. It’s too risky if you both fall,” Edishta warned. “My husband is too injured to pull you up, and then we all go down. This is what the knife is for.”

Misha started sobbing.

“I’m not leaving her,” Iryana grit out. “I’ll cut myself off and you three go ahead.”

“I’m not leaving you both!” Hadima screeched. But there was no way she could move around the injured man or untie herself without putting herself or the other two in danger.

“Be reasonable, Hadi,” Iryana ordered her.

Edishta groaned. “If you cut yourself off, we can wait, give you a chance to pull yourselves up. But we need to be quick—it’s going to be more dangerous the darker it gets.”

Hadima nodded with a jerk. “Be quick,” she begged.