“Brynja.” His voice is soft. His touch is softer.
I go still.
“I wanted you to be free of him. Wholly free. I didn’t want him to haunt you in death, as he did in life. I would have spared you that. I would have taken it on myself, so you never had to think of him again.” His voice breaks. “I should have. None of this is your fault.None of it.”
I blink back fresh tears. His kindness, his care for me, is staggering. I am glad that Ballast doesn’t bear the weight of his father’s death. Hehas borne enough. “None of this is your fault, either,” I tell him. “You know that, don’t you?”
He shakes his head and cups my face in his hands. “Do you know how remarkable you are, Brynja Eldingar?”
Hearing my true name from his lips makes me smile.
He kisses me, softly, his mouth warm and full of promise. Longing and contentment stir together in my belly, and I wrap my arms around him, pull him close. I can taste his magic, sharp and bright on my tongue, but it no longer burns me.
Wind stirs over the cliff, blowing snow into our faces, and without even really meaning to, I tell the snow to make a canopy to shelter us. It obeys. I forgot what true power felt like, seamless as a second skin, but it seems the power has not forgotten me.
Ballast breaks our kiss and glances up at the shimmering snow canopy. His eye finds mine again and a slow smile touches his lips. “You unlocked your magic. It worked.”
I grin, almost giddy. “It worked.”
He whoops with triumph and pushes to his feet, pulling me up with him. He sweeps me into a hug, spinning me around in the snow and laughing like a madman until all at once we’re still again, his hands in my hair and mine around his shoulders, crushing him against me. Now his lips are like fire and his stubble scrapes my cheek and the jewel on his forehead presses hard and cold into mine, but I don’t care. I don’t care because Ballast is here, with me, and all the cards have been played and there are no more secrets between us.
It is some time before we come back to ourselves, breathless and wild, the wind hardly able to cool our hot faces. Ballast smiles at me and brushes his fingers across my brow. “What now, my lady Eldingar?”
I echo his smile, my heart full to bursting. “Shall we go and kick my brother out of your mountain?”
He grins. “That would do nicely. His expulsion is long overdue.”
Up from the Sea, I call a chunk of glacier that’s as large as a carriage, glittering in the starlight. Ballast gasps, but it costs me little effort, mypower stretching and settling inside me, as eager to be used as a long-penned-up hound is ready to run.
This kind of exertion would have exhausted my child self. But I am not exhausted now. The colors of my own magic spark and shimmer before my eyes, blue and violet and bronze. I tell the glacier piece to be a sleigh, and it becomes one, runners and seats and a shining prow made all of ice. It waits before us, sparkling in the snow.
Ballast looks at me sideways, his brows raised and his mouth hanging open. “Are you sureyou’renot the one with Prism magic?”
“I’ve always been able to sense a spark of ...awarenessin all things, like every bit of matter has a mind, in a way. I don’t create new things. I ask them to find a new form, or move in new ways. But I’m stronger now. Even than I used to be.”
Ballast shakes his head in bewilderment. “I don’t think everyone blessed by the Bronze Lord can do that.”
I shrug. I wouldn’t know. The Iljaria mistrust mind magic—I am not sure my parents would have allowed me to be trained in it even if they hadn’t sent me to Kallias.
We climb into the sleigh. I speak a word to the ice and it hums in answer, the sleigh hurtling forward, bearing us swiftly across the tundra.
Toward the mountain, and whatever fate awaits us there.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Year4201, Month of the Yellow Lord
Daeros—Tenebris
I halt the sleigh when we’re still some ways from Tenebris. We’ve caught up with the animal army, and Ballast holds them in check with his magic while the two of us climb out of the sleigh. I dissolve it with a thought into a flurry of snow. I can sense the sun below the horizon—it will rise within the hour. We need to keep moving, but I won’t have us walking into a trap if we can avoid it.
“Can you send one of the birds ahead to scout?” I ask Ballast as we stand together in the mass of creatures, leopards lying at his feet and Asvaldr guarding his back. Stags stamp and blow, rattling their antlers together, while wolves whine and lions growl, impatient at being held fast on Ballast’s invisible leash.
Ballast nods, and an owl wings westward, disappearing into the dark.
I pace while we wait, trying to reach out to Saga, Gulla, Rute, and the others, trying to speak into their minds, but they must still be too far away; I can’t sense them. I curse in frustration at my fifth failed attempt, and stop trying. Ballast watches me, tense and quiet.
It seems an eternity before the owl comes back, landing on Ballast’s shoulder and ruffling its feathers as it leans its head to his ear.
