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Chapter Four

Daeros—the plains

There are more Daerosian camps after that first one. Vil has to show the peace banner every few days, and soon there is more red on it than white. I hate looking at it. Blood turns my stomach.

The daylight grows steadily shorter, but we can’t afford to decrease our traveling time to match, so we ride an hour and then two in the early dark. We aren’t as tired, though, our bodies hardened by the travel, and Saga decides to add another element to my royal education: dancing lessons.

I have danced some, of course, in the eighteen months I spent with them in the palace, but I am severely lacking in the years of formal training an actual Skaandan princess would have had.

Since the Bronze God’s feast day, Vil is the one who has been keeping his distance, and I suspect Saga has had enough of it.

When she explains her plan, though, Vil doesn’t take much persuading.

He teaches me the steps, solemn and steady, one hand on my shoulder and the other on my waist, the points of his fingers grazing my hip and sending heat through my veins. His eyes never leave mine.

We spin and sway under the stars, to the music of crickets and the rhythm of Saga’s carving knife, while Indridi mends our clothes and Pala and Leifur keep a sharp watch beyond the circle of our fire.

Every time Saga declares our practice is over, Vil releases me and strides off to his tent, glancing back as if daring me to follow. I never do.

One evening, when we’ve been at this for a few weeks, Vil pulls me into the dance as usual. Saga sings as she carves, and Indridi sews, never lifting her head.

Tomorrow our road turns north, toward Tenebris.

Toward Kallias and everything I want to forget.

Vil’s hands are heavy and warm in their usual places: my shoulder, my waist. It is easy, dancing with him. Familiar and safe, for all it sends my heart into a desperate riot.

Vil has been impossibly kind to me, ever since the day Saga and I showed up at the palace with a regiment of the Skaandan army, in borrowed clothes and helms too big for us.

They’d been eating luncheon, Vil and his parents, in the private dining room with an open balcony looking out over the menagerie.

I had halted in the doorway as Saga rushed in, and then the four of them were a big tangle of arms and legs and disbelieving shouts and grateful tears and it was Vil who looked back and saw me there, uncertain, lost, Vil who said, “Who’s this, Saga?”

And then Saga broke away from them and ran to grab my arm and tug me back, explaining all in a jumble who I was and what had happened.

She didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but they understood that I had saved Saga, that I had brought her back to them.

The queen wept on my shoulder and the king said something about a reward and Vil looked at me, tears brimming in his eyes, and thanked me sincerely.

After that Vil made a point to seek me out.

He showed me the palace and the city. He gave me a horse and taught me how to throw knives in the arena.

He would sit in the library when I was there, reading, not imposing or pestering me in any way, just offering his steady company.

And then of course there were the strategy meetings with his parents and their generals and Saga as we concocted the scheme to seize Daeros.

There were the many afternoons he and Saga and I would sit poring over the maps of the tunnels, tracing out the best route for the army to take.

Vil would take care of me, I know, if I let him. With him, I would be profoundly loved, unutterably safe . And yet I still cannot forget the blue-eyed boy, down with me in the dark, though with him there could only ever be danger.

Out on the star-drenched plain, Vil and I dance. His eyes pierce me through and I feel something like shame coiling in the pit of my belly.

“Where did you go just now?” he asks me quietly. “I wish—” His forehead creases. “I wish you would let me know you. The real you. The one you hide.”

I meet his eyes in the shifting firelight, heart racing. “I don’t hide from you, Vil.”

“Then tell me. Tell me everything. About your childhood and your family before—before the mountain. About what you want and what you dream of. You’ve told me some, but I want to know it all.

I want to know every piece of you, Brynja Sindri.

Give me something.” His voice pitches lower. “While I wait.”

I take a breath, hyperaware of the pressure of his fingers at my waist, of the intensity in his eyes and the warmth of his breath, whispering past my cheek. “My father is a mirror maker, and my mother is an architect. Or they were ten years ago, at least.”

“A mirror maker?” says Vil.

I shrug. “Someone has to make them.”

“True.”

“I’m the youngest of three siblings. My brother is a scholar, and my sister was a mechanical genius.”

“Was?”

“She died when I was small.”

He waits to see if I will say more but doesn’t press me, which makes my chest hurt.

He wants to know the real me, so I tell him. “She was trying out one of her inventions, but it failed and ... and she fell.”

“What was her invention?”

My breath hitches. “A pair of wings made of canvas and wood and wire. They were beautiful. But they failed her. They killed her. It’s why—” I fight to say more, trembling as we both heedlessly follow the pattern of the dance. “It’s why I’m afraid of falling.”

Vil’s throat works, and his fingers press a little harder into my shoulder, sending a trail of fire down my spine. “I’m so sorry, Brynja. It must have been awful for you. When we thought we’d lost Saga—” He shakes his head. “I was not well, for a long time.”

I fight down the old horror, that familiar sense of despair ready to drown me anew. “In my family, we were expected to be remarkable,” I tell him quietly. “I had no talent for books or inventions. But my body would mind me. I could bend it to my will. So I did.”

“Your acrobatics,” says Vil.

“Yes.”

Saga has stopped her singing now and is chatting with Indridi by the popping fire, knife blade flashing in the light. Vil and I keep dancing; the motion grounds me—if I stop, I fear I will fall apart.

“I wanted to make my family proud, like they were proud of my brother and my sister. I trained religiously. I made myself remarkable. But there was a woman.” There’s a sour taste in my mouth that I can’t get rid of.

“She saw me performing in my village, and she—she told my parents she had a place for me in her traveling troupe. She promised them a hefty sum, said I must only perform with the troupe in the summers, and the rest of the year I could be at home.”

“You were a child ,” says Vil, voice tight with anger. “Surely your parents didn’t—”

“They needed money to pay for my sister’s funeral expenses, to buy my brother more books. My father’s business was slow, my mother’s practically nonexistent. This was a way for me to be useful, a solution sent straight from the gods.”

“Gods’ bleeding hearts ,” Vil swears.

My own heart pricks that he would feel such fierce emotion on my behalf, when my own family did not.

We dance, dance, while the stars look down.

“Perhaps it would have been different,” I say quietly, “if they’d known the woman meant to take me straight to Kallias, to sell me for twice the sum she’d promised them. I like to believe it would have been different.”

I chew on my lip. I’m not going to cry. Not in front of Vil. Not ever, if I can help it. I don’t want him to think that I am weak.

“They never looked for you,” he realizes. “Or if they did, they never found you.”

I stop dancing, suddenly, and he stumbles but does not fall. He holds so tight to me it almost hurts. “And when you finally went home,” he says, “they weren’t there.” He’s breathing hard, harder than his small stumble merits.

I am, too. “No.”

“But you know where to find them?”

“I think so.”

“Then why are you here with us, instead of searching for them?”

A sudden wind seethes over the plain, blowing smoke at Saga and Indridi and causing them to choke and swear.

I blink grit out of my eyes. I don’t look away from Vil.

“I prayed for the gods to send my parents to rescue me, for years and years. I begged, groveled, made vows and spat curses. But they never came. I don’t know if my parents stopped caring for me, or if the gods did.

” It isn’t grit in my eyes now. I gnaw the inside of my cheek.

“My parents aren’t here to slay my demons, Vil. So I’m going to. Maybe when Kallias is dead, I can sleep at night. Maybe when he’s gone, I can finally prove to my family that I am every bit as remarkable as my siblings. Every bit as worthy of their regard.”

“Brynja,” says Vil, gently, face stricken.

“They don’t feel like my family anymore. You and Saga are my family, Vil. And I mean to see this through.”

He pulls me against his chest, and for a moment I allow myself to sink into him, his heart beating fast under my ear, his scent soaking into my skin.

“There is too much,” I whisper into his shirt. “There is too much left to do. I can’t—”

“I know,” says Vil. He presses a kiss into my hair and releases me.

I walk past Saga and Indridi, hyperaware of their eyes on me, infinitely grateful for the cover of night so they can’t see how red my face is.

I crawl into my bedroll, curling tight into a ball and gritting my teeth until I can be sure I’m not going to cry.

I don’t want to think about my parents, my brother, my sister.

I don’t want to think about how all this started.

I just want it to be over. Gods, gods . I just want it to be over.

Maybe then I can be what Vil wants. Maybe then I will know what I want, too.

In the morning we start on the road to Tenebris. We have several weeks to go yet, but this is the last leg of our journey. No more twists and turns—just straight on to the mountain.