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His jaw goes tight. “I am only half Iljaria.”

I didn’t mean to upset him, and tell him so.

He shrugs this off. “Do you know how to play?”

“It’s been a while.”

Ballast reminds me of the rules, explaining the hierarchy of the gods’ colors, of points won by different sets, runs, or pairs when laid down, with cards from the Prism suit being highest, and of course the Prism Goddess card—whom he calls the Prism Lady—trumping anything else.

This deck has one wild Ghost God card that, if played, makes the points of any cards the other player holds in their hand turn negative.

We play, quietly taking our turns in the glow of his light globe. As the deck dwindles down to nearly nothing, Ballast plays the Prism Goddess card, which I counter with the Ghost God card.

We play another round. He has the Ghost God card this time, but I have already laid out my cards, so the points can’t be counted against me.

“When you come again,” says Ballast, after I beat him a fourth time, “we will have to try a different game.”

I laugh, feeling a strange kind of contentment coiling in my belly. I wonder if this is what it’s like to have a friend.

I don’t come every night. I can’t afford the risk.

But I come more than I ought to. I think he waits for me every night, I think he’s disappointed when I don’t come, though he never tells me as much.

He always has food ready, sometimes something sweet, like the little cakes, other times something savory, like fried spiced lamb bites or roasted vegetables with fiery dipping sauce.

As time spins on, his offerings are almost always savory, often some kind of meat.

I think he realizes what awful fare the king’s steward gives me, and means to make up for it as best as he can.

We play games, every one we know of that uses his deck of cards; we even make up a few.

One night he has a Lords and Ladies set waiting, the wheel of the board painted in alternating blue and yellow, the pieces themselves intricately carved.

He won’t tell me where he got it, and I can only assume he stole it from his father.

Sometimes we read, him on one end of the bed, me on the other.

He brings me all sorts of books from the palace library, trying, I think, to find the ones that interest me most. But I am equally greedy for poetry and history, science and myth.

I cannot read them fast enough. The books are a gift, as is his steady company, and I feel human for a handful of precious hours every few nights.

And sometimes we talk, though haltingly, and never again about his father.

He tells me about his mother, how she instructs him in his magic and teaches him about his Iljaria heritage.

He tells me that, one day, he wants to sail with his mother to Iljaria and leave Daeros behind forever.

He tells me that his half siblings hate him.

I tell him that I’m beginning to forget what my home was like, that I’m afraid I will never get to go back.

I tell him that my brother hates me, that my sister is dead.

I almost tell him I don’t think my father loves me at all, but that is too close to the topic of his father, so I keep it to myself.

I don’t tell him that he’s starting to feel more like home to me than my family did.

I was alone then. I’m not now. He sees me, understands me, in a way no one else ever has.

On the nights I am made to perform, or Ballast is made to show off his Iljaria magic in the great hall, I don’t come to his room.

I want our time to be ours. I don’t want him to be thinking of me at his father’s command, slick with sweat and terror.

I don’t want to be thinking of him obeying his father’s every whim, no matter what it costs.

Year 4191, Month of the Black God

Daeros—Tenebris

Gods’ Fall comes, blanketing the mountain palace in bitter darkness.

I have been in the king’s Collection for over a year now.

Were it not for my visits with Ballast, I think I would have succumbed to despair.

But as it is, there is hope in his quiet company and subtle humor, in his careful, earnest friendship. It makes everything else bearable.

One night we sit, as we always do, on his bed, him on one end, me on the other.

It has been a few days since I last came to see him, and a heavy silence weighs between us.

There’s a half-healed cut on his left cheek from two nights ago, when the king cut-slapped him with his heavy signet ring because Ballast couldn’t make the royal hounds stand on their hind legs and serve soup to the king’s dinner guests. I know because I was watching.

I was made to perform that night, along with the other children in the Collection, and the king was in such a foul mood that afterward he ordered all of us beaten. I still have sore spots on both my shoulders.

Ballast has laid out the Lords and Ladies board on the bed, but he doesn’t seem to have much interest in playing tonight.

“Why don’t you stand up to him?” I ask quietly. “You could, you know. You are far more powerful than he could ever be.”

His whole body goes tense, and he grabs a piece off the board and hurls it viciously at the wall.

I jump off the bed and back away from him, heart raging.

He looks at me, utterly distraught. I don’t tell him the reason for my sudden, involuntary fear, but he sees it written all over my face: That was something his father would do.

Ballast swallows, miserable. He rubs the tattoos on his arms and takes quick, ragged breaths.

That’s when we hear a step outside his door. We both freeze and his eyes snap to mine, wild with panic.

In a heartbeat I’m up in the vent, pulling the grate over the opening, crawling swiftly and silently back to safety. I don’t dare stay, don’t dare risk the king finding me there. He would kill me. He would kill Ballast. And it would all be for nothing.

It’s more than a week before I’m brave enough to return to Ballast’s room, to loosen the grate and hop down.

I am anxious to resolve the tension between us, to resume our easy friendship.

His dressing table is shoved up against his door, but there is no food waiting, no deck of cards or Lords and Ladies board.

Ballast faces me, as cold and unfeeling as his father’s mountain. “I want you to leave, Brynja. Don’t come here anymore.”

“I’ll be more careful,” I say. “I won’t come as often.”

His jaw is hard. His blue eyes glitter. “That isn’t what I want. This was all a stupid mistake. Don’t ever come here again.”

Hurt sparks sharp in my chest. “I shouldn’t have pressed you,” I say quietly. “I shouldn’t have asked you why you don’t stand up to him. I understand why, better than anyone.”

“You understand nothing,” he spits at me. “I said leave !”

I stare at him, fighting the sudden press of tears. “But we’re friends,” I say stupidly.

“You’re not my friend. You have been taking advantage of me, and if you ever come here again, I will drag you right to my father. Do you understand?”

Terror beats through me with wings, large and dark. “Ballast,” I whisper.

He leans toward me, closer than he has ever been before, close enough that I can see his eyelashes are a mix of white and dark, just like his hair. “I never want to see you again,” he says. “Now get the hell out .”

I climb up into his vent and crawl away from his room, clumsy and shaky, the world blurred before me.

I do as Ballast asks.

I never go back.