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I try to smile, but I can’t manage it. “Do you think he knows?” I whisper.

“Kallias? About you?” Aelia shakes her head. “Do you think he’d let you stay here, alive and unchallenged, if he did?”

“Maybe. He likes his games.”

Aelia puts her hand on my shoulder. “Then let’s beat him at this one. You have my support, Astridur, for the duration of Winter Dark. I am on your side.”

I hear the for now that she doesn’t speak.

“What about the Iljaria?” I ask her. “Does your father mean to conquer them, too?”

“It seems that the Iljaria are best left alone,” says Aelia carefully, “unless one has at their disposal a power sure of beating them.”

Vil’s ordered fruit and cakes to his receiving room, with steaming mugs of tea ready on the end table. He and Saga and Pala are waiting for me when I hop down from the vent, with Leifur keeping watch in the hall.

Pala hands me a rag to wipe the grime off my face and hands. I perch on a footstool and grab a mug of tea but I don’t drink it, just watch the steam curl up.

“You heard something,” says Saga, reading me easily. “Out with it, Bryn.” She’s carving a new knife handle, shavings falling off onto the floor.

Vil offers me a plate of food, but I shake my head and he sinks back into his chair.

I give my report while Saga’s carving takes shape: It’s another sun design, every ray hung with a smaller star. We are all of us longing for the light again, I think, though we are a single day into Gods’ Fall. The winter will be long.

I tell them about my conversation with Aelia first, which makes Vil go tense and grim—he hadn’t reckoned on having to ward off an imperial invasion quite so soon. Saga just frowns and carves faster.

Then I take a bracing breath and tell them about Kallias’s discussion with his engineer.

Vil’s whole demeanor changes. He goes tense and jumpy, jiggling his knee and glancing at his sister nervously. I think about his staunch dismissal of the subject when it was brought up on the journey here and realize he hasn’t been wholly forthcoming about his plans in Tenebris.

Saga puts down her carving knife, brows bent together. “The Iljaria weapon from the stories—it really exists? Kallias truly believes he can find it?”

Vil grimaces and Saga watches him warily.

“It sounds like he’s been digging for years,” I say. “And two years ago, they hit a glowing vein.”

“A glowing vein ?” Saga’s mouth drops open.

“Why didn’t you tell me how close he was?” Vil demands of me.

I stare at Vil, hurt pulsing sharp in my chest. His sudden intensity makes me wary, or maybe it’s my nascent perception that perhaps he’s not quite as steady or as safe as I thought.

“That was the night I escaped,” I tell him, “the night I dragged your sister and her broken foot out of Kallias’s clutches, through a blizzard, and into the tunnels.

And then I was struggling to keep the both of us alive while battling cave demons —so forgive me if mythical weapons and glowing veins went right out of my head. ”

Vil swears at me. “This changes everything , Brynja. How can you not understand that?”

I jerk up from my seat, temper flaring, and swear right back at him. “It would have been nice if you’d bothered to tell us your entire plan before dragging us on this godsdamned mission!”

“ What changes everything?” Saga demands. “What didn’t you tell us, Vil? What is this weapon?”

I flick my eyes to her. “The stories don’t say what it is. But if the Iljaria feared it enough to bury, it must be capable of horrific destruction.”

Vil shakes his head, a feverish light in his eyes. “The Iljaria hid the weapon away because they rejected its power, not because they feared it. They couldn’t bear the thought of us Skaandans—the people who were once their kinsmen!—becoming as strong as them.”

Saga wheels on him. “You seem to have quite determined opinions about something that’s supposed to be a story .”

He flicks her a guilty look. “The weapon must have the power to change the fate of the entire peninsula—why else would the Iljaria bury it?—and I mean to be the one to wield it. Not Kallias. Not Aerona. Me.”

Unease ties me in knots. “Vil—” I start.

Saga stabs her carving knife deep into the table, making both Vil and me jump. “What. The. Hell , Vil!” she cries. “Were you even going to tell me about the weapon before you had it in your hands?”

“I can explain.”

She squares her jaw. “Then explain.”

My stomach churns. I don’t like this side of Vil. It makes me think of how he was out on the plain, ordering Indridi’s execution, and it scares me.

“I’m sorry, Saga. I wasn’t keeping you in the dark on purpose—or at least not maliciously. I needed to find evidence that the weapon really and truly existed before hanging all our hopes on it. Now we have it.”

Saga scowls at her brother. “I am the crown princess of Skaanda, Vilhjalmur Stjornu. You don’t get to decide what I do and don’t need to know.”

His lips thin.

“I agree with Saga,” I say. “This was never a part of our plan. If you would have told us this from the beginning—”

“Then what?” Vil snaps at me. “You wouldn’t have come along?”

Hurt burrows deep. I don’t understand what happened to the Vil who kissed me in the moonlight, who told me to trust him, who promised to keep me safe. “I would have advised you against it.”

Saga isn’t finished. “How did you find out about the weapon in the first place? What, exactly, do you think it can do?”

Vil rubs at his forehead, irritation roiling off him.

“When the reports came that you were dead, I dedicated myself to destroying Daeros. I researched everything I could get my hands on: maps and generals’ reports, ancient records of the time when the Daerosians first came to our peninsula and the Iljaria fled east. In one of those records was an account of the weapon, said to be a power greater than the sun itself, bound in rock and ice, meant to be buried, forgotten.

“I thought that if it existed, if it could be found ... Skaanda would never want for anything, never fear anything, ever again. It’s a miracle from the gods, Saga, meant to be wielded by Skaandan hands alone: the means to at long last right the wrong the Iljaria did us so long ago.

A chance at true peace, true freedom. No more darkness, no more fear. ”

My heart is beating too fast, too hard. I pace along one side of the room, trying to calm myself down.

Saga huffs out a breath, not mollified by her brother’s speech. “Do you think yourself a god , Vil, that you imagine banishing the dark? Will you even be content ruling only Daeros?”

He towers with sudden rage. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Saga stares him down. Both of them seem to have forgotten I’m even here. “You know exactly what it means. You have envied me ever since the priestess marked me as heir, and not you. I thought—I thought we had worked past all that. I guess not.”

“Saga—”

“I have trusted you all this time, Vil,” she says quietly. “Don’t give me a reason to stop.”

I’m unwilling to remain in the middle of this festering sibling rivalry. “I’m tired,” I announce. “I’m going to bed.”

I climb up into the vent before either of them can object, although I’m not sure they even heard me.

A little while later Saga joins me in our room, where I’m already tucked into bed. She crawls in and pulls the blankets up to her shoulders. “You knew about the weapon, too,” she accuses.

“I didn’t know it was part of Vil’s plans.”

“You still should have told me.”

“I’m sorry, Saga. I should have.”

She sighs.

“Are things all right? With you and Vil?” I ask her.

“I don’t know. I can’t stop being angry at him. I don’t want to be afraid that he resents me enough to seize Skaanda for himself ... but ...”

“But you are.”

She takes a slow breath. “I am.”

“He’s ambitious,” I say. “But he loves you. He was ready to tear apart all of Daeros for you.”

She huffs out a laugh. “So he was.”

I blink up into the dark.

“In any case,” she says, “we can’t let Kallias wield that weapon. It would be better in Vil’s hands.”

“Or yours?”

She shifts on the mattress. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me, Brynja?” she asks me quietly.

I count the beats of my heart. “No,” I say.

“You promise?”

“I swear it on the gods.”

“All right.” She turns her head toward me. “Have you visited the children yet?”

My gut twists. “No.”

“Why not?”

I gnaw on my lip. “I’m a coward.”

“They deserve hope, Brynja. You have to go.”

She falls asleep before I can reply, but I am awake a long while. When at last I sleep, I dream I’m once more in my cage, dangling from the peak of the great hall. But the cage has no door and the room is filling up with blood and I can’t get free. I drown, choking, in crimson.