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Chapter Fifteen

Daeros—Tenebris

There is no formal dinner tonight. Attendants bring food on trays to our rooms instead, leaving time to prepare for the naming ceremony, which is to be at the fifteenth hour. I eat a few half-hearted bites of roast pork and braised vegetables, but my stomach is too unsettled for anything else.

I sit at the dressing table while Saga arranges my hair, threading tiny strands of glittering crystals into my curls.

She covers my freckles with the usual cosmetics, then draws dark lines of kohl around my eyes and brushes glimmering powder on my eyelids.

I transform, under her hands, to the image of royalty I’m impersonating.

Kallias hasn’t announced whom he’s naming as his heir this evening, but I know in my gut that it’s Ballast. Payment, I expect, for the eye. There is no other reason that I can think of for Ballast to have sacrificed a piece of himself.

I study my fingers in my lap and think about Ballast in the hall last night, his hand locked about my wrist, the twin of his father’s smile on his face. His words to me, harsh and cold: If you know what’s best for you, you and your Skaandan prince will leave Tenebris and never come back.

But I see him in the caves, too, down in the dark by the rushing river, his mouth warm on mine, his breath on my neck and his fingers in my hair. His magic, blazing out of him.

Saga lays down her brush, shaking me from my reverie. “Come and get dressed.”

The gown is laid out on the bed; it makes me gasp.

On first glance it looks white, but there are thousands and thousands of glimmering beads sewn into the skirt and the bodice—beads of every color.

Saga means for me to arrive at the ceremony dressed as the Prism Goddess, flaunting a power superior to Kallias’s—and his heir’s.

“Are you really sure that’s a good idea?” I ask.

Saga squares her jaw. “The Daerosians don’t even believe in the gods. If Kallias is insulted, he’ll look the fool for saying so. Now get dressed, Brynja. You’ll be late.”

Vil walks with me to the great hall, my appearance evidently robbing him of all speech. In addition to the gown, which impractically has no sleeves, I wear white furs draped around my arms and shoulders. I feel foolish, overdressed, conspicuous. But there’s no changing now.

Vil wears dark trousers and a long white robe, embroidered in multicolored threads that complement my gown.

He is handsome, shining, and yet I am scarcely moved by the sight of him.

It isn’t wholly false, what he said to me before.

You didn’t think you’d ever see him again.

So you settled for me. But now that he’s here, you have no more use for me, do you?

Part of me, I think, has always been waiting for Ballast. He’s the reason I could never quite allow myself to commit to Vil, even though I wanted to accept the safety, the family, I thought he was offering.

But I got Vil wrong, just like he got me wrong, and I don’t know what to do about it.

Maybe there’s not really anything I can do.

We come into the great hall, and I have to fight the urge to flee. My head spins, but Vil grips my arm, grounding me. I’m humbled and grateful. I lean into him.

Chairs have been set up in a semicircle facing the ivory throne, where Kallias lounges, sipping wine and laughing with a pair of Daerosian women who are dressed in strips of gauzy fabric and little else.

One of them is in his lap, and the other is draped over the arm of his throne, both simpering up at him, trailing their fingers along his neck.

Aelia turns to greet us, wearing a blue velvet gown with animals embroidered in silver all down her skirt. I glance around to see that most everyone here is wearing blue, except for me and Vil. Blue is the color of the goddess of animals. Blue is Ballast’s color.

“Sit with me?” says Aelia, and beckons Vil to the chair next to hers. I take the seat on the other side of him.

Lysandra sweeps in, looking absolutely livid, her thick mask of cosmetics doing little to disguise that she’s been messily crying for a solid hour at least. She’s wearing gray, the color of death, decay, mourning.

Kallias’s other children file in after her, Rhode and little Xenia holding hands, Theron and Alcaeus dressed in matching gold and gray, heavy with furs and gold chains about their necks.

Zopyros is in his lieutenant’s uniform, stony and solemn.

They all sit together, though Lysandra shouts at Xenia until she starts crying, and Rhode tugs her sister into another row.

Pelagia, Elpis, and Unnur, Kallias’s wives, sit behind their children, but Gulla isn’t here.

I try not to look for her cage on the outskirts of the room, try not to wonder if Kallias has hurt her more since we last spoke, if Ballast has done anything at all to help her.

Pelagia’s belly is even more swollen than before, and I hope she’s being properly attended by the palace physician.

She looks ready to give birth at any moment.

The audience is rounded out by Talan, the Daerosian governors, and Kallias’s general, steward, and engineer.

Through the glass wall, northern lights pulse above the Sea of Bones, green and pink and violet. I think about all the times I watched them from my iron cage, beautiful and strange and wholly, wildly free .

I take a breath, force myself to forget about Rute, my replacement, dangling above my head even now.

Nicanor, Kallias’s steward, steps up to the king and says something low in his ear. Kallias yawns, stands, and shoos away the barely clothed women with a look of marked regret.

Ballast comes in, and I think my heart stops.

He wears a long red robe, embroidered with swirls of silver.

His eye patch and ribbon are white, and his one eye has been outlined in gold kohl, his white-and-dark lashes dusted with gold powder to match.

Tiny crystals have been pasted along his jawline, and he glitters as he walks.

He is so beautiful I can’t bear it, my mouth dry, my whole body trembling.

And then he stops at the ivory throne, kneeling before his father and bowing his head low. For a moment all I can see is the lion, ripping Hilf’s throat out.

“Rise,” says Kallias, formal and foreboding. “Rise and take your name, Ballast Heron Vallin.”

Ballast stands, and I’m surprised to realize that he’s several inches taller than his father.

“By my name,” says Kallias, “and by your blood, I seal you as heir apparent to the throne of Daeros, with all the power, privileges, and responsibilities afforded you by that role. Do you pledge your life and blood to Daeros, to its people and its stones?”

Ballast dips his head. “I pledge my life,” he says, his voice quiet yet strong enough to echo around the hall. “I pledge my blood. To Daeros, to its people and its stones.”

“Do you bind yourself to this throne, until your life is spent or taken?”

“I bind myself to this throne.” Ballast’s hands shake. “Until my life is spent or taken.”

Kallias nods, satisfied, and draws a dagger from his belt.

Ballast holds out his already scarred right arm without a word.

I clamp down on my lip as Kallias cuts Ballast’s arm, once, twice, three times, in a crisscrossing pattern just below the elbow.

Ballast stands stone-still and lets him do it, his face blank, his eye fixed on some invisible point in the distance.

This is not the first time Kallias has hurt him.

I don’t even think it’s the first time Ballast volunteered for it.

When the cuts heal, the scar will look something like a spiderweb—the mark of the Daerosian heir.

But right now there are only the wounds, and the blood leaking out. Nausea churns in my gut, and I hate this. I hate all this. I want to save him. I want to pull him far from this place, where Kallias can never hurt him again.

Kallias dips one finger in the wound and traces a line of blood across Ballast’s forehead.

Then he opens the square, flat box offered him by Nicanor and takes out a gold circlet.

He lifts it for all to see. “By the mark of your blood, the bond of gold, and my own word and faithful witness, I name you, Ballast Heron Vallin, heir to Daeros.”

Kallias lays the gold circlet on Ballast’s white-and-dark hair.

Then it is done, and Ballast turns to the crowd, gilded and shining.

I blink and see Gulla’s words, traced through the air in this very room: He has become too much like his father, desiring only power.

I look at Ballast. And I see Kallias. And I wonder if she might be right. It rattles me to my core.

I spend most of the following day hiding in the ceiling above the sprawling, cavernous library.

I am angry at Ballast. Wildly, viciously angry.

I try to parse out my anger, and I can’t quite do it, or don’t quite want to.

Because underneath the anger is hurt. How could he so align himself with his father and his father’s agenda?

How could he put himself further under Kallias’s power?

How can he claim he is saving his mother and all the rest and yet stand back and do nothing?

The voice of guilt screams in my own mind that I am also doing nothing, that Gulla and the children remain caged, and Kallias is yet on his throne, and nothing has changed.

I tell myself I am following the plan, that in less than two months Vil and Saga and I will put an end to everything that Kallias stands for.

But it doesn’t make me feel any better, and I don’t know if I’m more angry at Ballast or myself.

Kallias hasn’t forgotten his private dinner invitation, and when I ask Vil to get me out of it, he tells me it isn’t worth offending the king by refusing to go.

“We have to keep up our facade, Brynja,” he says, pouring himself a cup of wine from the sideboard in his receiving room. “That means we have to do hard things.”