Page 22

Then we’re at an elegant carved door, images of flowers and birds painted blue and red, eyes glittering with bits of obsidian.

No magic here, just exquisite artistry. A pair of those strange lights glow on either side of the door, which the attendant opens.

She waves me through, with Saga and Pala on my heels, and I’m relieved when the door closes behind us.

Saga pulls me into a tight hug, and we hold on to each other until our breathing grows easier and our heartbeats slow.

The room is warm, furs spread over the floor and silks hung along the walls to keep the mountain chill at bay.

There’s a wooden bed piled with pillows to my right, and on the back wall a square window with a sill wide enough for sitting on.

It looks out on Garran City. A low archway to the left leads into a washroom with a sunken marble bath.

There’s also a dressing table with an ornate mirror, a huge wardrobe, and a door leading to what I assume are anterooms.

Saga paces restlessly around the chamber, running her hand along the silk wall hangings, half-heartedly pulling clothes out of our packs, which lay all in a heap in front of the wardrobe. Pala stands guard at the door, her mouth pressed into a firm line.

Saga is to pose as my handmaiden while we’re here—it will be just me and Vil who go to dinner, and I don’t know if I can bear to leave her in our room. I don’t know how I’ll face Kallias alone.

“I thought I was going to pass out when I saw Nicanor,” says Saga. She chews on her lip. “I shouldn’t have come here.” She collapses onto the floor, and then she’s shaking and gasping for air and I drop down beside her, hold her tight as the panic courses through her body.

“It’s all right,” I whisper, grief and fear clogging my throat. “We’ll get through this. Together. It’s all right, Saga.”

Tears stream down her face. “I thought I was stronger than this. Stronger than him and what he did to me. What he did to us . But I’m not. I’m not.”

“I’m not, either,” I say softly. “No one could be.”

We sit like that for a while, until we’ve both grown relatively calm again. It’s Saga who pulls me to my feet, who shoves me into the bath with stern instructions to scrub all the dirt from the road away.

She drags me back out before I’m ready, then dresses me in a yellow silk gown lined in fur and embroidered with glittering gossamer thread.

She once again conceals my freckles with her carefully applied cosmetics, then paints my eyelids red, brushes my lashes and brows with gold powder, and pastes tiny flecks of jewels onto my cheeks and neck.

She weaves strands of gold into my dark curls, and crowns me once more with the headdress.

Then she tells me to wait, just a moment, and I sink onto the bed as she rummages through the packs.

She returns with a flat wooden box, which she presses into my hands. I open it to find a dagger with an intricately carved hilt, the one she was working on at the beginning of our journey: It has a sun design, the rays wrapping around the hilt, and at some point she inlaid the carving with gold.

“Saga,” I breathe. “It’s beautiful.”

She smiles. “I wanted you to carry light with you, always. Even in this dark place.”

I pull her into a crushing hug. “Thank you,” I whisper.

She laughs and tugs away from me. “Don’t wrinkle your dress!”

Before I go to join Vil for dinner, I kneel to pray with Saga at the little altar she’s set up in the corner of the room by the window. She asks the White Goddess for wisdom and protection for Vil and me. I pray to the Violet God to make time pass swiftly.

And then I smooth my thumb over the hilt of my sun dagger and slip out into the hall.

Vil and I are ushered into the dining hall, which I have only glimpsed previously from the heating vents high above the double doors.

It isn’t unlike the great hall, with its vast ceiling that follows the curve of the mountain and a smaller, purple version of the time-glass on the far left wall.

On the back wall, twelve arched windows with diamond panes look out over Garran City.

A long table rests on the raised dais in the center of the huge room, chandeliers dripping rubies and sapphires overhead.

Kallias isn’t here yet. That’s the only thing that keeps me moving to the table, where I’m seated across from Vil a few places down from the ivory throne at the head.

Vil looks resplendent, in an elaborate gold collar and a scarlet robe lined with white fur.

I can hardly stop staring at him. His earrings flash in the dazzling light from the chandeliers, and there is gold powder brushed along his lashes and brows, to match mine.

I try to imagine Leifur applying the powder, then Vil.

I fail at both images and conclude that Vil must have been assigned a palace attendant.

He catches me looking at him, and I flush.

His eyes glitter, and I realize that he is just as struck by my transformation as I am by his.

I can’t bear the heat of his glance; I am the one who looks away.

A dark-haired young woman with bronze-brown skin sweeps into the room and is shown to the seat on Vil’s right.

Elaborate braids threaded with gold ribbons circle her head like a crown, with the rest of her hair spilling loose to her waist. She wears a fitted green gown, edged with white fur and sewn with what must be thousands of tiny, glittering jewels.

Vil’s eyes grow wide at the sight of her: Aelia Cloelia Naeus, crown princess of the Aeronan Empire.

I saw Aelia, once, when we were both children.

She came with her parents as part of an imperial envoy, and the king of course had to show off his Collection.

Aelia cried through every performance, and later she came to the great hall alone.

She peered up at me in my dangling cage.

“When I grow up,” she said, “I’m going to come back here and free you all, and make that awful king leave this place forever.

I swear it in the name of my god.” I didn’t say a word back to her, but I’ve never forgotten.

I wonder if she really meant her oath, or if they were just the impassioned words of a child. Because of course she didn’t free us. I freed myself.

Now, Aelia inclines her head politely to Vil and me as she takes her seat.

Zopyros comes in next, his scale-armor breastplate looking freshly polished.

With him are three of his half siblings: twins Theron and Alcaeus, with milky-white skin and copper-tinged hair, and Lysandra, frigidly beautiful with her dark hair and eyes as blue as her father’s—and Ballast’s.

Theron and Alcaeus are my age, Lysandra a few years younger.

The three of them are full siblings, the children of Kallias’s wife Elpis.

All of them tormented us when we were trapped in Kallias’s Collection. All of them tormented Ballast, too.

My throat is thick with an emotion I can’t name, and it’s hard to give Lysandra an acknowledging smile when she sits beside me, with Theron on her left and Alcaeus opposite.

A few Daerosian nobles, whom I know by sight but not name, sit together at the foot of the table.

The only vacant seats, now, are the three at the head, including the ivory throne.

Dread knots my stomach. Vil catches my eye and gives me an encouraging nod, which bolsters me enough that I stay in my place instead of running screaming from the room.

But I don’t know how I’m going to force myself to eat anything. This was a mistake .

Elpis—Theron, Alcaeus, and Lysandra’s mother—comes in alone.

She can’t be a day past forty, if even that, but she looks far older, shrunken in her fine gown, her eyes hollow and haunted, too much rouge on her pale cheeks.

She takes the seat to the right of the head of the table, the place of honor.

I know—from spying on other dinners like this one—that the wives clamor for this distinction, that it’s only afforded to whichever wife is currently in Kallias’s favor.

I never saw Gulla here, and rarely Unnur, Kallias’s Skaandan wife, but the honor seemed to pass fairly freely between Elpis and Pelagia, Kallias’s Daerosian wives.

Kallias very pointedly never made any of his wives queen, and it strikes me, just now, that these women are just another one of his Collections.

Even though I know he isn’t in Tenebris, I find myself looking for Ballast, and being disappointed when each person who comes into the dining hall isn’t him.

I’m almost caught off guard when Kallias walks in, deep in discussion with his general, Eirenaios, who is decorated with so many medals he jingles as he walks.

All the waiting diners jerk to their feet out of respect for the king, and I numbly echo their movements half a moment after everyone else is already standing.

Kallias strides to the seat at the head of the table, not even acknowledging his wife Elpis’s deep curtsy and beseeching eyes.

And then he’s sitting down with a sweep of his blue robes and he’s so close too close and it takes a heartbeat for me to realize everyone else has taken their seats again and now I’m the only one standing.

I sit so fast I jostle the table, and Kallias’s eyes flick to mine.

I’m frozen in his gaze, an insect pinned to a board.

He knows, screams my terrified heart. He knows.

But the next moment he turns his eyes to his general, picking up the conversation they were having as they came in, at the same time raising his right hand and snapping his fingers in the air. I am forgotten.

Attendants lay the first course in front of us, a steaming soup in blue porcelain bowls. I force my hand not to shake as I pick up my spoon, as I take a bite. I nearly choke: The meat is gamy, the broth sweet with a kick of heat that seems to claw at the back of my throat.