“You have broken our sacred laws,” I say quietly. “You have forsaken our people. Our beliefs. Our ideals.”
“I bring justice, Brynja! How many times do I have to tell you? I bring recompense. Ifollowour laws. I fulfill them.”
Wind whips strong through the decaying room, blowing my curls in my face. “Do you, Brandr? You did not obey the queen’s latest command—how many other of her orders have you disregarded?Wasthis mission sanctioned by her? Truly? Or was there no more power for you to seize in Iljaria, so you came here seeking more?”
He regards me with unfettered loathing. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I am here to enact the First Ones’ judgment—their law is above even our queen’s.”
I shake my head. “Murder isn’t judgment, Brandr. You’re talking about the eradication of two entire peoples.”
“They areworms,” he spits, “insects. Blink, and they will be gone. They are not like us.”
“Yes, they are,” I say quietly. “They have hearts and minds and bodies. They deserve life and freedom. The only thing they lack is our power, and I can’t help but think they might wield it more faithfully than we do. You have freed the Yellow Lord. Be content and go back to Iljaria and repent of the blood you have spilled. You are not a First One. Don’t presume to claim their power.”
“You are afool. The greatest of all fools. Do you truly believe the nonsense you’re spouting? Do you truly believe Iljaria has never gone to war, never left destruction in their wake? Do you think our father would be more merciful?”
“You weren’t merciful to him,” I say roughly.
He drops his eyes, and for a moment I think he’s ashamed. But it’s rage he feels, and it sears me.
“Our father gave menothing.” Brandr’s long white hair whips about his face in the cold wind, and he slams his fist into one of the bookcases. He hisses with pain, because it is not a real bookcase. He’s only hurting himself.
“He cared about Lilja,” Brandr goes on, a little quieter. “He cared, in his way, about you. But he didn’t care about me. He was ashamed of me, of my power. So I reinvented myself to please him. Made myself something he wanted, something I wasn’t.”
My gut twists. “That’s what I did, too.”
Brandr doesn’t acknowledge me, just traces one finger along a dusty shelf. Sparks of silver float to the floor. “I hope he was sorry, by the end. I hope he was sorry that he didn’t nurture me from the beginning, that he didn’t search with me until he found an answer to the gift of the Ghost Lord’s power. But he didn’t. I had to find the answer myself, in a rotting book whose pages crumbled as I turned them.”
Pity sparks within me. I know what it is to be used. To be forgotten. But that still does not absolve him. “Then this is truly what is in your mind,” I say, glancing around the room. “Knowledge. Power. Misused and left to rot. Have you ever met him, Brandr? Have you ever met the Ghost Lord?”
He sneers at me. “Met him?”
I pace through the decaying room, glancing at the ruined books but not touching them. “He is your patron Lord. He would come if you asked him, you know.”
“I don’t want the Ghost Lord. I don’t need him. I made myself. Iammyself. And soon all the world will bow to me.”
I shoot my brother a swift, hard glance. “Then youdomean to make yourself a god.”
“Power was always meant to be mine, little sister. It belongs to me. I mean to clothe myself in it.”
“And when you rule the world, what will you do? Bind the rest of the First Ones and make them do tricks for you, like Kallias did with all of us in his Collection?”
“I will bring justice. The people will weep at my feet and thank me for saving them.”
“When you are done with your justice, there will be no one left to kiss the hem of your garment.”
He hisses as he cuts his finger on some rough part of the shelf—a nail, perhaps. Red mottles his skin. “I’ve had enough of your little game, Brynja. You will die too, you know. When the sun fills the sky, when the Yellow Lord unleashes his power. Release me.”
I give him a thin smile. “You are the all-powerful Prism Master. Free yourself, if you can. But first, I think, there is someone you ought to meet.”
The Ghost Lord comes from between the shelves. He’s hard to look at—no, he’s hard to perceive. He’s wearing gray, I think. He’s about my brother’s height. But I cannot say if he’s old or young. I can’t tell the color of his eyes or even his hair.
Brandr turns to face him, and trembles before his patron Lord.
“You have learned well, young one,” says the Ghost Lord. His voice is a whisper on a snowy mountainside, sharp as ice and holding back a power strong enough to break the world.
“Go,” says Brandr. “Go, I do not want you here.”
The Ghost Lord shrugs. He resolves, a little, into the form of a young man. His skin is gray and white, marbled together. His hair is every color there is, and yet none of them. His eyes—his eyes are wholly white. The Ghost Lord is blind.
