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My breath hitches. “Yes,” I whisper.

And then he is crushing me once more against him, his mouth wild and wanting on mine.

I feel him reining in his power, or attempting to.

It’s there just beneath the surface, ready to ignite.

Magic sparks on my tongue, burrows into my mind.

All is blue, all is heat. Our kiss is a living thing, bound between us, barely contained.

I don’t think I want to contain it. His magic grows stronger as he loses hold of it.

It burns me, eating me up from the inside.

But I don’t care. I want him closer, I need him closer. I—

Steps sound on the stone, and I come back to myself in a rush, jerking away from Ballast.

I gulp air in desperate mouthfuls, feeling wildly disoriented. Ballast’s eyes are unfocused, and he’s breathing hard, too. “Brynja,” he says, soft as a prayer.

And then Saga is beside us, the torch she carries fully illuminating the wrath and hurt in every line of her face. “Get up,” she snarls. “Both of you, Get The Hell Up .”

We obey, stiff and shaky on our feet.

“What are you doing down here?” she demands. “Why did you leave the camp?”

She sets her jaw when neither one of us answers, and then she looks at Ballast, her jaw tight, her right hand gripping her sword hilt. “How far are we from the exit?”

Ballast flicks his gaze to mine, agony written all over his face. “An hour’s walk,” he says. “No more.”

Saga swears at him. “We’re leaving. Now.”

We follow Saga back to our cave, where we smother the fire and shoulder our packs for the last time.

I feel tight and hot and full to bursting.

Ballast catches my hand with his, and I turn to speak with him, but Saga yanks me away.

“Touch her again,” she says, low and cold, “and I’ll take your damned head off. ”

He ducks his chin to her in deference and makes no further move toward me.

None of us speak as Ballast leads us through the tunnels, as our path winds up and the stone morphs to dirt beneath our feet.

A screen of tangled brambles obscures our exit.

We pull them free, thorns snagging at our sleeves, our hands.

The pain grounds me but doesn’t stop the tears from pressing hard against my eyes, threatening to fall. I don’t want to leave him. How can I?

We break through the brambles to see light spilling across the tundra, gleaming a fiery red on the icy snow.

Now I do weep, openly, at the touch of the sun on my skin.

I can’t seem to stop, sagging against the mountain, wrenched apart by grief, by joy, by deliverance.

Kallias cannot reach me here. I am free of my cage.

Free of the mountain. Free of everything, perhaps, but myself.

Ballast touches my hand and I lift my face to him, see that he is crying, too. “It has been a long time,” he says, “since I saw the sun. It’s beautiful.”

I choke off my tears, swipe my sleeve across my nose and eyes. “Don’t shrink from it,” I tell him. “Don’t go back into the dark.”

He nods, his eyes fixed on mine. “I will try not to, Brynja of Skaanda.”

I flinch. This is goodbye. I will never see him again, never have another chance to tell him that I—

Saga jerks me away from him. Her jaw is clenched; her eyes are wet. She shines in the sunlight. “We are going now,” she tells Ballast. “Remember what I told you: If I ever see your face again, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

He bows to her, very low, as if she is a queen. “Thank you for your mercy.”

She has nothing else to say to him and, grabbing my wrist, pulls me with her onto the tundra. I glance back at Ballast, panicked. I shake Saga off. “Give me a moment, Saga.”

She shakes her head, angry but resigned. “Catch up, then,” she says shortly. “I’m not waiting.” And then she stalks ahead, like she cannot get away from Ballast and the mountains fast enough.

My heart stammers as I turn back to Ballast, as I look at him in the full light of the sun.

He is so very beautiful it makes me ache.

I shiver at the memory of his heat and his magic, his mouth on mine.

I want to kiss him again, want to pull him against me.

But I don’t dare. If I did that, I would never let him go, and I have to. My family, my future, is waiting.

There is a depth of feeling in his eyes as he studies me, the sunlight turning his face all to gold.

“Come back to me,” he says, “when you have done what you need to do. Please come back to me.”

I can’t promise him that. I want to, but I can’t. There is too much I want to say to him, and not enough time or words to say it. So all I tell him is: “Don’t dwell in the darkness, Bal. Not anymore. Stay in the light.”

He gives me half a smile, but I don’t miss the sadness there. “In the light, Brynja.”

He touches my brow with warm fingers. My breath catches.

“Lords keep you,” he says softly.

I echo his Iljaria phrasing: “Lords keep you.”

One last look between us, fraught with feeling, with loss.

And then I follow Saga west across the tundra, my boots squeaking in the hard-packed snow, the sun warm on my face.

I glance back, just once, to the mountain.

But Ballast is already gone.