Vil is waiting for us in the main courtyard, honeysuckle hanging over the walls, fountains bubbling merrily, parrots singing in the trees. He’s wearing loose trousers and a sleeveless vest that puts his arm muscles on full display and makes me blush. His earrings are diamond and gold and flash in the sunlight.
“No luck?” he says, reading our moods.
Saga shakes her head, dejected.
I stand there awkwardly as Indridi goes on ahead into the palace proper.
“Will you continue staying with us, then?” Vil asks me.
“Of course she will!” Saga cries. She grabs both my hands, excited again. “You’ll stay here until Ridi finds your family. You can go on staying here even then, if they turn out not to be worthy of you.”
She means it as a joke, but it stings a little. “I can’t impose on you any longer, Saga.”
“You’re not imposing. You saved my life, Bryn. My family and I owe you a debt we can never repay. Hospitality is the very least that we could offer you.”
I let the chattering parrots and laughing fountains fill my ears. I revel in the touch of the sunlight, the feeling of freedom. But I still can’t quite bring myself to agree.
“Besides,” says Vil, “we could use your help. We’re going to end the war with Daeros, once and for all.”
My pulse spikes. I meet his eyes. “How?”
“My sister tells me we can send our army undetected through the old Iljaria tunnels. I mean to lead a team posing as ambassadors to infiltrate Tenebris and, when the time is right, depose the king.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
Vil glances at Saga and then back at me. “My sisteralsotells me you can go anywhere in the mountain palace unseen. We need that, Brynja. We need a spy.”
Part Three
Soul’s Rest
Chapter Twenty-One
Year4200, Month of the Ghost Lord
Daeros—Tenebris
Vil’s eyes lock hard on mine, his pulse beating quick in his neck under my knifepoint. I feel his anger, his confusion. My head is a wheeling mess of emotions I don’t have time to identify, but at least one of them is guilt. Dimly, I register that Saga is cursing at me.
“Iam the heir to Tenebris.” Ballast’s voice echoes sharply in the stone chamber, but his skin looks gray, wrong, and his neck is starting to blister where the iron touches it.
Brandr eyes him with disgust. “What are you going to do, half blood? You let your father collar you like a dog, and you deserve to be put down like one.” He snaps his fingers, and more Iljaria melt out of the shadows—I am impressed that my brother was able to conceal so many down here, but not surprised. Two of them wrestle Ballast’s hands roughly behind his back and bind his wrists together. He struggles and swears, but it doesn’t do any good. He goes still all at once, tense and exhausted, sweat running into his good eye. I turn my own eyes away, sick and ashamed.
“Will you seize me, too?” says Aelia coldly, standing alone in the middle of the chamber. “Do you declare war on the peninsula and the mainland in the same breath?”
Brandr frowns. “Aerona is of no consequence to me. You may return to your father if you must, but if he attempts invasion, his blood will be on his own head.”
“Brynja,” says Vil again, low and angry, “explain yourself.”
I will my hand holding the knife to his throat not to shake. I don’t trust myself to speak, the bravado from a moment ago seeming to have leaked out of me.
Brandr shoves Kallias at the remaining Iljaria soldiers, and they drag him back into the tunnel we came through. He doesn’t struggle or curse or show any emotion beyond stark bewilderment. He seems small to me, like a confused child. The blood from my knife trickles still down his neck.
My brother steps over to me and Vil, his presence, hismagic, large enough to fill the whole mountain. “There is nothing to explain,” Brandr says. “She is Brynja Eldingar, youngest daughter of the former Prism Master, and my own twin sister. You owe her your reverence.”
“But you’reSkaandan!” spits Saga, writhing in the grasp of her guard.
My heart is a dull drum, beating out every second of the last ten years, every secret, every lie. Sometimes evenIforgot what was real, and what must only seem real, if I were to honor my people.
