Page 133 of While the Dark Remains
Without another word, he pushes past me and steps onto the stairs winding down to the tunnel.
Then he’s gone.
I stare after him, my whole world inverting itself.
One thing is brutally clear: Brandr doesn’t believe in pacifism anymore, if he ever did. I am not sure if any of my people do, not truly, not as I was taught when I was small. Maybe the Iljaria never believed intrue peace. Maybe I don’t, either. Maybe Vil was right, all those weeks ago, and the Iljaria’s professed pacifismisa sham. What is the good of near-limitless power if it isn’t used to protect and defend, to uphold peace and preserve life?
Whether Brandr intended it at first or not, he killed our father.
And now he’s going to kill Saga and Vil. Now he’s going to kill Ballast.
Now he’s going to killKallias.
This realization twists inside me like a serrated blade, and I feel every jagged cut. Death by the Yellow Lord is too good for Kallias. He murdered Lilja. He tormented me and countless others. He laughed while he did it. Death by the Yellow Lord is too good for him. Kallias stole my childhood, my family, my magic, my name. He murdered my sister and caged me like an animal. He tormented me, day after day, year after year, kept me trapped and terrified in the never-ending dark. But no more.
No more.
My feet turn toward the great hall before I even tell them to, and somehow there’s already a knife in my hand.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Year4200, Month of the Ghost Lord
Daeros—Tenebris
Kallias is asleep on my ledge, though it’s far too small for him. He’s curled up like a child, his head tucked into his arms, his legs dangling into the empty space of the iron cage. I try not to see how much he looks like Ballast. I try not to think about Ballast at all.
I slip up the chain without a sound and hang there a moment, watching him sleep. I don’t understand how he can be so helpless, so fragile, this man who held my life in his hands for nearly a decade. I sidle around the outside of the cage to the sleeping ledge. My knife finds his throat.
He wakes in an instant, his body perfectly still, his blue eyes blinking up into mine in the semidarkness of the great hall. “I was wondering when you would be back, little acrobat.” His words are quiet, careful around the point of the knife. But he has the audacity to smile.
I press the blade in a little deeper. A trickle of red runs down his throat. “My brother means to execute you tomorrow.”
“And you have come early to save him the trouble, is that it?” His eyes bore into mine, fearless and unflinching. “I knew you were my wayward acrobat the moment you paraded in here with those Skaandanfools. There’s too much pride in you—and too much fear. Why do you think I allowed you to get close to me? Why do you think I offered to make you queen? Certainly not because Idesiredyou.”
I fight to keep hold of myself. If I kill him now, I won’t have answers to my questions, and he won’t know exactly why I mean to end him.
He just smirks at me. He wants me to ask.
“Why?” I grind out.
He shows his teeth. “To mock you. To draw you closer and closer until I could strangle you alive, make you pay for escaping from my Collection anddaringto come back. I’m not a fool. I knew the treaty was a ruse. But I like a good game, Brynja. It helps to pass the time. And what better game than toying with your Skaandan friends and you? All the sweeter when the long night is over, when I could throw your worthless corpses into the Sea of Bones.”
“Shut up.” My throat is starting to hurt, the old terror coiling through me.
He smiles and smiles. “And my worthless son, Ballast, near bursting with rage to see you with me—I swear the stupid boy is half in love with you.”
“I said shutup!”
Kallias raises his eyebrows. “I figured you came here to talk, little acrobat. Or else you would have killed me already.”
I’m livid that he reads my mind so easily. I don’t withdraw the knife, eyes fixed on the line of red that slides down his neck and seeps into his collar.
“This is about your sister, I suppose.”
I tighten my grip on the knife as images flash through my mind: Lilja bent over her worktable, Lilja overseeing the packing of her inventions, Lilja beaming in pride as she showed her wings to Kallias. Lilja falling, falling, falling.
“I should have recognized you, when you joined my Collection, as the Iljaria monster who nearly brought down the mountain on top of us. I shouldn’t have been fooled by your dark hair, your sudden flair foracrobatics.” He sighs a little. “But in my defense, I barely even noticed you the first time you were here. Your sister vastly overshadowed you, you know.”
