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Chapter Twenty-One

Daeros—Tenebris

Vil’s eyes lock hard on mine, his pulse beating quick in his neck under my knifepoint. I feel his anger, his confusion. My head is a wheeling mess of emotions I don’t have time to identify, but at least one of them is guilt. Dimly, I register that Saga is cursing at me.

“ I am the heir to Tenebris.” Ballast’s voice echoes sharply in the stone chamber, but his skin looks gray, wrong, and his neck is starting to blister where the iron touches it.

Brandr eyes him with disgust. “What are you going to do, half blood? You let your father collar you like a dog, and you deserve to be put down like one.” He snaps his fingers, and more Iljaria melt out of the shadows—I am impressed that my brother was able to conceal so many down here, but not surprised.

Two of them wrestle Ballast’s hands roughly behind his back and bind his wrists together.

He struggles and swears, but it doesn’t do any good.

He goes still all at once, tense and exhausted, sweat running into his good eye.

I turn my own eyes away, sick and ashamed.

“Will you seize me, too?” says Aelia coldly, standing alone in the middle of the chamber. “Do you declare war on the peninsula and the mainland in the same breath?”

Brandr frowns. “Aerona is of no consequence to me. You may return to your father if you must, but if he attempts invasion, his blood will be on his own head.”

“Brynja,” says Vil again, low and angry, “explain yourself.”

I will my hand holding the knife to his throat not to shake. I don’t trust myself to speak, the bravado from a moment ago seeming to have leaked out of me.

Brandr shoves Kallias at the remaining Iljaria soldiers, and they drag him back into the tunnel we came through. He doesn’t struggle or curse or show any emotion beyond stark bewilderment. He seems small to me, like a confused child. The blood from my knife trickles still down his neck.

My brother steps over to me and Vil, his presence, his magic , large enough to fill the whole mountain. “There is nothing to explain,” Brandr says. “She is Brynja Eldingar, youngest daughter of the former Prism Master, and my own twin sister. You owe her your reverence.”

“But you’re Skaandan !” spits Saga, writhing in the grasp of her guard.

My heart is a dull drum, beating out every second of the last ten years, every secret, every lie. Sometimes even I forgot what was real, and what must only seem real, if I were to honor my people.

“No,” I say softly. “I am Iljaria. I came here to watch Kallias. To monitor his progress digging into the mountain. My people do not believe in war, but we have never forgotten that this land belongs to us. We devised a way to take it back without bloodshed.”

Saga lets loose another string of curses. “I thought you were my friend. I thought you were helping us, but you were just buying time until your monstrous brother decided to take over.”

“You’re a godsdamned Iljaria spy ,” says Vil. “Just like Indridi.”

I see fire and dust, and my stomach twists.

“Yes, Indridi,” says Brandr, brows drawing tight together as he glances at me. “Where is she?”

“Indridi is dead,” Vil tells him viciously. “It is all your kind deserves.”

Brandr looms suddenly large in his rage. “Take these Forsaken away,” he says, low and cold. “I will deal with them later.”

Vil swears as an Iljaria wrenches him out of my grasp. His eyes meet mine for a heartbeat before he’s pulled into the tunnel. “We trusted you. You betrayed us.”

Saga is hauled out next, fighting and cursing the whole time, then Pala and Leifur, Kallias’s steward, general, and engineer. Aelia walks unhindered, but she’s escorted by another guard.

Ballast is taken last of all. “I knew it,” he says quietly as the Iljaria steer him past me. “I knew that’s why you could taste my magic.”

And then he’s gone, too, and it’s just me, my brother, and one last Iljaria, a woman who could be forty or could be three hundred.

She has pale skin, like Brandr and I, and her white hair is bound in braids on top of her head.

I wish she were someone familiar, but she’s not. I don’t know why that guts me.

Brandr turns to me, his face splitting into a grin. It doesn’t suit him somehow, in his grand role as Prism Master. “An admirable performance, little sister.”

“You’re only three minutes older,” I object, and he laughs.

“Still fierce and argumentative, I see.” He wraps me in a sudden, tight embrace that crushes all the breath out of me.

“You won’t hurt them,” I say, hating that my voice wobbles, hating that I am unsure. I haven’t seen my twin in a decade, and he is different than I remember him, in every way possible.

His brows bend together. “Hurt them?”

“The Skaandans and . . . Ballast.”

Brandr waves a dismissive hand. “Violence is not the Iljaria way. Or have you forgotten?”

A knot pulls tight in my chest, and I think of my knifepoint, pressed into Kallias’s neck hard enough to draw blood. That is a violence I do not regret. Does that make me less Iljaria? “I haven’t forgotten.”

“Good.”

I gulp air and remind myself that I’ve done it. I’ve finally completed my mission. My brother is here and I can be myself again. I have honored my people, and perhaps, at long, long last, they will honor me, too.

I smile at my twin and link my arm through his, trying not to wince at the sting of his magic. “I am happy to see you, Bran.”

His grin is back, and he shakes his head. “A Skaandan princess. On the road, and then here—at first I couldn’t believe it was you! Last I knew you were a parrot in a cage.”

My brief pulse of happiness evaporates.

“But never mind that now,” Brandr goes on. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?”

Brandr turns to the hole Kallias knocked in the magic-infused wall, and the mysterious chained block in the room beyond. In all the commotion, I’d forgotten.

“To fulfill our destiny,” he says.

We walk through.