Page 45

Twenty-One Months Ago

The Iljaria Tunnels

Saga won’t speak to me. She barely even looks at me. She will never forgive Ballast for killing Hilf. And she will never forgive me for permitting Ballast’s touch.

The only time she interacts with Ballast is every night after we make camp, when he scratches out the map with charcoal on the stone, and she copies it down, making certain she has it memorized.

Other than that every day is an agony of silence, of hewing our way through the cave demons, of careful distance between all three of us.

Sometimes I catch Ballast watching me, but when I meet his eyes, he glances away.

I want to tell him I am not Saga, that the memory of his hand on my cheek sends fire through my veins.

I want to tell him that I care for him, that he means something to me I don’t even properly understand.

What pass for days down here spin on, and I sense very keenly that there are not many left, that no matter how often I have felt we will be trapped here in the mountain with the shadow monsters forever, it isn’t true.

We’ll reach the end of the tunnels soon.

It will be time to leave Ballast behind.

The very thought is a keen-edged agony. I will miss him when we have gone.

Already it gnaws at me. I don’t know if I will be able to bear letting him go.

“We’re close, aren’t we,” says Saga one day as we break camp, scattering the ashes of the fire, smudging out the twin charcoal drawings on the stone floor. “Close to the exit.”

Ballast looks at me for one long and steady moment before turning his back to us and raising his torch into the darkness, sword loose and ready in his other hand. “Yes,” comes his quiet agreement. “We’re close.”

My stomach wrenches.

“How close?” says Saga.

“We will camp only once more.”

She huffs out a breath. “Good.”

We walk awhile in silence before Ballast says: “I’m not coming with you to Staltoria City.”

Saga’s jaw tightens. “I know. I will not force you to come—and with that, I consider my debt to you for guiding us repaid. But if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”

“I know,” Ballast echoes.

There are no monsters today, which makes me more restless than usual—it’s easier to hack through a horde of cave demons than to be confronted with my own thoughts, forced to reckon with the reality of having to part with Ballast, when I have only just found him again.

I dread making camp, but Ballast stops sooner than I’m ready for, in a little cave off the main tunnel. The underground river flows nearby, its laughter reverberating off the stones.

We eat and sip our tea. Saga draws the charcoal map once more on the ground, and Ballast looks at it and nods.

Then there are only the blankets to spread out by the fire, and one last sleep before leaving the caves behind.

I take first watch, peering out into the wider passage, listening to the fire crack and pop.

But nothing stirs, and I don’t think anything will.

I take the torch from where Ballast propped it against a rock and pace down the tunnel.

I follow the sound of the river until I find it, running smooth and dark along its stony bank.

I sit, study the gleam of the water in the reflected torchlight.

Bright-blue pebbles seem almost to glow beneath the surface, and I scoop out a handful of them, spreading them out on the bank to dry.

I study the pebbles as I force myself to contemplate my future.

I have to go back to my family, and I try to understand my resistance to do so.

My sister has been gone many years now, and yet when I think of home, I think of her—her quick brain and quicker fingers, her spectacles smudged with grease.

The way I’m not sure, even now, if she was properly aware of my existence, so wrapped up in her inventing that she had little thought left to spare for anything or anyone else.

There is my brother, of course, but we were never particularly close.

He was sickly, when we were little, always being attended to by physicians, closeted away from his rambunctious sister.

That’s when he started reading so much, when he decided to become a scholar.

He’s the one who told me all the stories of the gods.

My parents had little time for me. They could have found me in Kallias’s mountain, but they didn’t. They don’t know if I’m alive or dead. I’m not sure it matters to them, either way.

What is there for me, really, at home? But where else would I even go?

“Brynja?”

Ballast’s voice is warm and soft in the darkness, and I don’t turn as he sinks down beside me, close enough that his sleeve brushes mine.

My skin pricks with awareness, yet my heartbeats quiet, steady. I am easier with him next to me. I’m glad he came. I wanted him to.

For a while we don’t speak, just stare into the water, listen to it flowing over the stones.

“The cave demons won’t come again, will they?” I say.

He shakes his head. “We are too near the light. They stay in the deeper parts of the labyrinth, where they can be assured of the darkness. We’re perfectly safe now.” He picks up one of the blue pebbles and turns it over and over in his hands. “Will you really go with Saga?”

“Yes,” I tell him.

“Why?”

“She asked me to. And I have nowhere else to go.”

“You could stay here,” he says quietly. “In the tunnels.”

I hear what he doesn’t say: You could stay with me.

I want to stay with him. I want to so badly it hurts. But not here. Not now. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. “I can’t live in the dark, Bal.”

He turns to face me. The torchlight dances in his white-and-dark hair, licks along his skin, and turns him all to molten gold. His eyes gleam with moisture.

“You can’t stay here, either,” I say. “You belong in the light.”

“I’m a monster. I belong in the shadows with the rest of the monsters.”

His words wreck me. I want to erase the very essence of them, but I don’t know how. “You’re not a monster.”

“But I am. Saga is right. I deserve to die for the things I’ve done.”

“Saga is not a god, to deal out life and death.”

Pain writes its way across his face, like his whole soul is filled with it. “Can I touch you, Brynja?” he whispers.

My heart presses against my breastbone. I give him the barest of nods, which doesn’t convey even an iota of how much I want him to.

He cups one hand around my face, smooths my cheek with his thumb.

I tremble as he tugs the scarf from my head, lets it fall to the ground.

I lean into him like I’m drawn by some unstoppable magnetic force.

He brushes his fingers across my newly grown hair, infinitely gentle.

My skin sparks at his touch. I want him closer. I need him closer.

“I don’t know why you don’t hate me,” he says. “Why don’t you hate me?”

“Because you are a good person, Ballast Vallin, whatever you might think.” The words stick in my throat. I believe them of him; I want to believe them of me, too. “And because you are my friend.”

His eyes are wet, his hand warm against my cheek. “Brynja,” he says. “Can I kiss you?”

I am hot and cold, wild and still, a maelstrom of emotions that narrow down to one I can understand. I want this. I want him .

“Yes,” I whisper. “Gods, Bal, yes.”

He looks at me with such intensity my insides go all to jelly, and then he dips his head and his lips find mine, hesitant, soft.

I kiss him back, careful and a little unsure, my heart raging inside me.

His mouth is warm and wet. He tastes of salt and tea and something untamed that I yearn to know more of.

The stone is cold at our backs; the river rushes steady beyond it, its music echoing in my very soul.

Our kiss deepens, turning feral. His unshaven cheek scrapes against my smooth one, and his lips become fire, desperate and wild.

His hands are in the tangle of my newly grown hair; mine are around his shoulders, pulling him harder against me.

I can’t bear that there is yet space between us. I need him closer.

Blue sparks suddenly before my eyes as magic rushes into me, exploding in my mind, ripping me to pieces.

I jerk away from Ballast with a half-swallowed scream. Blue dances still in the field of my vision, and the pain sears.

He’s breathing hard, his eyes unfocused, his fingers still wound in my hair. “What is it?” he gasps. “What’s wrong? I’m sorry if I—I thought you wanted—”

“I do.” My eyes are hot with tears. “But I can feel your magic, Bal. It’s bursting out of you. It burns.”

“Violet Lord,” he curses. “I’m sorry.” He cups my face with his hands, trembling.

I’m shaking, too, and desperately blinking back my tears. “Don’t be sorry.” I look at him in utter misery. I want to pull him close again. I want his skin on mine, I want to feel the hard and soft planes of him. But his magic terrifies me.

We hold each other for a while in the dark, my head tucked under his chin, his hands tracing slow circles on my back. His heartbeat calms me, pulsing under my ear, but it breaks me, too. My tears soak through his shirt.

I don’t want to leave him here alone when we reach the end of the tunnels. I don’t want to leave him at all. I want to kiss him again but not in the dark. In the light of the blazing sun.

I lift my head after a while, and we study each other in the torchlight, the river lapping quietly at its stony bank.

“Stay with me,” he says. “Please. I don’t—I don’t think I can bear to be without you.”

My heart wrenches. “I can’t stay, Bal.”

“Why? Saga doesn’t need you.”

“I need to go home. I need to find my family again.”

He traces the line of my collarbone with one finger, and I shiver. “When you’ve found them, then. Will you come back for me?”

I can hardly think around the hard pulse of my heart. “I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep.”

“Then keep it,” he says.

The river rushes on, soft and steady.

“I can try and hold it back,” says Ballast. “My magic.”