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The Skaandan army pours from the mountain, three hundred strong, with Leifur and Pala at their head.

They sing as they come, brash and chilling Skaandan war songs that shatter the stillness, their feet like drums pounding the earth.

They shine in the burgeoning dawn, swords brandished high. A thrill sears through me.

Saga gives a shriek of triumph, and both she and Vil jerk to their feet.

Brandr curses and shouts a word into the sky, sending a flare of light bursting up above his head.

Out of the shadows comes the Iljaria army, white hair unbound, jewels shining from their brows.

They are on foot as well, wearing thin, light breastplates of tooled leather dyed the colors of their magic.

Some carry weapons but most do not, magic blazing in them so bright it’s hard for me to look at them.

The owl was wrong. There are at least six hundred, maybe more.

Gróa smiles and Drengur begins to sing, a quiet melody threaded with power that makes the snow swirl up around his feet.

And then three hundred Daerosian soldiers come marching up from Garran City, with Aelia and Zopyros, Kallias’s oldest son, leading them, gleaming in gold-plated scale armor and steel helms. My trepidation eases, just a little—the combined Skaandan and Daerosian forces equal the number of Iljaria, with Ballast and his animals still to come.

Saga meets my eyes, and with a single focused thought, I loose her bonds. The ropes fall silently to the snow. Between one heartbeat and the next, I do the same for Vil and Gulla and the others.

Run, I say into their minds, and they all jerk their gazes to me, startled. Now.

I fling up a wall of snow between them and Gróa and Drengur. Saga, Vil, Gulla, and all the rest bolt across the tundra.

Brandr utters a vicious oath as Drengur’s song shakes the ground and thorny vines burst out of the earth at Gróa’s command, too late to keep Saga and the others from escaping.

“You really think you can stop this?” Brandr demands of me.

“You really think two human armies is enough to stop this ?” He turns to the Yellow Lord.

“Kill them,” he snaps. “Kill all of them . Wipe out every soul in Daeros and Skaanda, save me and my army alone. Thus I command you, and thus I unbind your power.”

“My Lord,” I beg the First One. “Please spare us.”

The Yellow Lord yawns, twiddling his thumbs and watching sparks of light weave in and around them.

“I must do as I am commanded,” he says without looking at me.

The light curls up his arms, winding through him, making his skin pulse yellow.

Pain creases the lines of his immortal face.

He spares Brandr a single, fleeting glance, before refocusing on the light dancing between his fingers.

“You will have to take shelter in the mountain. I cannot control the light when it reaches its fullest power, and the Black Lord’s guardians will protect you. ”

He must mean the gargoyles at the front gates. I shudder at the mere thought of trusting in their dark defense.

“Fine,” Brandr grinds out. He glances east. “Give me and my people until the sun crests the ridge. We’ll be safe in the mountain by then.”

“As you wish,” says the Yellow Lord, fixated on the light in his hands.

“Brandr.” My heart drums in my ears, frantic, quick. “Command him to stop. Save us. Save our land.”

My brother sneers at me. “I have nothing more to say to you, Brynja. You are no sister of mine. You should have died in your cage. No.” His eyes are fierce and hard, the prismatic gem on his forehead glistering with power.

“You should have died here, all those years ago, instead of Lilja. She would not have forsaken our cause. Our faith. Our people.”

“Brandr—”

He shrieks a curse and flings out his hand, thrusting me backward with the force of his magic.

Pain sears through my chest and I land hard in the snow, breathless for the moment it takes him to turn on his heel and stride away from the Sea of Bones, Gróa and Drengur at his back.

“To the mountain!” he shouts to his army, which comes like the tide over the tundra. “For Iljaria!”

“ For Iljaria !” the army echoes, and the clamor of their unified voices rumbles in the earth.

I drag myself up again, my own power hot in my veins. “My Lord?” I say quietly as the First One grows brighter and brighter before me.

“Little one,” he says. “I cannot stop it.” His voice crackles with heat, with light. “Whatever it is you mean to do, you had better do it now.”

I bow to him, though I’m not sure he can see me through his light.

Then I bolt through the snow after Brandr.

Behind me, the sun is rising, and the Yellow Lord burns ever hotter and more luminous than that ancient star.

Ahead of me, Saga and Vil have joined the Skaandans, spare swords thrust into their hands, helms shoved onto their heads.

I think I see Rute with them, but there’s no sign of Gulla.

Theron and Alcaeus, Kallias’s twin sons, have run the other way, toward the Daerosian army, with Nicanor and Eirenaios at their heels.

Screams shatter the burgeoning dawn as the first ranks of the Skaandan army collide with the Iljaria.

Pockets of fire and light, darkness and whirling ice burst from the Iljaria, their magic bitter and deadly against the flash of mortal blades.

Roots push from the ground; stone monsters ascend from the cold earth.

The Iljaria who are blessed by the White Lady raise a song of death, shrill on the frigid air.

The Skaandans scream at the noise, dropping their weapons and clapping their hands over their ears, only for thorny vines or stony hands or living, writhing darkness to rip them into pieces.

Magic bursts in all its colors before my eyes, blue and green, white and yellow, black and gray. And yet everywhere I look, it’s red, red.

I scream as I run, desperate to catch up to my brother and stop him the only way I know how. But his Prism magic speeds his steps, and I can’t quite seem to reach him.

To my right, Theron, Alcaeus, and Eirenaios reach the Daerosian army just as it clashes with the Iljaria, half of which has turned to face them, while the remainder continues to mow through the Skaandan army like so much wheat.

Nicanor has fallen behind the others and is caught by a stray flame of Iljaria fire.

In an instant he burns, screaming, into ash.

My stomach heaves and tears bite at my eyes and I don’t understand how I can feel sick over the death of Kallias’s steward, my tormentor, even for a moment.

I run on, aware of Finnur, somewhere in the dark, fighting the Iljaria with magic of his own.

Fire turns to butterflies with red-and-orange wings; the monsters made of earth and stone become smoke and blow away.

The death song becomes a flock of chirruping canaries.

But he is only one, against hundreds, and the canaries fall and are trodden underfoot, and the song of death is sung anew.

A new music rises to combat it. I glimpse Gulla within the fray, her whole body shimmering with power.

She stands with her head tilted back, eyes shut and mouth open, a song of life spilling from her ruined tongue.

She is stronger than I could have ever imagined, nullifying the music of the other Iljaria.

But even Gulla’s magic is not enough to turn the tide.

The snow is thick with bodies, and only a very, very few of them are Iljaria.

I reach out with my mind and sense Saga and Vil, Pala and Leifur and Rute, still alive, still fighting. Tears slide down my cheeks. They are not yet among the dead.

I reach for Ballast, too. Where are you, Bal? Where are you?

The sky grows a little lighter, and the heat of the Yellow Lord pulses stronger and stronger away behind me.

I try to breathe, and barrel on toward my brother. I tell the earth to speed me along, and suddenly I’m within reach of him. I grab Brandr’s shoulder, wheel him around, and press my hands, hard, against his temples.

“Get off of me!” he shrieks. “You can’t do anything to me! You only have mind magic, and I am the Prism Master. Get off of me!”

Behind me, the roar of an arctic bear shatters the sky. Here, says Ballast’s voice in my head. I’m here. A knot within me loosens.

“No, Brandr,” I tell him. “Come with me.”

And I wrench both of us sideways, into his mind.