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His cloak whips about his ankles, the mingled light of the stars and the moon tracing him in silver. “Do you trust me, Brynja?”

The quiet longing in his words is enough to draw me to him; I step gingerly up to the edge of the Sea, heart thudding, sweat breaking out under my heavy coat.

For a few long moments, I don’t look aside at him.

I think of Vil, asking me to trust him outside the walls of Skógur, how I told him I did but it was already a lie.

I trusted my father, who molded me into his willing sacrifice and sent me away to be devoured.

I trusted my brother, my people. But I was nothing to them beyond a game piece, easily discarded when I was no longer of use.

But Ballast isn’t asking for something he hasn’t already freely given to me.

“I trust you,” I whisper. And I think that perhaps I trust myself, too.

Ballast looks at me. The jewel on his forehead shines. “Then jump,” he says.

I jerk backward, ice skittering from under my feet and tumbling into the glacier valley. This is very like the place Lilja fell to her death, the place that still haunts my dreams. “I can’t do that.”

“If you want to unlock your magic, I think you have to.”

I shake my head, terror pounding through me. “No.”

“Trust me.”

“You can’t ask me to jump into the Sea of Bones!”

“Your magic was strong.”

“I was a child, Ballast! I—I barely remember it.”

“ I remember it. You nearly brought the whole world down around us. Surely you can catch yourself if you fall.”

“I can’t .”

He takes a step toward me and I back away, terror stitched into my soul.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says quietly. “I would never hurt you.”

My throat hurts. “I know that, Bal.”

“Then trust me.” His voice breaks. “Try.”

I look down into the Sea of Bones, wicked and grinning in the moonlight. I look at Ballast, his face racked in anguish.

“I’m afraid of falling,” I whisper. Tears blur my vision.

His jaw works. “I know.”

My heart beats, beats. I take a breath of ice-sharp air. I turn once more to the Sea.

And then I leap off the cliff.

All the breath is sucked out of my lungs as the frozen wind laughs and tumbles me downward.

Down, down, down.

I’m falling.

Falling.

Terror clouds my vision as images flash through my head: my sister’s wings, Kallias’s laugh, my roar that shook the very mountain.

But I’m falling, falling, the ice thundering up to meet me with its open, bony arms.

I’m screaming, somewhere outside of myself. Tears freeze on my cheeks. He told me to trust him and I did.

Still I fall, fall.

I scrabble desperately for my magic. But the only thing in my mind is fear.

My eyes close. A deadness steals through me, and I know there are only seconds left before I smash against the ice.

I am nothing, no one.

I fall

fall

fall.

I blink and see the chamber where the Bronze God once sat, mutilated and alone. His table is empty now, the candle guttered out. The hooks lie glinting wickedly in his vacant seat.

But the chest containing my magic is nowhere to be found.

Outside of my mind the wind rushes around me, the ice claws at my hair, the Sea of Bones reaches up to shatter me.

I will be nothing more than a memory, a whispered nothingness in the dead of winter dreams.

Inside my mind, I snatch the silver hooks and run from the chamber into the ancient cavern, where I’m greeted by crumbling statues and stone pillars half worn away.

Everywhere, there are cracks in the stone, and I scrabble frantically inside each one, searching, searching, for the place I hid away my magic.

The silver hooks burn in my other hand, bitter fire gnawing down to bone.

My heart beats, beats.

Outside me, I am falling.

I dig into the cracks, anguished with each one that turns out empty.

But then I see a spark in the stone, glittering bronze, and I shove my hand into the rock and draw out the chest.

I sink to my knees as I open it, my magic mounded in a glittering pile. I tremble, because I’ve found it now, and I don’t know how to take it back again.

Young one. What do you seek?

I turn to find the Bronze Lord, there beside me, his mutilated face shimmering in the dim light. He kneels on the stone, the stumps of his arms resting on his thighs.

“My power,” I say. “But my father has reduced it to dust.”

You did that yourself. His voice echoes strong inside me, resonant as a bell.

I gaze at the ruins of my magic in utter despair. “How can dust become a stone again?” I whisper.

How indeed, says the Bronze Lord. But must it become a stone?

I remember the hooks in my hands. I take them, dip them into the gleaming remains of my power.

I twist. The dust winds onto the hooks, becoming gossamer threads as thin as spider silk.

When the hook is full, I turn it on myself, plunging it deep into my temple.

Agony bursts in my very soul. But I don’t stop. I can’t stop.

Outside, I am falling.

Over and over I wind my magic onto the hooks and drive them into my head. The pain burns and burns, eating me from the inside. But with each new strand, I sense power returning to me, a trickle at first, then strong as a flood rushing over the plain.

Then there are only a few more specks of dust in the chest. I wind them into silk, lift it to my head. I pause, blinking over at the Bronze Lord. “What have you become, My Lord?” I ask him.

He smiles, raising his truncated wrists. A story. And one day, I will learn how to rewrite myself. But hurry, young one. You are almost at the bottom.

I drive the hook into my temple. I burn with magic. I know I am whole.

But then I blink and I’m hurtling into the Sea of Bones, and not even my magic can save me.

It’s cruel, I think, in the last few heartbeats before I smash against the ice, cruel to have found myself again just to die like I always feared I would. Falling. Into oblivion.

There is a rush of air, a whir of wings, and I collide with something soft and strong. I am buoyed up, up, back toward the top of the cliff.

I curl my fingers around broad feathers and find I am carried by a trio of massive white owls, all of them sharing my weight, beating their wings as one. My heart wrenches. Ballast.

The owls deposit me in a heap at the top of the cliff, and I watch, shaken, as Ballast bows to the magnificent birds. They bow back and take wing, flying west, Asvaldr keeping pace below them.

He turns to me, stricken. “Are you all right?” he says quietly.

I stare at him, my power searing in every part of me.

I have been rewritten, from the inside out, but he can’t see it.

He doesn’t know. Then I’m sobbing in the snow and I can’t breathe and I think that my grief will rip me apart and I don’t know don’t know don’t know why I’m crying but I can’t stop .

He wraps his arms around me, pulls me tight against his chest, tucks his chin against my shoulder. He holds me, holds me, and it takes a while to realize he’s crying with me, his tears damp in my hair.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Brynja. It was the only thing I could think of that might restore your magic. I would never have let you die.”

I’m not sure how long we’re like that, locked together on the edge of the Sea of Bones, but at last my tears stop, at last I come into myself again and lift my head.

I look at Ballast in the light of the stars, and he looks back.

He smooths his thumbs across my cheeks, wiping away the remnants of my tears.

I’m stricken again by his scarred eye socket.

I lift one hand, touch his scars with gentle fingers.

My gut wrenches, and it’s all I can do to keep from crying again.

It hurts, that someone I care about so deeply has endured so much pain.

“Do you hate me?” I ask quietly.

His forehead creases. “Why would I hate you, Brynja Eldingar?”

“I deceived you. Betrayed you.” My throat tightens. “I killed your father.”

My skin buzzes where Ballast touches me, his hands warm on my skin. There is pain in his glance, in the set of his jaw.

“Are you sorry that he’s dead?” I whisper. I feel the blood on my hand, see the life gutter out of Kallias’s eyes. It makes me sick.

“I am not sorry he’s gone,” says Ballast. “But I would have spared you if I could have. You shouldn’t have been the one to kill him.”

I can’t tell my grief from my anger. “Didn’t I have the right? Didn’t I? He murdered my sister and he tormented me for years and he—”

“Brynja.” His voice is soft. His touch is softer.

I go still.

“I wanted you to be free of him. Wholly free. I didn’t want him to haunt you in death, as he did in life. I would have spared you that. I would have taken it on myself, so you never had to think of him again.” His voice breaks. “I should have. None of this is your fault. None of it. ”

I blink back fresh tears. His kindness, his care for me, is staggering. I am glad that Ballast doesn’t bear the weight of his father’s death. He has borne enough. “None of this is your fault, either,” I tell him. “You know that, don’t you?”

He shakes his head and cups my face in his hands. “Do you know how remarkable you are, Brynja Eldingar?”

Hearing my true name from his lips makes me smile.

He kisses me, softly, his mouth warm and full of promise. Longing and contentment stir together in my belly, and I wrap my arms around him, pull him close. I can taste his magic, sharp and bright on my tongue, but it no longer burns me.

Wind stirs over the cliff, blowing snow into our faces, and without even really meaning to, I tell the snow to make a canopy to shelter us. It obeys. I forgot what true power felt like, seamless as a second skin, but it seems the power has not forgotten me.

Ballast breaks our kiss and glances up at the shimmering snow canopy. His eye finds mine again and a slow smile touches his lips. “You unlocked your magic. It worked.”

I grin, almost giddy. “It worked.”

He whoops with triumph and pushes to his feet, pulling me up with him.

He sweeps me into a hug, spinning me around in the snow and laughing like a madman until all at once we’re still again, his hands in my hair and mine around his shoulders, crushing him against me.

Now his lips are like fire and his stubble scrapes my cheek and the jewel on his forehead presses hard and cold into mine, but I don’t care.

I don’t care because Ballast is here, with me, and all the cards have been played and there are no more secrets between us.

It is some time before we come back to ourselves, breathless and wild, the wind hardly able to cool our hot faces. Ballast smiles at me and brushes his fingers across my brow. “What now, my lady Eldingar?”

I echo his smile, my heart full to bursting. “Shall we go and kick my brother out of your mountain?”

He grins. “That would do nicely. His expulsion is long overdue.”

Up from the Sea, I call a chunk of glacier that’s as large as a carriage, glittering in the starlight. Ballast gasps, but it costs me little effort, my power stretching and settling inside me, as eager to be used as a long-penned-up hound is ready to run.

This kind of exertion would have exhausted my child self.

But I am not exhausted now. The colors of my own magic spark and shimmer before my eyes, blue and violet and bronze.

I tell the glacier piece to be a sleigh, and it becomes one, runners and seats and a shining prow made all of ice.

It waits before us, sparkling in the snow.

Ballast looks at me sideways, his brows raised and his mouth hanging open. “Are you sure you’re not the one with Prism magic?”

“I’ve always been able to sense a spark of ... awareness in all things, like every bit of matter has a mind, in a way. I don’t create new things. I ask them to find a new form, or move in new ways. But I’m stronger now. Even than I used to be.”

Ballast shakes his head in bewilderment. “I don’t think everyone blessed by the Bronze Lord can do that.”

I shrug. I wouldn’t know. The Iljaria mistrust mind magic—I am not sure my parents would have allowed me to be trained in it even if they hadn’t sent me to Kallias.

We climb into the sleigh. I speak a word to the ice and it hums in answer, the sleigh hurtling forward, bearing us swiftly across the tundra.

Toward the mountain, and whatever fate awaits us there.