Page 36

We reach the dining hall far too soon for my liking, and to my extreme discomfort, the attendants seat me to the left of Kallias’s ivory chair, with Vil to my own left.

The seat to Kallias’s right—the place of honor—is vacant.

Lysandra isn’t here tonight, but Zopyros, Theron, and Alcaeus are.

All three of them practically radiate anger, which I can’t see any concrete reason for.

Until Kallias sweeps in with a boy at his side.

A boy I once kissed in the dark.

My heart trips at the sight of him, striding tall across the room. Ballast , dressed in silk and fur, jewels in his ears and rings on every finger. Ballast , whom I never thought I’d see again, Ballast —

Belatedly, I notice the white silk patch tied around the left side of his head with an indigo ribbon. Angry red lines show from beneath the patch, half-healed wounds cruelly given.

Ballast, with only one eye.

I know I’m staring. I can’t wrench my gaze away. I feel flushed and frantic, my desire to flee the room at war with the draw of Ballast, who takes the seat of honor. The one across from me. His gaze locks on mine and he looks ill, sweat on his brow and a feverish gleam in his single eye.

I can’t think, can’t breathe. All is a roaring kind of numbness punctuated by the lodestone pull of him, four feet from where I’m sitting.

“Princess Astridur,” says Kallias, turning to me. He takes my hand and raises it, briefly, to ice-cold lips. “I was sorry to miss you at the proceedings this morning. I do hope you’re feeling better.”

I force myself not to recoil and stammer out something in return, but I have no idea what I actually say. Kallias follows my gaze to Ballast.

“Allow me to introduce my son, His Highness Ballast Heron Vallin,” Kallias says. “I do apologize for his regrettable appearance. He’s part Iljaria.”

Vil tenses beside me and puts his hand almost possessively on my leg under the table. He’s heard all about Ballast from Saga, and she didn’t exactly paint him in a flattering light, despite what he did for us in the tunnels.

“I am honored to meet you, my lady,” says Ballast, still staring at me every bit as much as I’m staring at him. He holds himself stiffly, like he’s in pain and trying not to show it.

Gods gods gods .

“This is Princess Astridur Sindri,” says Vil coolly, collecting himself. His hand is warm and heavy on my leg.

Ballast’s lips thin as his gaze slides to Vil. “And you are?”

Vil stares him down. “Vilhjalmur Stjornu, crown prince of Skaanda.”

Ballast’s brows go up again. “Indeed?”

“They are here to negotiate peace,” offers Aelia.

“I see.”

“But not well,” says Vil pointedly. “I would imagine.”

Zopyros, Theron, and Alcaeus—who have been following this exchange with rapt attention—snicker behind their hands.

Ballast’s jaw works, but he doesn’t rise to Vil’s bait. The attendants lay the first course in front of us, and I eat without registering what’s on my plate. The world is spinning and I’m too aware of Kallias at my elbow, Vil brooding on my left.

Ballast, just across from me.

Ballast, with only one eye.

How can he be sitting here at his father’s table after everything Kallias did to him, to Gulla? How can he even be back here at all? Gulla’s words burn in my memory: He has become too much like his father, desiring only power.

I don’t understand and it’s driving me mad, like my mind is incapable of understanding the shape of him across from me, so very close, but farther away than he has ever been before. I fight to keep hold of the conversation around me, fight for the awareness of anything at all apart from him.

“I am surprised,” says Aelia to Ballast as she sips at her wine, “not to have seen you before. Have you been away?”

Ballast fiddles with his fork and table knife, awkwardly stabbing at a thick slice of ham and cutting off a bite. His hands shake.

“My son has been in the infirmary,” Kallias answers for him. “Recovering.”

I stare at those red lines under Ballast’s eye patch, horror squirming in my belly. They can’t be more than a week healed, if that. He was here. The whole time Vil and Saga and I have been in Tenebris, Ballast has been here, too. I didn’t know. And it guts me.

“I told him he’d had enough time to languish, and he’d best get himself to dinner to meet my guests.” Kallias smiles sweetly over at me.

I gag and turn it into a cough, pretending to choke on my meat.

Vil squeezes my knee under the table. He means to comfort me, perhaps, but right at this moment I don’t want him to touch me.

“May I inquire what happened to your eye?” says Vil, icy as the Sea of Bones.

His hand stays on my knee, and I realize with a sort of distant incredulity that Vil is jealous of Ballast. It’s almost hilarious. I haven’t seen Ballast in nearly two years, and thus far tonight I haven’t spoken a single word to him.

“My son has made some ... regrettable choices in the past year or so,” says Kallias, as if Ballast can’t speak for himself. “But he’s here, now—home, where he belongs. And he has earned his way back into my good graces.”

A muscle jumps in Ballast’s jaw, and I see the fear in him again. Visceral. Raw.

“Some of us have no need to earn our way back into your graces, Father,” says Zopyros overloudly from his place next to Aelia. “ I never left your side.”

I have the sudden, horrific suspicion that Ballast is here, like his half siblings, angling to be named Kallias’s heir. Is that what Gulla meant? And if he is ... is the secret of my identity safe with him?

“I am man enough,” says Ballast quietly, “to own when I am wrong. And to bear the consequence for my misdeeds.” He attempts to stab another bite of meat with his fork, missing it at first and hastily correcting himself.

I realize that having only one eye has thrown off his depth perception, and it sickens me to my core.

What did he do to you, Bal? I want to ask him. Oh gods, what did he do to you?

Kallias leans over and brushes his thumb over the silk eye patch. Ballast goes gray and still, not even blinking. Kallias smiles that satisfied-cat smile before drawing his hand away.

After that, Ballast doesn’t eat anything, just stares at his plate, fingers clenched tight around the handle of his table knife, that feverish glint in his eye grown worse.

I can’t pin down my thoughts, can’t convince my heart to stop its mad racing. It can’t be, it can’t be that Kallias put out Ballast’s eye as some twisted test of loyalty.

But Bronze God. I know that it is .

All the rest of that interminable dinner, I will Ballast to look at me. But he doesn’t. He’s the first to leave the table, and I’m trapped with Kallias awhile longer, able to make my escape only after I swear to him I’ll attend the treaty talks in the morning.

By the time I slip out into the corridor, Ballast is long gone.

“He’s a problem,” says Vil for the hundredth time, pacing the width of his receiving room. Vil and Saga have reached a tentative peace in light of Ballast’s sudden reappearance, and she’s crouched stonily on the footstool, knees pulled up to her chin.

“He knows who you are, Brynja,” Vil goes on. “He knows Saga’s not dead. I’m sure he can guess the rest.”

“Aelia knows who I am, too,” I point out.

“She has no reason to reveal you to Kallias,” Vil replies. “Ballast does .”

Every cell in my body is screaming at me to go and find Ballast, to speak with him, to understand what he’s doing here, to beg him to tell me he’s not back playing his father’s games. To ask him why—

I shove the thought away with an inward curse. “Ballast wouldn’t be back here, wouldn’t have put himself back under his father’s control, unless—”

“Unless what , Bryn?” Saga snaps. She pulls at a loose thread on the footstool, pulls and pulls until there’s a ragged spot on the cushion. Her face has a haggard look, and I think of the dirt on her hem, the things she’s not telling me.

I don’t remind her that she owes her life to Ballast. That we both do. She’s thinking of Hilf, seeing that last awful moment of his life played out over and over.

“He’s Kallias’s son,” she says after a breath. “And that’s the only thing that he is. I agree with Vil. He’s a problem.”

Vil flicks her a grateful smile. “Keep a close eye on him, Brynja. Track his movements, his meetings, especially with his father. We need to know how close he is in Kallias’s confidences, and if Kallias is likely to choose him as his heir—we need to know if Ballast means to reveal us.”

I clench my jaw. I have no intention of spying on Ballast. How could I? After everything we went through together—I jerk up from my seat, but Vil grabs my wrist and holds me back.

I pull my hand from his. “Ballast would never betray me. He hates Kallias too much for that.” That’s what I thought before tonight, anyway, but I’m not about to admit my uncertainty to Vil and Saga.

A muscle twitches in Vil’s face, and I wish Saga hadn’t told him everything about what happened in the tunnels. With Ballast. With me.

“While we’re here in Tenebris,” says Vil, low and tight, “you have agreed to be under my command. Find out everything you can about Ballast. That’s an order.”

I stare at Vil, hurt pulsing through me.

Ever since we left Staltoria City, I’ve seen a different side of him, one I don’t at all like.

He claims he wants to protect me, and yet he pushed me to come on this mission to Daeros.

He ordered Indridi’s execution and was ready to see it through.

He’s been petty toward Ballast and concealed his knowledge about the weapon in the mountain.

The man I thought Vil was is unraveling before my eyes, and I’m beginning to wonder if that man even exists, or if I just wanted him to.

“As you command, then,” I say brusquely.

“Brynja—”

But I stalk back to my and Saga’s room without another word, fighting to conceal my hurt. Saga follows on my heels, her anger pulsing off her like Indridi’s fire.

She doesn’t speak to me until the lights are out and we’re in bed, blankets pulled up to our chins, heat curling into the room. “You know you can’t trust Ballast.”

I screw my eyes shut tight; I feel every pulse of my heart, and I remember the taste of his magic.

“What happened in the caves, what you thought he was to you there—it was nothing. It meant nothing . He’s a murderer , Brynja, and the son of one. Please tell me you know that.”

I dig my nails into my palms, press hard enough to make tears prick. “Have you ever killed anyone, Saga?” It’s not what I want to ask her, but I sense she’s in no mood to be telling me her secrets.

She’s quiet for a long while. I wonder if she’s angry at me for not answering her question, or for asking her that one.

“Yes,” she says at last. “I fought in the skirmish. I fought well . But the Daerosians overwhelmed us. And then Njala was killed in my place, and Hilf was captured, and I—I—”

She doesn’t have to finish. “I know,” I say.

I let her decide what I mean by that.

Saga sleeps, and I slip out of bed. I don’t scramble up into the vent, despite the nearly overwhelming urge to go and find Ballast. I don’t trust myself, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m not sure I trust Ballast, either.

Instead, I wrap an extra blanket around my shoulders and curl up on the windowsill, staring out into darkness lit by cold, wheeling stars until another sunless morning comes.