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Chapter Twenty-Four

Daeros—Tenebris

Gulla is sleeping when I slip into her room in the guest wing, though it’s nearly the seventh hour. Two of the littlest children from the Collection are with her, curled up tight on either side of her. The rest are draped over chairs and the sofa, or sprawled about on the floor in mounded blankets.

It’s Rute who senses me first, unfolding herself from a fur blanket and blinking up at me with huge eyes.

“I didn’t believe you when you said you’d free us,” she tells me frankly. “But you did. Thank you.”

My heart wrenches. “I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner.”

She gives me a small smile, and some of the tension eases out of me. “Why are you all in here together?” I ask her then. “I left instructions for rooms to be found for each of you—”

“None of us wanted to be alone. We wanted to be with Gulla. She looked after us as best she could, you know, before she was shut in a cage, too. She’s all we have.”

I take a breath, blinking back tears. “I know.”

“What’s going to happen to us?” Rute asks quietly.

“Do you have a family to go back to?”

She shakes her head. “My parents passed when I was little. I grew up in a traveling troupe—that’s where I learned all of my tricks. But they were short on money, and they heard Kallias was looking for a new acrobat—”

Ice slides through my veins. “I’m sorry, Rute.”

“It isn’t your fault. It’s his . I’m glad he’s there now. In our old cage.”

“Me too.” I give her a tight smile. “But don’t worry. I’ll find a place for you. I’ll find a place for all of you, just as soon as ...” I trail off.

Rute looks me square in the eye. “Is the Yellow God really chained in the heart of the mountain?”

I blink at her. “How would you possibly know that?”

She just grins and jerks her thumb at the ceiling vent.

I have to laugh. “Did you pick your lock with hairpins?”

“A cloak-pin, actually. But is he?”

I sober. “Yes.”

“And does the Prism Master really mean to—” She cuts herself off as she realizes the children are waking up, including Finnur, who sits up on one of the armchairs and stretches out his long legs; he sparks green and yellow.

“Brynja,” he says, and smiles.

I turn to find Gulla sitting up in bed. Hello, Brynja.

Rute meets my eyes. “Go and speak with her. Finnur and I will take care of this lot while you do.”

I nod my thanks, and Gulla and I slip into the empty adjoining room. A lamp glows orange on a low table, and we settle on either side of it.

“Are you well, Gulla?” I ask her quietly.

Well enough, she signs back. There is weariness in her face, but a calmness, too. What’s wrong, Brynja?

I take a breath. I force myself to look her square in the eye. “I’m not who I told you I was.”

She smiles a little. You’re Iljaria. The Prism Master is your brother.

I blink at her. “Rute told you?”

About the Prism Master and the Yellow Lord, bound beneath us, she signs to me. I already knew you were Iljaria. I sensed it the first time we met, like calling to like.

My eyes go hot and scratchy.

Her gaze softens. You hid yourself very well from those who could not see. But how could I not recognize a fellow Iljaria in exile?

Tears sear down my cheeks, and I scrub them away with my hands, taking deep, choking breaths in an attempt to get hold of myself. “Did Rute tell you what my brother means to do?”

Gulla nods. Unleash the Yellow Lord. Remake the world.

“I didn’t know that this was my father’s plan from the beginning. I didn’t know I was sent here to bring destruction.”

Her gaze pierces me. If you had known, would you still have come?

I shrink beneath her scrutiny, because I don’t know. “Is this really what the First Ones want?” I ask quietly. “Is this really what our people are meant to do?”

Our people speak of peace, but I do not think they truly believe in it.

“Do you? Believe in peace?”

She raises her eyebrows. Do you?

I consider her for a long moment. “How did you come to Daeros, Gulla?”

That doesn’t matter now.

I clench my jaw. “How did you come here?”

She sighs. My sister and I wanted to see Tenebris.

We left our home by the sea, traveled by ourselves for some weeks.

Daerosian soldiers found us within sight of the mountain.

My sister used her magic—growing magic, from the Green Lady—to get away.

I was brought to Kallias. No one ever came for me. You know the rest.

I fight back a fresh wave of tears. “I’m so sorry, Gulla.”

She gives me a sad smile. It was not of your design, Brynja Eldingar.

“What about your magic?” I ask her.

It is harder to reach than it was. But it is not wholly gone. And then she does something I have never heard her do—she makes a sound deep in her throat, a guttural note of rich, powerful magic.

The lamp on the table winks out, smoke curling up. Another note from her and it’s lit again, flaring brighter than before.

I stare at her, mouth hanging open, and she gives a soundless laugh.

“What am I supposed to do?” I say. “About my brother and the Yellow Lord? About our people?”

Her brow creases as she studies me, and I’m seized with a sudden wild grief that I will never know what her voice sounded like before Kallias cut out her tongue.

I think you need to figure out where your loyalties truly lie, she signs . I think you need to figure out what is buried within your own heart.

I take a deep breath.

I am worried for my son, she says then. How is he?

I shake my head. “He’s locked up with the rest of them.”

Will you save him? Whatever it is he’s been up to since he came back, I do not truly believe he is like his father. I know he is not. Will you save him? Her eyes go wet and shiny, and my gut clenches.

“I will try,” I promise. “But, Gulla. Please tell me what to do.”

I can’t tell you what to do, Brynja. She blinks at me. I think you already know.

The Yellow Lord is sitting on his block, playing with a little ball of light that I can’t look at directly because its intensity makes my eyes tear.

The chains on his ankles clink faintly with his movement, and the collar that Brandr bound him with pulses with prismatic runes.

He tosses the ball of light back and forth between his hands, unaffected by its brilliance.

The patch Brandr magically regrew over the wall is gone, and I get the idea that, if he really wanted to, the Yellow Lord could leave his prison, bound though he is.

I stand just within the low doorway and wait for him to notice me.

After a while, he puts the ball of light beside him on the block, folds his hands behind his neck, and yawns. “So the impotent one has decided to visit me.” He sounds and looks so young, but the heat of his magic sears my skin even from a few paces away. “What do you want?”

Gulla’s words repeat themselves endlessly in my mind: You need to figure out what is buried within your own heart. “My father locked my magic away. Can you unlock it?”

The Yellow Lord looks at me with passivity or boredom or both. He flops down on his side, propping his head up with one hand, bare feet dangling. “What kind of magic did you call your own, Brynja Eldingar?”

“Mind magic.”

The Yellow Lord makes a face. “Horrid fellow, the Bronze Lord. I don’t even like to think about him.” He realizes he accidentally made a joke. “Ha!” He snaps his fingers and the light globe whirls in his palm, a blur of yellow-orange-white.

“Then you can’t help me.”

“If your father locked your magic, your father will have to un lock it.”

“But he’s dead.”

The light winks out. “He is, isn’t he. That does make things difficult.” The Yellow Lord sits up again. “Come here, Eldingar. Let me look into you.”

This seems like a very bad idea, but I’m angry and wrung out and reckless, so I pace over to him. Somehow his magic doesn’t burn as terribly this close.

I stand eye to eye with him and am overwhelmed with the sudden sensations of loneliness and sorrow and anger .

They taste bitter on my tongue, and I peer at the Yellow Lord with greater understanding.

He’s been chained down here for centuries.

My measly eight years in Kallias’s cage don’t even compare.

“One person’s pain does not negate another’s,” says the Yellow Lord quietly, reading my thoughts. “I have been down here longer, but that doesn’t make your experience meaningless. You have been hurt. Deeply. Haven’t you?”

Another wave of loneliness hits me, and I gasp under the weight of it.

The Yellow Lord puts his hands on either side of my face, like my father did all those years ago; his fingers are gentle and cool, where I’d expected them to be rough, hot.

Magic rushes through me, raging as rivers, quiet as spring rain.

For an instant the memory of my own magic sparks bright on my tongue, and I want to weep in relief.

But the next moment it’s gone again.

The Yellow Lord withdraws his hands. He studies me, solemn and small, and I think again how very strange it is that a First One who has lived untold centuries looks to be little more than a child.

“Your magic is not gone,” he says after a moment, tapping his fingers along his jawline, “but it is buried deeper than I would have guessed. Your father used your own magic against itself. Only your magic can unlock your magic.” He grins at me.

I choke back a Skaandan curse. “But I can’t use my magic.”

“Therein lies the dilemma. You still sense magic, as easy as breathing. I perceive the effect I have on you. You see it everywhere, don’t you? What does it look like?”

I blink at him, shocked. How could a First One not know? “Magic is color,” I say softly. “It turns and twists in shapes and patterns; it sparks or glimmers or pulses. Some magic is sharp and some is bright, some dark, some cold. And it tastes like—” I shrug. “I don’t know. It tastes like magic.”

“Perhaps you have only to reach for it in the right way. Perhaps it is not as impossible as you think.”

I huff in frustration. “Could my brother help me?”