Vil’s hands are heavy and warm in their usual places: my shoulder, my waist. It is easy, dancing with him. Familiar and safe, for all it sends my heart into a desperate riot.
Vil has been impossibly kind to me, ever since the day Saga and I showed up at the palace with a regiment of the Skaandan army, in borrowed clothes and helms too big for us. They’d been eating luncheon, Vil and his parents, in the private dining room with an open balcony looking out over the menagerie.
I had halted in the doorway as Saga rushed in, and then the four of them were a big tangle of arms and legs and disbelieving shouts and grateful tears and it was Vil who looked back and saw me there, uncertain, lost, Vil who said, “Who’s this, Saga?”
And then Saga broke away from them and ran to grab my arm and tug me back, explaining all in a jumble who I was and what had happened. She didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but they understood that I had saved Saga, that I had brought her back to them. The queen wept on my shoulder and the king said something about a reward and Vil looked at me, tears brimming in his eyes, and thanked me sincerely.
After that Vil made a point to seek me out. He showed me the palace and the city. He gave me a horse and taught me how to throw knives in the arena. He would sit in the library when I was there, reading, not imposing or pestering me in any way, just offering his steady company. And then of course there were the strategy meetings with his parents and their generals and Saga as we concocted the scheme to seize Daeros. There were the many afternoons he and Saga and I would sitporing over the maps of the tunnels, tracing out the best route for the army to take.
Vil would take care of me, I know, if I let him. With him, I would be profoundly loved, unutterablysafe. And yet I still cannot forget the blue-eyed boy, down with me in the dark, though with him there could only ever be danger.
Out on the star-drenched plain, Vil and I dance. His eyes pierce me through and I feel something like shame coiling in the pit of my belly.
“Where did you go just now?” he asks me quietly. “I wish—” His forehead creases. “I wish you would let me know you. Therealyou. The one you hide.”
I meet his eyes in the shifting firelight, heart racing. “I don’t hide from you, Vil.”
“Then tell me. Tell me everything. About your childhood and your family before—before the mountain. About what you want and what you dream of. You’ve told me some, but I want to know it all. I want to know every piece of you, Brynja Sindri. Give me something.” His voice pitches lower. “While I wait.”
I take a breath, hyperaware of the pressure of his fingers at my waist, of the intensity in his eyes and the warmth of his breath, whispering past my cheek. “My father is a mirror maker, and my mother is an architect. Or they were ten years ago, at least.”
“A mirror maker?” says Vil.
I shrug. “Someone has to make them.”
“True.”
“I’m the youngest of three siblings. My brother is a scholar, and my sister was a mechanical genius.”
“Was?”
“She died when I was small.”
He waits to see if I will say more but doesn’t press me, which makes my chest hurt.
He wants to know the real me, so I tell him. “She was trying out one of her inventions, but it failed and ... and she fell.”
“What was her invention?”
My breath hitches. “A pair of wings made of canvas and wood and wire. They were beautiful. But they failed her. They killed her. It’s why—” I fight to say more, trembling as we both heedlessly follow the pattern of the dance. “It’s why I’m afraid of falling.”
Vil’s throat works, and his fingers press a little harder into my shoulder, sending a trail of fire down my spine. “I’m so sorry, Brynja. It must have been awful for you. When we thought we’d lost Saga—” He shakes his head. “I was not well, for a long time.”
I fight down the old horror, that familiar sense of despair ready to drown me anew. “In my family, we were expected to be remarkable,” I tell him quietly. “I had no talent for books or inventions. But my body would mind me. I could bend it to my will. So I did.”
“Your acrobatics,” says Vil.
“Yes.”
Saga has stopped her singing now and is chatting with Indridi by the popping fire, knife blade flashing in the light. Vil and I keep dancing; the motion grounds me—if I stop, I fear I will fall apart.
“I wanted to make my family proud, like they were proud of my brother and my sister. I trained religiously. I made myself remarkable. But there was a woman.” There’s a sour taste in my mouth that I can’t get rid of. “She saw me performing in my village, and she—she told my parents she had a place for me in her traveling troupe. She promised them a hefty sum, said I must only perform with the troupe in the summers, and the rest of the year I could be at home.”
“You were achild,” says Vil, voice tight with anger. “Surely your parents didn’t—”
“They needed money to pay for my sister’s funeral expenses, to buy my brother more books. My father’s business was slow, my mother’s practically nonexistent. This was a way for me to be useful, a solution sent straight from the gods.”
“Gods’ bleedinghearts,” Vil swears.
