Page 48

I swear at him, up and down the pantheon, as colorfully as I can. “What hard things are you doing?” I demand. “You promised me you’d keep me safe!”

Vil turns to look at me, a stoniness in his face that is there now more often than not. “You are safe, Brynja. And the hard thing I’m doing is not taking Ballast’s damn head off his damn shoulders.”

I grind my jaw and swear at him again, to hide the fact that I’m trying not to cry. I go back to my and Saga’s room without another word.

Saga dresses me in a gold gown with a skirt that flares out at the hips, then weaves strands of little suns through my hair, and clasps a heavy gold collar—also in the shape of a sun—around my neck.

Gold powder on my eyelids, brows, and cheeks, and gold kohl around my eyes complete the look, a not-very-subtle nod to the Yellow God—the god of light.

Saga nods, satisfied, though she won’t quite meet my eyes.

I’ve been avoiding her today, not ready to discuss with her in detail the ramifications of Ballast being named heir, though last night she gave me a taste of her feelings: vindication that she was right about his grasping ambitions, and further fuel on the fire of her hatred.

In her eyes, Ballast truly is no different than his father.

I thank her for helping me get ready, then step out into the corridor to meet the waiting attendant, feeling very, very alone.

I almost turn back to beg Saga for the headdress with the hidden blade, because as it is, it will only be me, unarmed, before the king.

I tell myself that surely there will be dinner knives, and the thought braces me enough to keep going.

It takes a full fifteen minutes of various twists and turns through the palace corridors before the attendant deposits me in front of an arched, ivory door carved with suns. He opens it and waves me into a small parlor.

A pair of doors at the back of the room lead out onto a balcony carved from mountain stone. Kallias waits there, turning at my step. He’s dressed in a black velvet robe embroidered in gold, with a heavy coat of black furs. He smiles. “How lovely you look this evening, Princess.”

I think about dinner knives and force myself to curtsy.

He lifts me to my feet again, his hand cold and hard around mine. “You must be hungry. Come.”

He pulls me through the doors and out onto the balcony, where a small round table is set for two. A pillar of fire blazes impossibly in one corner, lending a measure of warmth to the frigid winter air: Iljaria magic, sparking red and gold.

Kallias draws out a chair for me and lays a white fur over my knees. He takes the seat across from me, eyes glittering in the light of the fire pillar, and I remember how very, very afraid I am of him.

An attendant with a pitcher steps out to fill our wineglasses, and it takes me a moment to register the silk patch tied over his right eye. My heart tries to claw its way out of my rib cage. I have to force myself not to stare.

“Don’t mind him, my dear,” says Kallias in a lazy drawl. “I have to keep an eye on him, or he gets himself into mischief. Just one eye, of course.” He laughs at his joke, but Ballast doesn’t react, just withdraws to the balcony doors, awaiting our pleasure like any ordinary servant.

“Please,” says Kallias. “Eat.”

I turn my attention to my plate, which is piled with eleven different kinds of cake, candied nuts, sugared peaches, and more sweet things than I have ever seen presented all at once.

I’ve had my fill after only a few bites, but I keep nibbling.

Anything is preferable to looking Kallias in the eye.

I sip my wine, too, furious. He has offered me only dessert, and so there are no knives on the table.

Kallias snaps his fingers, and Ballast comes back, stiff and wary in the light of the magical fire.

“I thought I would treat you to a little private performance before we get down to business,” says Kallias, smug. “Did you know my son has some delightful Iljaria tricks?”

My gut wrenches, and I regret every bite I took of Kallias’s damn desserts.

It is a horror to me that Ballast has sacrificed everything to be named his father’s heir, and nothing at all has changed.

“That isn’t necessary,” I say in a rush.

“I am not certain why you invited me this evening, Your Majesty, but—”

“Oh, you’ll be charmed.” Kallias gives a careless wave of his hand, then turns his shrewd glance on Ballast. “Boy.”

Ballast’s eye flicks to me for a heartbeat before returning to Kallias. “What is it you wish me to do, Father?”

My heart is a wild thing, frantic and raging. Oh gods, I wish I were anywhere but here.

“Surprise me,” says Kallias.

Ballast shuts his eye and takes a step back from the table, his lips moving soundlessly. I can feel his magic whispering out of him, shivering through the air, glancing past my cheek. I can’t help but remember the taste of it. The fire of it. My insides turn to clotted cream.

I blink, and there comes the rush of white wings as a flock of owls descends on the balcony.

Their low-throated calls are somehow chilling, their flapping stirring my hair and making the pillar of fire flare hot.

One of the owls lands on Ballast’s shoulder; another takes a tiny cake from my plate and gulps it down whole.

A third owl snatches the gold chain from Kallias’s neck, letting it fall onto his lap.

I blink again, and the owls fly away.

Ballast opens his eye.

Kallias laughs, but there is no mirth in it, and dread curls down my spine.

“Forgive him, Astridur. I will make him do something more exciting next time.”

“No need,” I say, fighting to keep my tone even. “It was most thrilling.”

“You are too kind.” Kallias sighs, bored, and orders Ballast to bring us coffee.

He does, in etched bone cups. I heap sugar and cream in mine, but I can’t quite combat the bitterness, and every sip makes my gut churn worse.

“I am surprised you haven’t asked me yet, Your Highness,” says Kallias as he drinks deep, as the fire pillar blazes too bright for me to see the stars.

“About what, Your Majesty?”

“My Collection. You don’t seem as thrilled with it as I had hoped. I am planning another performance soon.”

I am hyperaware of Ballast, stiff and still in the corner of my eye. I have to fight not to be sick, to face Kallias and say, as evenly as I can, “The children are ... remarkable.”

“The acrobat, particularly, wouldn’t you say?”

His eyes bore into mine and oh gods he knows but I simply force a smile through gritted teeth. “I am not particularly fond of acrobatics, Your Majesty. The heights and leaps make me feel faint.”

He grins. “Which one was your favorite, then?”

“I am ... uncomfortable choosing a favorite among children kept in cages.” My pulse thrums in my throat, and I am so afraid he’s found me out, that Kallias’s sweets and acrid coffee will be the only things in my belly when I die.

But he just raises his brows, laughing at me. “I had not thought you especially tenderhearted, Princess. They are very well looked after, you know. Orphans, all of them. They are fed and educated. The cages are only for show.”

His bald-faced lies enrage me, but there is nothing, nothing , I can do besides keep pretending, as he is, to be something I am not. “Why children, though? What is your fascination with them?”

“I was a prodigy myself, you know,” he returns, tapping on the side of his coffee cup.

“Mathematics and science—they made sense to me, from a very early age. My tutors praised me and my parents made me work out complicated equations for my relatives and visiting dignitaries, showing off my brain as if they were responsible for it.”

I am shocked at the resentment in him, years past but still eating him up from the inside.

Kallias drains his mug and snaps his fingers at Ballast, who comes to dutifully refill it.

“But the older one gets, the less remarkable one’s skills,” Kallias says, “at least in the eyes of others. My father did not think I deserved power, or was capable of wielding it. I was only good for equations, for party tricks. But he underestimated me. Everyone underestimated me.” He clenches his jaw, and fear knits hot and tight inside me as he smiles, sharp and deadly.

“I came to the throne at sixteen,” he says, “when my parents were found dead in their bedchamber during Winter Dark. Poisoned, both of them, by my uncles, who thought to seize Daeros for themselves. They are just bones now, scattered in the glacier sea. I had them executed for murdering my parents.” His eyes glitter, malicious laughter on his brow.

I try not to show my horror—I knew in the vaguest of terms that Kallias had become king at an early age, but none of the sordid details.

And I understand exactly what he’s saying without saying it: He poisoned his parents, then pinned the crime on his uncles, neatly eliminating them while securing the throne for himself.

He must have played his part to perfection, for the Daerosian governors to accept his version of the truth and not stand in the way of him becoming king. That, or they’re a greater lot of fools than I ever thought.

“I have ruled well, in the twenty-three years since,” Kallias goes on. “And soon I will wield a power stronger than my father could have ever imagined.”

Everything inside me pulls me toward Ballast, but I don’t even dare look at him. “What power would that be, Your Majesty?” I say carefully.

Kallias sets down his coffee mug and stands. “Ballast!” he barks. “Move my chair next to Princess Astridur’s.”

Ballast crosses the balcony and puts his hands on his father’s chair, but he doesn’t move it. “Does Her Highness wish you to be so close to her, sir?”

“Are you in the position to question my commands, boy?”

Ballast moves the chair.

Kallias sits next to me, his thigh touching mine. He takes my hands in both of his, trapping them in a cage of skin and bone. His rings press hard against my knuckles, and I try not to gasp at the pain.

“I am very glad,” he says quietly, almost tenderly, “that the Skaandans have such a beautiful ambassador at their disposal. The treaty was a wise idea, and sending you to tempt me into agreeing to it was even wiser.” He eases the pressure on my hands a little, smooths his thumbs along the backs of them.

My heart beats, beats, but I don’t struggle. I know that’s what he wants. I try to breathe. I tell myself that Ballast won’t let Kallias hurt me, even though I’m not at all sure that’s true. I can sense his loathing of me, from his place at the door.

“Your little country is weak, its military spread too thin. Skaanda could no sooner conquer Daeros and seize Tenebris than win a war against the gods you barbarians cling to. But a treaty. A marriage pact to seal it.” His smile is oil and steel.

I want to crawl out of my own skin. “That would do very well, I think.”

I tug my hands out of his, and his rings scratch me. I twist my fingers in my skirt, my whole body aflame. “No woman would bind herself to a man who already has so many wives.”

Kallias shrugs and lays a possessive hand on my neck. “They mean nothing to me. I’m forced to seek the company of other girls because my wives bore me so. And you forget I have no queen.”

I jerk from my chair and am halfway out the double doors before Kallias grabs my wrist. Holds me back.

Ballast is a dark shape in the doorway, his rage coiling off him. Every nerve inside me is screaming, but I force myself to be still.

I am caught in a waking nightmare, trapped by my childhood tormentor, who means to put me in a different kind of cage than the one that housed me before.

But it would be a cage all the same. I’ve seen the way he treats his wives, the way he treats his newly named heir no better than a bear trained for party tricks.

Everything is a game to him, every person a prize to be hoarded or a token to be sacrificed.

It feels inevitable, inescapable. I don’t see any way out.

Panic rattles through me, and the world goes hazy at the edges.

“You don’t need to answer me right away,” Kallias is saying calmly. “But an answer I will require, before the end of Winter Dark. The choice is yours—a treaty, sealed by our marriage and a crown for your head. Or death, for you and all your countrymen.”

I try to breathe, but my head spins. I collapse and Ballast catches me. For a moment he holds me up, his eye fixed on my face, his fingers warm through my sleeve. The world is right again.

And then Kallias swears and rips Ballast away from me, shoving him hard to the floor. “Keep your hands to yourself, boy!”

Ballast sits there in a heap. He bows his head.

Coward! I want to scream at him. Coward! But I’m a coward, too, because I don’t go to help him up. My stomach churns and my head wheels and I can’t bear it. I can’t bear any of this.

Kallias turns back to me with a sickly-sweet smile. “Consider your answer, Astridur.” He brushes one hand across my cheek. “Consider carefully.”

Then I’m running through the parlor and out into the corridor. I make it only a few steps more before I’m sick all over the stones.