There are no monsters today, which makes me more restless than usual—it’s easier to hack through a horde of cave demons than to be confronted with my own thoughts, forced to reckon with the reality of having to part with Ballast, when I have only just found him again.
I dread making camp, but Ballast stops sooner than I’m ready for, in a little cave off the main tunnel. The underground river flows nearby, its laughter reverberating off the stones.
We eat and sip our tea. Saga draws the charcoal map once more on the ground, and Ballast looks at it and nods.
Then there are only the blankets to spread out by the fire, and one last sleep before leaving the caves behind. I take first watch, peering out into the wider passage, listening to the fire crack and pop. But nothing stirs, and I don’t think anything will. I take the torch from where Ballast propped it against a rock and pace down the tunnel.
I follow the sound of the river until I find it, running smooth and dark along its stony bank. I sit, study the gleam of the water in the reflected torchlight. Bright-blue pebbles seem almost to glow beneath the surface, and I scoop out a handful of them, spreading them out on the bank to dry. I study the pebbles as I force myself to contemplate my future.
I have to go back to my family, and I try to understand my resistance to do so. My sister has been gone many years now, and yet when I think of home, I think of her—her quick brain and quicker fingers, her spectacles smudged with grease. The way I’m not sure, even now, if she was properly aware of my existence, so wrapped up in her inventing that she had little thought left to spare for anything or anyone else.
There is my brother, of course, but we were never particularly close. He was sickly, when we were little, always being attended to by physicians, closeted away from his rambunctious sister. That’s when he started reading so much, when he decided to become a scholar. He’s the one who told me all the stories of the gods.
My parents had little time for me. They could have found me in Kallias’s mountain, but they didn’t. They don’t know if I’m alive or dead. I’m not sure it matters to them, either way.
What is there for me, really, at home? But where else would I even go?
“Brynja?”
Ballast’s voice is warm and soft in the darkness, and I don’t turn as he sinks down beside me, close enough that his sleeve brushes mine.
My skin pricks with awareness, yet my heartbeats quiet, steady. I am easier with him next to me. I’m glad he came. I wanted him to.
For a while we don’t speak, just stare into the water, listen to it flowing over the stones.
“The cave demons won’t come again, will they?” I say.
He shakes his head. “We are too near the light. They stay in the deeper parts of the labyrinth, where they can be assured of the darkness.We’re perfectly safe now.” He picks up one of the blue pebbles and turns it over and over in his hands. “Will you really go with Saga?”
“Yes,” I tell him.
“Why?”
“She asked me to. And I have nowhere else to go.”
“You could stay here,” he says quietly. “In the tunnels.”
I hear what he doesn’t say:You could stay with me.
I want to stay with him. I want to so badly it hurts. But not here. Not now. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. “I can’t live in the dark, Bal.”
He turns to face me. The torchlight dances in his white-and-dark hair, licks along his skin, and turns him all to molten gold. His eyes gleam with moisture.
“You can’t stay here, either,” I say. “You belong in the light.”
“I’m a monster. I belong in the shadows with the rest of the monsters.”
His words wreck me. I want to erase the very essence of them, but I don’t know how. “You’re not a monster.”
“But I am. Saga is right. I deserve to die for the things I’ve done.”
“Saga is not a god, to deal out life and death.”
Pain writes its way across his face, like his whole soul is filled with it. “Can I touch you, Brynja?” he whispers.
My heart presses against my breastbone. I give him the barest of nods, which doesn’t convey even an iota of how much I want him to.
He cups one hand around my face, smooths my cheek with his thumb. I tremble as he tugs the scarf from my head, lets it fall to the ground. I lean into him like I’m drawn by some unstoppable magnetic force. He brushes his fingers across my newly grown hair, infinitely gentle. My skin sparks at his touch. I want him closer. I need him closer.
