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Chapter Twenty-Five

Daeros—Tenebris

Kallias is asleep on my ledge, though it’s far too small for him. He’s curled up like a child, his head tucked into his arms, his legs dangling into the empty space of the iron cage. I try not to see how much he looks like Ballast. I try not to think about Ballast at all.

I slip up the chain without a sound and hang there a moment, watching him sleep. I don’t understand how he can be so helpless, so fragile, this man who held my life in his hands for nearly a decade. I sidle around the outside of the cage to the sleeping ledge. My knife finds his throat.

He wakes in an instant, his body perfectly still, his blue eyes blinking up into mine in the semidarkness of the great hall. “I was wondering when you would be back, little acrobat.” His words are quiet, careful around the point of the knife. But he has the audacity to smile.

I press the blade in a little deeper. A trickle of red runs down his throat. “My brother means to execute you tomorrow.”

“And you have come early to save him the trouble, is that it?” His eyes bore into mine, fearless and unflinching.

“I knew you were my wayward acrobat the moment you paraded in here with those Skaandan fools. There’s too much pride in you—and too much fear.

Why do you think I allowed you to get close to me?

Why do you think I offered to make you queen? Certainly not because I desired you.”

I fight to keep hold of myself. If I kill him now, I won’t have answers to my questions, and he won’t know exactly why I mean to end him.

He just smirks at me. He wants me to ask.

“Why?” I grind out.

He shows his teeth. “To mock you. To draw you closer and closer until I could strangle you alive, make you pay for escaping from my Collection and daring to come back. I’m not a fool.

I knew the treaty was a ruse. But I like a good game, Brynja.

It helps to pass the time. And what better game than toying with your Skaandan friends and you?

All the sweeter when the long night is over, when I could throw your worthless corpses into the Sea of Bones. ”

“Shut up.” My throat is starting to hurt, the old terror coiling through me.

He smiles and smiles. “And my worthless son, Ballast, near bursting with rage to see you with me—I swear the stupid boy is half in love with you.”

“I said shut up !”

Kallias raises his eyebrows. “I figured you came here to talk, little acrobat. Or else you would have killed me already.”

I’m livid that he reads my mind so easily. I don’t withdraw the knife, eyes fixed on the line of red that slides down his neck and seeps into his collar.

“This is about your sister, I suppose.”

I tighten my grip on the knife as images flash through my mind: Lilja bent over her worktable, Lilja overseeing the packing of her inventions, Lilja beaming in pride as she showed her wings to Kallias. Lilja falling, falling, falling.

“I should have recognized you, when you joined my Collection, as the Iljaria monster who nearly brought down the mountain on top of us. I shouldn’t have been fooled by your dark hair, your sudden flair for acrobatics.

” He sighs a little. “But in my defense, I barely even noticed you the first time you were here. Your sister vastly overshadowed you, you know.”

I gnaw on the inside of my cheek, because I will not give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry. “You murdered her.”

He gives a noncommittal shrug.

I’m trembling; the point of my knife shakes. “Why?”

“Your sister was remarkable. I wanted her to stay here in Daeros. I wanted her to be part of my Collection. But your parents wouldn’t hear of it—I even offered them a fortune, told them she would be treated like a queen—”

“A lie ,” I spit.

“—and they had the audacity to say that their little genius was not for sale.” Kallias blinks at me, his blue eyes glassy in the dim light. His lips curl into a smile. “Do you know what they offered me instead?”

A sick dread slides into my veins. I grind my jaw shut, refusing to answer.

“They offered me you , Brynja, their youngest daughter, who had the power to control minds. I got the feeling they were afraid of you, you know. Of what you could do. They saw an opportunity to get rid of you, and they seized it.”

Spots jump in my eyes, and I bite harder and harder into my cheek, until I taste blood.

Kallias’s smile sharpens. “I didn’t want you—why would I?

I wanted Lilja. I wanted her to join her genius to mine, to create marvelous machines with me, to help me burrow into the heart of the mountain faster, easier.

But your parents refused, and it made me angry.

If I couldn’t have her, I didn’t see why anyone else should. ”

My head wheels, my palms sweat. I adjust my grip on the outside of the cage, muscles trembling in the effort to hold me there. Lord of Fire, I’m going to be sick. “You murdered my sister because my parents told you no.”

Kallias tilts his head to one side. “I killed her because I didn’t want you .

It was the easiest thing in the world, you know.

I’d heard her brag about her wings. I sent a servant to your rooms. Had him grind iron shavings into the wood, the canvas.

So her magic would fail. I didn’t count on you, of course, the little Iljaria girl grown so powerful in her rage that she nearly tumbled the mountain down around my ears.

The Prism Master himself could barely subdue you, let alone contain you.

You could have killed me right then on that frozen cliff.

But you didn’t have it in you, then. You weren’t quite enough of a monster. ”

My throat feels thick and tight. I am hollow, numb. A tear slides down my cheek without my consent. I focus on the king, the trickle of blood on his pale neck. “Is that why you kill people?” I ask him quietly. “Because you are a monster?”

His eyes bore into mine. “I kill because it makes me feel powerful. It makes me feel alive. When you kill me, Brynja, what will you feel?”

I stare at him, stare into him, and see for a moment a soul as fragile and tremulous as my own. “I’ll feel peace. I’ll be able to sleep at night, knowing there is one less monster in the world.”

“And what of the monster chained below, poised to devour the world? What of the monster you call your brother, who dresses in the robes of the Prism Master and means to rule the world when it has been devoured?”

“Brandr isn’t a monster,” I say, but my voice shakes, because I’m not sure I believe that.

Kallias doesn’t reply, just looks at me.

For an instant I see Ballast in him, a child who longs to be a man, to prove himself, to be taken seriously.

Then I blink and see Lilja falling. I see Hilf dead on the floor in a widening pool of blood.

I see the children of the Collection, kept in cages, beaten on his whim.

I feel their fear and I feel my own, back when he had power over me.

But it’s Kallias in the cage now. And I’m the one holding the blade.

My rage surges back, stitched into every part of me. I tighten my fingers around the handle of my knife.

“What will you do when I’m dead?” says Kallias softly.

“Be free,” I whisper.

And then I drive the knife deep into his heart.