Page 117 of While the Dark Remains
I learn how to walk wires thinner than my fingers, and when I master that, I learn routines on them.
With the power from her patron, the Brown Lady, my mother erects an enormous arena for my use, with wires thirty feet in the air, silks, rings, swinging platforms—anything and everything my father thinks might help to catch the king’s eye.
Every evening, after a full day of training, I return to my room to find Brandr waiting for me with a stack of books. We have formed a temporary truce, he for a time satisfied to be teaching me things I don’t know. In this area, at least, he is stronger than me.
Brandr educates me about being Skaandan. He finds me a new last name, invents a history for me that is close enough to the truth that it won’t sound false—my mother an architect, my father a mirror maker. He teaches me the Skaandan way to talk about the First Ones, and even teaches me how to curse.
“Stop calling them the Gray Lady and the Yellow Lord and so on,” he says. “Think of them as gods and goddesses, even in your head. Think of yourself as Skaandan, and no one will doubt you.”
So I do. I bury Brynja Eldingar deep in my mind and become Brynja Sindri in truth as well as name.
I am determined to avenge Lilja, to bring honor to my people, to defeat the king. And so I don’t falter. I don’t back down.
Even though every time I shimmy up the wall or do a tumbling passage on the wires, every time I leap across dizzying air to grab the rope or silk or swinging bar waiting for me on the other side—
Every time I fear it might be my last.
Every time, I see Lilja plummeting to her death, her body breaking on the ice.
I am utterly terrified I will meet the same fate.
I have no magic to assist me anymore—I can’t call on the air or the wind to save me. My father has locked my power deep inside me so I won’t betray myself. I am as helpless as if I truly were Skaandan.
Nightmares haunt me. I dream of falling, my body fractured on the rocks.
But I refuse to give up. My parents and Brandr have invested too much in me. And if I don’t go through with my father’s plan, Lilja’s death will never be avenged.
At the close of the year, a little after Brandr and I turn ten, my father declares me ready. “There is only one thing left,” he says. He puts his hands on either side of my head, and his magic slides into me, buzzing across my scalp, twisting hot through my skin.
He withdraws his hands, and I peer into a mirror to see he’s turned my hair from white to dark, my brows and eyelashes, too. I stare and stare, realizing that I am truly no longer myself. That there is no turning back.
Year4192, Month of the Black Lord
Daeros—Tenebris
Father promises me before I leave that once or twice a year, an ambassador from Iljaria will come and check on me, to get my report on anything regarding the king digging into the mountain.
I count every day of the first year.
The ambassador doesn’t come until I’ve been here two. He watches the entire Collection perform and later that evening returns to the great hall. I slip from my cage to speak with him. He doesn’t ask me if I am well, just inquires about Kallias. I tell him I haven’t heard anything about him digging into the mountain yet. The ambassador frowns and walks away.
I don’t see him again.
Year after year passes. The ambassador doesn’t return. I hear no word of Iljaria at all, not even the barest scrap of news from home.
My father’s last words to me echo forever in my mind, uttered on our hilltop as the sun sank west and the wind blew leaves in my hair.
“You are of the Iljaria, Brynja,” he told me. “You could live three hundred years, perhaps more. Time does not bind us like it binds others. Our kind doesn’t even feel the passing of time—it will be nothing to you. Remember that. And be true to our cause. To our people.”
My father was wrong. I do feel the passing of time, in my iron cage in the king’s mountain. I feel it acutely. Every second, every heartbeat—they pierce me through like swords, and leave me breathless.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Year4200, Month of the Ghost Lord
Daeros—Tenebris
It’s quiet in the heart of the mountain. I feel its breath, sense its pulse. And I stare at the block wrapped with chains and am very, very afraid.
