Page 140 of While the Dark Remains
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Year4201, Month of the Yellow Lord
Daeros—the tundra
There isn’t any time to spare. I am not sure when the Iljaria queen will arrive—or if she already has—but Soul’s Rest is over, and I don’t wholly trust my brother to wait for her before unleashing the Yellow Lord. The sooner Ballast and I get back to Tenebris, the better.
Asvaldr lumbers out from amid the host of animals, and bows his head before Ballast, who rubs his neck affectionately and then scrambles up onto the massive bear’s back. Ballast reaches out his hand to pull me up after him, and for a moment I balk, staring.
“He won’t hurt you,” says Ballast. “And it will be faster than walking.”
I take a breath. I let him pull me up and have barely settled in behind him before Asvaldr lopes forward, enormous paws plowing through the snow. My stomach lurches with every movement and I hold tight to Ballast, my heart thudding against his back, closer to him than I’ve ever been, save by the river in the tunnels.
After a while I grow used to the motion and breathe a little easier, hyperaware of Ballast’s warmth and power, pressed up against him.The rest of the animals follow at a slower pace, growing ever fainter behind us.
This first light of the new year lasts only an hour before the sun begins to sink west again, blue shadows slanting long over the snow. Asvaldr lopes along, seemingly tireless, chasing the light.
I can’t quite parse out Ballast’s mood: He’s been pensive, quiet, since I told him my plan. But the tension seems to ease out of him bit by bit as Asvaldr lumbers across the snow.
“How did you find them all?” I say at last, into Ballast’s shoulder. “The animals?”
It takes him a moment to answer, and I wonder if it’s difficult for him to talk when he’s holding so many creatures to his will, that maybe that’s the reason he’s barely spoken. “I called Asvaldr, and he called the others. When I asked them, they bound themselves to me, every one. They will fight for me.”
I feel a rush of pride for him. But even if we manage to stop Brandr, the tension between Skaanda and Daeros and Aerona won’t just evaporate. I’ll have my work cut out for me, convincing Ballast and Saga and Vil and Aelia to forge a real, lasting peace.
“Why didn’t you free the others when you left?” I say. “Saga and Vil. Your own siblings.”
He grimaces. “I couldn’t have brought them with me—they would have only gotten in the way. I was going to free them when I got back. When Tenebris was mine.”
I digest this without further comment.
Ballast glances back at me, as if trying to read my thoughts.
I stare at the marks on his neck, left from the iron collar, and I hate myself for not freeing him of it sooner.
“I wondered if it was you,” says Ballast quietly, into the setting sun. “No one could ever forget the girl who nearly brought the mountain crashing down around her with the strength of her anger and her grief.”
I bite my cheek to hold back the tears. Ballast was there that day, when Lilja fell to her death.
“I wondered,” he says, “when my father brought you to Daeros, when he locked you in an iron cage and hung you from the ceiling. I wondered if it was you. Your hair wasn’t white. You had no magic. And yet. The pattern of your freckles was familiar. So were your eyes, fierce and dark. And the haughty tilt of your chin.”
“I wasn’t haughty.”
A laugh huffs out of him. “Yes, you were. But I didn’t understand how itcouldbe you. It didn’t make any sense. But that day I caught you spying on me—”
I flush and am glad he can’t see me.
“You told me your name,” he says. “And it was the same as hers. The girl who almost brought the mountain down. I was beyond glad when you kept coming to see me, those next few months. The time we spent together—it made me feel human, Brynja. I was devastated when my mother told me I had to end it. She was right, but ... I wish it could have gone differently.”
The old pain pricks at my heart.
“But I didn’t forget about you. I watched you for years, and you never gave a hint that you were anything but what you pretended to be. So I thought I must have imagined it.” He glances back at me, eye catching mine in the last glimmers of light. “How could you have done it,” he says with quiet agony. “How could you have put yourself at my father’s mercy, let him debase you, abuse you, torment you, for year after year afteryear? How could you bear it, Brynja?”
My throat goes tight as his eye gleams with moisture. And I know the question is not wholly directed at me.
The sun drops below the western horizon; for a little while more, Asvaldr gambols in its afterglow, paw prints silver in the snow. Ballast sends an Iljaria light globe bobbing ahead of us to illuminate our path as the white bear runs on.
“Tell me about your magic,” says Ballast then. “Tell me how it was locked away.”
