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“You’re the one here disguised as an ambassador and pretending to work toward peace. I assume Saga’s army is coming through the labyrinth as we speak?”

I grit my teeth, and that’s his answer.

“Damn it, Brynja.”

“What are you going to do?” I demand. “Reveal us? Throw us on your father’s mercy?”

“My father has no mercy,” Ballast grinds out. “He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. And I have no wish to see him dash you to pieces.”

“Then ally with me. Ally with us . Come and meet with Vil and Saga. We can forge true peace between Daeros and Skaanda, and when our army arrives and we take your father off his throne, I’ll convince Vil to back your claim to it.”

Ballast scoffs. “He would never agree to that. Your Skaandan prince wants power every bit as much as he wants me dead, or I miss my mark.”

I look away, Vil’s words burning in my brain: He’ll be executed along with Kallias, when the time comes.

“What, then?” I say quietly, staring at the floor.

“Ally with me .”

I glance up again and am caught in the fierceness of his one-eyed gaze.

“I mean to be king of Daeros,” he says. “Autonomous. Sovereign. When my father is gone, I will drive Skaanda and Aerona both from my country. Forget about Skaanda. Ally with me.”

“You’re asking me to betray my country. My friends.”

His eye glitters. “I’m asking you to choose me over anything else.”

Panic crawls through my veins. “And if I don’t? If I can’t?”

His face closes. “Then stay out of my way, and don’t try and stop me. Or you’ll bitterly regret it.”

I stare at him, and I shake.

His eye goes wide. He stretches out a hand to me. “Brynja—”

But I’m up and through the heating vent before he has a chance to say anything more. I crawl to safety, away from the royal wing to a hidden hole in a forgotten part of the palace, where no one could ever find me, least of all him.

I fight to get hold of myself, to shake away the lingering sensation of his kiss, to not let his words rattle me. But they do. Because I realize he’s changed since the tunnels. I realize he’s not who I thought he was.

He sounded exactly like his father just now, and it scares the living hell out of me.

There are weeks left yet before the end of Gods’ Fall, but I am beyond weary of darkness.

Life in Tenebris takes on a horrible monotony.

I long for the same things I always have: light and freedom.

It feels like little has changed since the last time I was here—it’s only my cage that is bigger.

I feel trapped, and I envy Saga, who continues to leave the palace every day to help at the orphan house.

Aelia begins to go, too, and the two of them strike up a friendship that makes me even more envious.

Vil orders me to stay in Tenebris so I can continue to spy for him, keeping tabs on anyone and everyone who moves within the palace.

I track Kallias’s movements, as well as those of his general and his steward.

I know if his wives stir from their rooms, and if he ever sends for them.

I know what his children do all day: the girls attending to their lessons in their rooms or the library, the boys—with the exception of Ballast—training with the guard.

Ballast is in constant meetings with the Daerosian governors, striking bargains with them, making promise after promise in exchange for their support.

Every so often he glances up to the ceiling where I crouch, listening, and I know he knows I’m there.

I don’t dare go and speak with him again.

I’m still reeling from our last encounter, and I don’t know what the point of it would be.

He isn’t going to change his goals, and I can’t change mine.

I continue to monitor digging progress into the heart of the mountain, and twice more I ask Finnur to craft his stones of healing magic, to make certain that Kallias doesn’t reach the weapon before the Skaandan army arrives.

Every few days I sneak down to the cellar, slipping through a secret entrance to the Iljaria tunnels behind a curve of stone that looks like a wall but isn’t.

Ballast told me and Saga about it, marked it down on his charcoal map—it was how he escaped from Tenebris three years ago.

I go there hoping beyond all hope to find the advance scout of the army waiting for me.

It’s far too soon for that yet, of course, but it doesn’t stop me from checking.

In the evenings after dinner—where I do my level best to avoid interacting with either Kallias or Ballast—I make my report to Vil and Saga.

“No change?” says Saga one evening, sitting in her usual place in Vil’s receiving room, sipping wine.

I’m too antsy for wine or the cheese and cakes spread out on the low table in front of the couch. I perch on top of Vil’s wardrobe, jiggling my knee and wishing I could prevail upon the Violet God to make time move a little faster.

“No change,” I confirm. “Finnur’s magic should hold until the army arrives.”

Vil nods. “Good. And won’t you come down from there? You’re making me nervous.”

I obligingly hop down from the wardrobe, landing lightly on the balls of my feet as Vil turns his questions to Saga, quizzing her on her latest conversation with Aelia at the orphan house, and whether she gleaned anything useful about the Aeronan Empire and their plans.

I leave them to it, climbing back up into the vents. I didn’t tell them that today was hell, as it always is. I didn’t tell them about Kallias’s possessive touches and smug smiles at dinner, assuming an answer to his proposal that I have not given him and never will.

I didn’t tell them that afterward Ballast attempted to pull me aside, desperate to speak to me, as he has been ever since that night in his room, that I left him without a word.

I didn’t tell them that there’s to be another performance from Kallias’s Collection tomorrow evening, and I’ll have to watch, stoic and stupid and dying inside.

I make my way to the great hall, where I leap down into the realm of my nightmares and go to visit the children, emptying my pockets of filched treats, giving all my reassurances to their pale and weary faces.

Last of all, I visit Gulla.

She seems to have shrunk since the last time I was here, hollow and gaunt, though her eyes are bright.

Hello, Brynja, she says in her finger speech.

“Hello, Gulla,” I tell her.

I don’t have anything to say, really, I just wanted to be with her. Wanted her to know she isn’t forgotten.

How is my son? she asks me, her white lashes seeming almost to shine in the pulsing glow of the time-glass on the opposite wall.

I shake my head. “Under Kallias’s rule. He claims he wants to save you—to save Daeros, but—”

She sighs and sits with her knees pulled up to her chin. And you, Brynja?

“What about me?” I whisper.

She shakes her head, reaches her hand through the bars of her cage, and gently touches my curls. Are you where you want to be?

“No.”

Why?

I don’t know how to answer that. We study each other in the dim light, and I am weary, weary, of all this.

“When the light returns, I’m going to save you,” I promise her. “I’m going to kill him, and I’m going to save you.”

And after that? What then?

“I don’t know,” I say quietly.

She gives me a tired smile.

There is nothing left to say, so I just sit with her as the night spins on, as the cold floor numbs every part of me, as Rute watches from her cage, high up at the peak of the ceiling, the ghost of what I was, the ghost of who I am.