Page 125 of While the Dark Remains
“Enough, Brynja. I have things to attend to.”
He leaves me alone in the alcove, the scent of wine wrapping around me, my own insignificance crushing me into oblivion.
My room feels strange, wrong, without Saga and Pala in it. I don’t know why I’m surprised that no one has moved me to a grander room—Brandr has been installed in Kallias’s suite, after all. But then again, which room would I even want? Ballast’s? My stomach turns sour. No, this is better.
I don’t dare go to the dungeons until Brandr is asleep. He doesn’t know about my paths through the ceilings—he doesn’t know anything about my years here, my escape with Saga, or how long I’ve been back. He probably doesn’t care. But I still need to be cautious. He’ll be able to sense me if I’m near him, and if he catches me freeing Ballast, all hope of getting my magic back will be gone.
I pace awhile, trying to collect myself, trying to reorder my understanding of the world and my place in it. I think of the Yellow Lord, bound beneath my feet, awaiting his fate as all of us await ours. I try to reconcile myself to the necessity of my brother’s purpose: the restoration of Iljaria, as it was meant to be.
WhatdidI think my father’s plan was? To keep Kallias from uncovering the Yellow Lord, to take Kallias off his throne, and ... then what?Bury the Yellow Lord again? Set him free? Bring him back to our queen and king?
I curse. Was it really always going to end this way?
For all my recent quarrels with Vil, he’s my friend, or at least he was. He and Saga have been family to me, showing more care for me in two years than my actual family did in a decade. I cannot resign them to death by the Yellow Lord’s power. I cannot see any justice or peace in the eradication of their entire people. Pacifism is the Iljaria’s way of life. Or at least I thought it was.
Lord of Time. If I could, I’d go back to the night of my escape. I would harden my heart to Saga’s pleas. I would leave her to Kallias’s mercy and go home to Iljaria, as I had planned. I had tried to anyway, leading her east out of the mountain, counting on delirium from her wound to keep her from realizing we weren’t going west to Skaanda. But she’d noticed. So I lied to her:We must have taken a wrong turn in the dark.
And like a fool, I took her west. Like a fool, I didn’t leave her to die in the snow, or in the caves. Like a fool, I went with her all the way to Skaanda, when I had chance after chance to slip away. Like the greatest of fools, I entangled myself into her life, and now I can’t bear that my brother means for her to die.
I curse and curse, sweeping jars of cosmetics from my dressing table, hurling them at the wall. I look in the mirror and scream at my reflection, because Indridi’s hair dye has worked too well, and there is not a hint of white showing among my dark curls. I try to find the Brynja I used to be, studying every freckle, every scar. But that Brynja is gone. I hid her for too long, and she’s never coming back, and I don’t know who I am anymore.
It’s late by the time I deem it safe to go, the twenty-first hour by the mantel time-glass. I jam a chair under my doorknob and shimmy up into the heating vent.
I pick my slow way to the dungeon, hating myself more with every beat of my heart.
I’ve been in the dungeon only once before, years ago, when I did my extensive exploration of the palace. I left in a hurry, because I found that it wasn’t only the children in his Collection that Kallias liked to torment.
The main entrance is a heavy wooden door, which leads to a wide dark corridor, lined with cells carved out of the rock, all barred in iron. Because, once, this was an Iljaria prison—it was built to contain Iljaria.
Brandr hasn’t bothered to post a guard, so I pick the lock to the main door unhindered. I’m forced to carry a light, and I tense as I pace down the corridor. I can’t see Saga and Vil. Not now. I’m here only to ease Ballast’s torment. Then I can work on gaining my brother’s trust. Earn my magic back. Become wholly Iljaria again. Fix all this, to the best of my ability.
“Have you come to crow, Brynja?”
I jump at Saga’s voice, turning toward her without meaning to.
She stands with her hands wrapped around the iron bars of the cell she’s in, her eyes filled with such visceral hatred that I take an involuntary step backward.
I can’t let myself say anything to her. Ican’t. I glimpse Vil in the next cell, sitting against the stone wall with his head tilted back and his eyes shut. My limbs turn all to water. I harden my resolve. I have to. I walk past them both, Saga hurling curses in my wake.
Kallias’s children are all locked up, too—my brother has been thorough. Zopyros, Theron, and Alcaeus all share a cell, with Lysandra, Xenia, and little Rhode in the one beside them. The boys don’t even look at me as I go by, but Lysandra screeches for my attention, demanding I let her out, telling me it’s a mistake, it’s all a mistake, she cares nothing for her father, she wants to ally with the Iljaria, she wants—
I ignore her, though my heart jerks at the sight of Rhode cradling a sleeping Xenia in her lap. Those two are as innocent as the children in the Collection, and I make a mental note to speak to Brandr abouthaving them released. To my knowledge, Kallias’s wives have been allowed to stay in their warren of rooms. Surely Rhode and Xenia can join them.
I find Ballast in the very last cell on the right. My hands shake as I pick the lock and slip inside.
He’s lying on the floor, unconscious. There’s dried blood under his fingernails and all around the iron collar on his neck, like he was trying to claw it off.
I fight to breathe, to force the nausea down, to keep control. I kneel beside him. I fumble with the collar, cursing and cursing until I find the latch that releases it. I hurl it at the stone wall, and it falls with a clatter.
But Ballast doesn’t wake. There are welts on his throat from the collar. His cheek is still horribly swollen where the wasp stung him. The ribbon that kept his eye patch in place has come loose, leaving his empty socket visible. Gently, gently, I pick up the ribbon. I tie it back on.
I bow my head and weep over him, racked by grief and rage, wanting and loss.
He opens his eye. Blinks up at me.
For a moment there is tenderness in his gaze, a fathomless relief. I see memory crash through him. He hardens. Recoils. Scrambles away from me as fast as he can.
His hands go to his throat. “You should have left me to die,” he snarls. “You should haveleftme.”
