Page 65

I got shouted at and banished outside, where I tried the same thing with seashells and pebbles on the shore.

I was there until the sun set and the stars began to appear, and then my mother came out and found me with sand and fish and water swirling about my head, unsure of how to put them all down again without causing a hurricane. I got quite a few lectures after that.

“My hair color is coming back,” I say, “so that spell is wearing off. Why isn’t my magic returning? If one reverted on his death, why not the other?”

Brandr sighs, like I’m the most troublesome thing in all the world. To him, maybe I am. “It is possible that locking magic can’t be reversed at all. Did that never occur to you?”

It occurs to me now, and I want to scream and rail. I need my magic back, a second heart I’ve been living without for all these years. I’m not sure how long my other heart, my frailer heart, can go on beating without it.

“Won’t you even try , Brandr?” I ask him quietly. “You’re the most powerful Iljaria alive right now. If there’s a way, surely you can find it. And—and you of all people know what it is like to be weak.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and I take a step back as his magic pulses off him white-hot.

“Your sympathies with the Skaandans and even the Daerosian children run far too deep. How can I trust you?”

“So you’ll damn me to live forever like one of them?”

“I’d imagine you’d be used to it by now.”

I bite my lip hard to keep from screaming at him.

“Prove yourself to me, Brynja. Prove your loyalty to the Iljaria, and I will do my best to reunite you with your magic.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing all this time?” I demand. “I sacrificed a decade of my life for our people. I betrayed my friends and handed you the keys to the Yellow Lord. I’ve done nothing but prove my loyalty.”

His mouth thins. “It isn’t enough. Simply calling Skaandans and that half-Iljaria bastard your friends attest that you’ve grown too much like them, that you don’t know what true loyalty even means.”

“But—”

“Enough, Brynja. I have things to attend to.”

He leaves me alone in the alcove, the scent of wine wrapping around me, my own insignificance crushing me into oblivion.

My room feels strange, wrong, without Saga and Pala in it. I don’t know why I’m surprised that no one has moved me to a grander room—Brandr has been installed in Kallias’s suite, after all. But then again, which room would I even want? Ballast’s? My stomach turns sour. No, this is better.

I don’t dare go to the dungeons until Brandr is asleep.

He doesn’t know about my paths through the ceilings—he doesn’t know anything about my years here, my escape with Saga, or how long I’ve been back.

He probably doesn’t care. But I still need to be cautious.

He’ll be able to sense me if I’m near him, and if he catches me freeing Ballast, all hope of getting my magic back will be gone.

I pace awhile, trying to collect myself, trying to reorder my understanding of the world and my place in it.

I think of the Yellow Lord, bound beneath my feet, awaiting his fate as all of us await ours.

I try to reconcile myself to the necessity of my brother’s purpose: the restoration of Iljaria, as it was meant to be.

What did I think my father’s plan was? To keep Kallias from uncovering the Yellow Lord, to take Kallias off his throne, and ... then what? Bury the Yellow Lord again? Set him free? Bring him back to our queen and king?

I curse. Was it really always going to end this way?

For all my recent quarrels with Vil, he’s my friend, or at least he was.

He and Saga have been family to me, showing more care for me in two years than my actual family did in a decade.

I cannot resign them to death by the Yellow Lord’s power.

I cannot see any justice or peace in the eradication of their entire people.

Pacifism is the Iljaria’s way of life. Or at least I thought it was.

Lord of Time. If I could, I’d go back to the night of my escape.

I would harden my heart to Saga’s pleas.

I would leave her to Kallias’s mercy and go home to Iljaria, as I had planned.

I had tried to anyway, leading her east out of the mountain, counting on delirium from her wound to keep her from realizing we weren’t going west to Skaanda.

But she’d noticed. So I lied to her: We must have taken a wrong turn in the dark.

And like a fool, I took her west. Like a fool, I didn’t leave her to die in the snow, or in the caves.

Like a fool, I went with her all the way to Skaanda, when I had chance after chance to slip away.

Like the greatest of fools, I entangled myself into her life, and now I can’t bear that my brother means for her to die.

I curse and curse, sweeping jars of cosmetics from my dressing table, hurling them at the wall.

I look in the mirror and scream at my reflection, because Indridi’s hair dye has worked too well, and there is not a hint of white showing among my dark curls.

I try to find the Brynja I used to be, studying every freckle, every scar.

But that Brynja is gone. I hid her for too long, and she’s never coming back, and I don’t know who I am anymore.

It’s late by the time I deem it safe to go, the twenty-first hour by the mantel time-glass. I jam a chair under my doorknob and shimmy up into the heating vent.

I pick my slow way to the dungeon, hating myself more with every beat of my heart.

I’ve been in the dungeon only once before, years ago, when I did my extensive exploration of the palace. I left in a hurry, because I found that it wasn’t only the children in his Collection that Kallias liked to torment.

The main entrance is a heavy wooden door, which leads to a wide dark corridor, lined with cells carved out of the rock, all barred in iron. Because, once, this was an Iljaria prison—it was built to contain Iljaria.

Brandr hasn’t bothered to post a guard, so I pick the lock to the main door unhindered.

I’m forced to carry a light, and I tense as I pace down the corridor.

I can’t see Saga and Vil. Not now. I’m here only to ease Ballast’s torment.

Then I can work on gaining my brother’s trust. Earn my magic back.

Become wholly Iljaria again. Fix all this, to the best of my ability.

“Have you come to crow, Brynja?”

I jump at Saga’s voice, turning toward her without meaning to.

She stands with her hands wrapped around the iron bars of the cell she’s in, her eyes filled with such visceral hatred that I take an involuntary step backward.

I can’t let myself say anything to her. I can’t . I glimpse Vil in the next cell, sitting against the stone wall with his head tilted back and his eyes shut. My limbs turn all to water. I harden my resolve. I have to. I walk past them both, Saga hurling curses in my wake.

Kallias’s children are all locked up, too—my brother has been thorough.

Zopyros, Theron, and Alcaeus all share a cell, with Lysandra, Xenia, and little Rhode in the one beside them.

The boys don’t even look at me as I go by, but Lysandra screeches for my attention, demanding I let her out, telling me it’s a mistake, it’s all a mistake, she cares nothing for her father, she wants to ally with the Iljaria, she wants—

I ignore her, though my heart jerks at the sight of Rhode cradling a sleeping Xenia in her lap.

Those two are as innocent as the children in the Collection, and I make a mental note to speak to Brandr about having them released.

To my knowledge, Kallias’s wives have been allowed to stay in their warren of rooms. Surely Rhode and Xenia can join them.

I find Ballast in the very last cell on the right. My hands shake as I pick the lock and slip inside.

He’s lying on the floor, unconscious. There’s dried blood under his fingernails and all around the iron collar on his neck, like he was trying to claw it off.

I fight to breathe, to force the nausea down, to keep control. I kneel beside him. I fumble with the collar, cursing and cursing until I find the latch that releases it. I hurl it at the stone wall, and it falls with a clatter.

But Ballast doesn’t wake. There are welts on his throat from the collar. His cheek is still horribly swollen where the wasp stung him. The ribbon that kept his eye patch in place has come loose, leaving his empty socket visible. Gently, gently, I pick up the ribbon. I tie it back on.

I bow my head and weep over him, racked by grief and rage, wanting and loss.

He opens his eye. Blinks up at me.

For a moment there is tenderness in his gaze, a fathomless relief. I see memory crash through him. He hardens. Recoils. Scrambles away from me as fast as he can.

His hands go to his throat. “You should have left me to die,” he snarls. “You should have left me.”

“How could I?” My voice cracks, wavers.

He swears at me, and I bite my cheek so hard I taste blood.

“What’s your plan then, Brynja? Because you always have a plan, don’t you?”

My heart races as I look at him. I take a breath. I open my mouth and close it again. “I wanted to tell you. I almost did in the caves—”

“What would that have accomplished? Did you think I would just merrily join your Iljaria plot?”

Hurt pulses sharp because I don’t know what I thought, only that I yearned for him to know every part of me.

His eyes flick past me, to the open cell door, but before he can lunge for it, I’m already through, slamming it shut in his face before he can get out.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

He laughs at me, sounding so very like his father that I want to cry again.

“I’ll save you,” I tell him. “If I can.”

He grabs the iron collar from the ground and heaves it at me through the bars. It hits my shoulder, hard, and I choke on a scream because Bronze Lord it burns . I think about how it must’ve felt, locked around Ballast’s throat for hours and hours, and I have to fight not to be sick.

I leave the dungeon without a backward glance, Saga’s shouts and curses still echoing in my ears even when I’m back in my room again.

I spend the rest of the night in the windowsill, staring out at wheeling stars.

Whoever this new Brynja is, I think I hate her.