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My heart beats too hard, too quick, his nearness overwhelming me. Vil is safety, strength, peace, and I know that’s what he would give me if I let him. But it scares me too much.

I take a step back, putting distance between us. “Being here, with you and Saga—” My throat catches. “It has meant everything to me, Vil. Truly. But it’s past time for me to go now.”

“Go where? Back to the family that abandoned you?” His voice is hard. “Come with us, Bryn. Come with me . Don’t waste the life the gods gave back to you. Do our country proud. End the war. Take revenge on the man who treated you so cruelly.”

Anger twists down my spine. I grip the collar of his shirt and yank him to my eye level, close enough that I can see the stubble already showing on his chin, the curl of his dark lashes.

Close enough that I can’t deny I want him closer still.

“The gods didn’t give me my life—I took it back myself. And I have no intention of wasting it.”

He looks at me, daring in his eyes, and my belly twists. “Then don’t,” he says.

I let him go and stalk back to where the throwing line is marked with red powder in the sand.

A year and a half ago, when Saga and I arrived back in Skaanda and couldn’t find my family, she insisted I stay with her. She was more than happy to adopt me as her sister—doubly so, I suspect, where her brother is concerned—but Vil or no Vil, my feet have been itching to leave.

I know I can find my family. I just don’t know if they’ll want me back. Bile burns in my throat, and I start hurling knives again before Vil is quite clear of the target.

Skaanda and Daeros have been warring for decades.

It’s not all-out war, all the time, but frequent skirmishes over border towns, river trade routes, and logging efforts in the Altari Forest have taken a toll.

Daeros is a smaller country than Skaanda, bordered by mountains on three sides and the mighty Saadone River on the fourth.

By all accounts, Daeros is running low on the food that Skaanda has in large supply.

But Daeros trades with the Aeronan Empire, our mainland neighbor to the north, and so seems content to keep squabbling with Skaanda indefinitely.

Iljaria, the third country to occupy our peninsula, lies to the east of Daeros and stays out of our eternal feud.

The Iljaria claim pacifism almost religiously and are a people blessed with long life and inherent, powerful magic, every member of their race marked by their white hair.

Centuries ago, the Iljaria erected a magical barrier that permanently cut them off from the rest of the peninsula.

So they don’t fight because they don’t need to—and that’s only one of the reasons Skaandans despise them.

But even without the magical barrier, Skaanda would never dare march on Iljaria.

Ordinary swords and spears are of little use against a people who can bend earth and rock, beasts and trees, the air in your lungs, and the very beats of your heart to their will.

So it’s Daeros Skaanda squabbles with, locked in seemingly endless conflict over land and resources, while the Iljaria dwell ever apart, essentially an island unto themselves.

The plot to take Daeros is twofold: Vil will lead a party of ambassadors overland to Tenebris—the mountain palace in Daeros—to make overtures of peace and secure a cessation of hostilities between the two nations, while keeping tabs on the key players within the mountain.

The Daerosian nobility will be staying in Tenebris during Winter Dark, and Vil means to make allies with them where he can, laying the groundwork for a smooth transition of power.

At the same time, the Skaandan army will come secretly through the labyrinth of mountain tunnels Saga and I discovered during our escape.

When the army arrives, Vil will seize Kallias and claim Daeros for Skaanda—hopefully with minimal casualties.

It’s a good plan, one I’ve helped Vil and Saga fine-tune for the year and a half I’ve been here. But I still don’t want any part of it.

If I ever see Kallias again, it will only be long enough to drive a knife into his heart and look him in the eye while I do it.

I would want him to know exactly who it is who ends him, as he once threatened to end me.

I don’t want to play at being an ambassador and hope Kallias doesn’t recognize me while I spy for Vil.

I don’t want to spend a single minute more in that damned mountain. Eight years was enough.

Tonight there’s a feast in the great hall to send off the ambassadorial party.

I sit on Saga’s right, across from Vil, who is wearing a sleeveless blue robe embroidered in silver, whorls of gold painted all up and down his tautly muscled arms. There are rings on his fingers, and his ears are heavy with jewels.

He looks every inch the chiseled statue of a god, as he did the first time I saw him the day Saga and I arrived back in Staltoria City.

He has grown more human to me since then. We’ve become friends.

But I’m not sure he understands the enormity of the thing he’s asking me to do.

Vil catches my eyes across the table, and I can read his thoughts as easily as if he spoke them aloud, because they’re the same things he says to me over and over: We need you, Brynja. Skaanda needs you. I need you.

I flush and look away, playing with the fringe of the tablecloth and hardly touching my food. I stare at my pale, freckled hands and wonder if Saga is right—maybe I have changed so much my mother wouldn’t recognize me. Maybe that means Kallias won’t, either.

Skaandans, like the magical Iljaria with whom we share a common ancestry, run the gamut of skin tones, from light like mine to dark like Vil’s and Saga’s, and every shade between.

It’s my freckles that worry me the most. They are neither very common nor very un common in Skaandans, but I am certain Kallias would recognize mine.

Indridi, Saga’s handmaiden, promises she can cover them with carefully applied cosmetics.

But despite the cosmetics and my curls, my added weight, and my newly acquired curves, Kallias would know me. Wouldn’t he? How could he not?

Saga’s father stands from his place at the head of the table, the crystal-and-sapphire crown that marks him as king of Skaanda resting on his close-cropped, silvering hair.

He toasts the Skaandan army, then toasts Saga and Vil.

They rise from their seats, regal and shining, ready to end the war—and Kallias—forever.

A cheer roars through the hall, and every soul present lifts their wine goblet to their lips. I take a hefty swallow, and the alcohol burns all the way down my throat.

Pipes and drums and tiny, tuned cymbals strike up music for dancing, while a host of servants shove the dining tables to one end of the hall and couples rush to the floor.

I look up to find Vil beside me, the jewels glittering in his ears, his fitted robe accentuating his muscular frame. “Dance with me, Brynja?” he says, holding out his hand.

My mind snags on the image of a blue-eyed boy with white-and-black hair, pulling me toward him in the dark.

I taste the heat of his kiss, of his magic, fizzing blue and silver inside me.

Longing floods my senses. This is why I keep distance between me and Vil.

The blue-eyed boy is why. But all that is over.

I will never see him again. Vil is the one here, in front of me.

I forcibly shove the memory away and fold my hand in Vil’s.

“I’m not going to Daeros,” I insist as Vil leads me to the outskirts of the dancing.

He shakes his head and smiles a little. “So you say.”

He puts his other hand on my waist, tugs me close against his chest. His heat pulses through me, and he smells of his shaving lotion, of our dinner wine. It would be easy, I think, to melt into him. To forget everything else.

And yet I can’t forget the boy in the dark. Fingers in the stubble of my newly grown hair. Blue eyes and sparking magic. Unshaven cheek scraping against my smooth one. Lips like fire, desperate and wanting.

“I need some air,” I choke out, pulling away from Vil. I fairly run through the hall and out onto a high balcony that looks east, toward Daeros, faint stars scratching already at the night sky. I breathe deep and slow, trying to come back to myself.

As autumn deepens across the peninsula, the days will grow shorter and shorter until the onset of winter, when the sun won’t rise at all for three months.

The Iljaria call this long period of darkness Soul’s Rest , we Skaandans Gods’ Fall , and the Daerosians the rather-unimaginative-if-you-ask-me Winter Dark .

Saga and I escaped from Daeros during Gods’ Fall a year and nine months ago.

Vil’s plan is to arrive at Kallias’s mountain in time for this year’s.

He means to infiltrate the palace while the dark remains and seize Daeros as the sun rises again, marking the beginning of a new year—and the beginning of Vil’s governorship over a new territory.

Up on the balcony, I blink into the night, a cool breath of air sliding past my neck.

“You know you’re coming with us,” says Vil, stepping up beside me, but at a thoughtful distance.

My throat tightens. I don’t look aside at him, because I can’t quite bear to. “I know,” I say.