Page 82 of While the Dark Remains
But I don’t understand. I think of Gulla, locked in her cage, bruised and alone and forgotten. “Have you even gone to see your mother since you’ve been here?” It’s a cruel question.
His jaw goes hard. “I can’t antagonize my father.”
I scoff. “What’s your game, Ballast? Get yourself named heir, take over from your father, and then what? Start a Collection of your own?”
Something breaks in his face, and I utterly revile myself for saying that to him.
He turns distant, cold.
I take a step toward him. “Ballast. I’m sorry. I know that isn’t you.”
“Do you?” he says. He shows his teeth in an echo of Kallias’s feline smile, and it chills me to my bones.
“You’re better off with your Skaandan prince,” he says, eye glittering, “although I’m not sure anyone believes he’s your cousin.”
My anger flares and I shove past him, but he grabs my wrist. Holds me back.
I look at him, pulse wild. Fear rages through me, fear of him, of his father. Of this mountain and all the secrets buried in the heart of it.
“Don’t interfere,” says Ballast, tone clipped. “If you know what’s best for you, you and your Skaandan prince will leave Tenebris and never come back.”
“He’s not my Skaandan prince,” I practically snarl at him.
For a moment more we stare at each other, his fingers hot through my sleeve.
Then he releases me, and I sweep on down the corridor.
I don’t look back.
Twenty-One Months Ago
Year4199, Month of the Yellow God
The Iljaria Tunnels
Saga won’t speak to me. She barely even looks at me. She will never forgive Ballast for killing Hilf. And she will never forgive me for permitting Ballast’s touch.
The only time she interacts with Ballast is every night after we make camp, when he scratches out the map with charcoal on the stone, and she copies it down, making certain she has it memorized. Other than that every day is an agony of silence, of hewing our way through the cave demons, of careful distance between all three of us. Sometimes I catch Ballast watching me, but when I meet his eyes, he glances away. I want to tell him I am not Saga, that the memory of his hand on my cheek sends fire through my veins. I want to tell him that I care for him, that he means something to me I don’t even properly understand.
What pass for days down here spin on, and I sense very keenly that there are not many left, that no matter how often I have felt we will be trapped here in the mountain with the shadow monsters forever, it isn’t true. We’ll reach the end of the tunnels soon. It will be time to leave Ballast behind. The very thought is a keen-edged agony. I will miss himwhen we have gone. Already it gnaws at me. I don’t know if I will be able to bear letting him go.
“We’re close, aren’t we,” says Saga one day as we break camp, scattering the ashes of the fire, smudging out the twin charcoal drawings on the stone floor. “Close to the exit.”
Ballast looks at me for one long and steady moment before turning his back to us and raising his torch into the darkness, sword loose and ready in his other hand. “Yes,” comes his quiet agreement. “We’re close.”
My stomach wrenches.
“How close?” says Saga.
“We will camp only once more.”
She huffs out a breath. “Good.”
We walk awhile in silence before Ballast says: “I’m not coming with you to Staltoria City.”
Saga’s jaw tightens. “I know. I will not force you to come—and with that, I consider my debt to you for guiding us repaid. But if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”
“I know,” Ballast echoes.
