But there is only darkness.
Chapter One
Year4200, Month of the Bronze God
Skaanda—Staltoria City—the royal palace
“Brynja.Brynja!”
I jolt awake to find light slanting through a warm chamber. My sheets are silk. The room smells of oranges. Tears drip down my cheeks, and the mad pace of my heart makes the world wheel. I squeeze my eyes shut again to try and block it out.
“Breathe, Brynja.”
A cold glass is pressed into my hands, damp with condensation from the ice that must have slowly melted overnight. I focus on the texture of the glass, on the scent of oranges and the steady voice of my friend. My pulse slows. I open my eyes.
Saga’s gaze meets mine, the memory of our shared horror written all over her face. I’ve clearly pulled her from her own bed—she’s wearing her sleeping shift, and her hair is wrapped up in a swath of purple. There are tears on her cheeks, too. Her hands wrap around the glass just above my own.
I take a shuddering breath, and for a few moments we breathe together, in and out, long and steady.
I remind myself that we are not in Daeros anymore but safe in Skaanda, far out of reach of the cruel king who haunts our sleep.
For now, at least.
Saga sets the glass back on my bedside table. “Breakfast in my room. Five minutes.” Her words are certain, but her voice wobbles. “Then to the training arena.”
Saga is a big believer in working your body until you’re too exhausted for traumatizing memories.
“Thanks for waking me,” I tell her.
She squeezes my hand. “Always. Now hurry and get dressed, will you? I’m starving.”
She slips away through the door that joins our chambers, and I drag myself out of bed.
I stretch, first thing. It’s a habit I haven’t been able to shake, even though it’s been a year and nine months since Saga and I escaped from Kallias’s mountain and I’m not forced to perform anymore. I broke nearly every bone in my body in order to make it mind me, and the thought of losing my acrobatic skills entirely panics me nearly as much as the idea of facing Kallias again.
“Breakfast!” shouts Saga from the other side of the door, just as I’m pulling on loose trousers and a linen shirt.
I splash water on my face and join her in her room, kneeling with her at the low round table that’s laden with more than enough food for two. We eat while her maids fuss around her, unwrapping her hair and dabbing the smooth dark skin of her face with cosmetics, no matter that she’ll sweat it all off in the arena. Saga is the crown princess of Skaanda, and she’s not allowed to appear in public looking like “a disheveled mongoose,” as her mother so lovingly puts it. She’s regained her composure since waking me, locked her shadows tightly away, and become, at least in appearance, the confident princess she was before Kallias broke her.
She watches me over the table as she sips tea and eats berries, absently swirling her oatcake in a bowl of cream until the soggy pastry breaks apart and the pieces float away. “Brynja,” she says pointedly.
I stare at my own breakfast, not having much of an appetite.
“By the time we reach the mountain, it will have been two years, you know,” she says.
It was a three-month journey from Tenebris to Skaanda; the return trip will take another three months. I brace myself for the argument I’ve heard many times. I take a bite of an oatcake.
“You look completely different,” she goes on. “You have hair now, for one, and you’ve gotcurves, Brynja! You no longer look skinny enough that a child could snap you in half like a twig, and Iswearyou’ve grown a couple inches. I doubt your own mother would recognize you.”
I grimace and she does, too, because she didn’t mean to needle at the sore subject of my family.
“Sorry.”
I shake my head. She’s right, though. I’ve changed a lot since we fled from Tenebris—eating proper, hearty meals and not living in a cage will apparently do that to a person. I have filled out in unexpected places, gained weight and acquired hips; I frequently run into doorframes and furniture because I’m no longer quite sure of the shape of my own body.
“Is that why you don’t want to come?” says Saga softly. “You want to stay and keep looking for them?”
My parents, she means. My brother. I think of the empty house in the tangled streets of Staltoria City. Saga went there with me, when we first arrived back in Skaanda. She was heartbroken that I was robbed of the joyful reunion she had had with her own family. There was nothing in that house but dust and shadows.
