Page 90 of While the Dark Remains
Year4199, Month of the Yellow God
Skaanda
We walk without speaking, heading west, always west, across the snow. It’s strange, feeling the sunlight again. I forgot how bright it is, how fiercely hot, even out here on the tundra. I tell myself that’s what makes my eyes blur as my feet take me farther and farther from the mountains. I try to push Ballast out of my head, but I can’t do it. He’s always there, the memory of him pulsing through me like my own heartbeat.
The tension eases out of Saga, bit by bit, as we walk. Her foot is fully healed now and she takes long strides—I nearly have to trot to keep up with her. My legs burn and my breath comes short, but I understand her desire for speed. The day will be brief this close to Gods’ Fall; the light won’t last very long. We will have to find shelter. Plot our course.
A few hours’ walking sees the sun dipping down to the horizon again, and we glimpse a blur of dark in the distance I hope to the gods is a copse of trees. Without discussion, we both break into a jog.
It is indeed a copse of trees, and we reach it as the last of the light fades. I gather wood for a fire while Saga spreads out our blankets andunpacks the last of Ballast’s smoked fish. We will have to go hunting tomorrow if we want to fill our bellies again.
I try not to think about Ballast. I can think of nothing else. The taste of his kiss resounds within me, the bright fiery burst of his magic. I want more. I crave it.
“What were you doing?” says Saga, low and tight. “What were you doing with him in the dark?”
The fire leaps high into a night alive with stars. By the twelve gods, I forgot the glory of stars. I take a breath, thinking of the underground river and the bright-blue pebbles, the feel of Ballast’s mouth on mine. I don’t know why I answer her honestly, but I do. “I kissed him. He kissed me.”
She curses, turning her face away so I don’t see her tears. “I’m glad you’re free of him now,” she says in a strangled voice. “Free of his magic, of whatever spell of seduction he used on you.”
The fish turns to ash in my belly. “He didn’t use his magic on me, Saga.”
“Really?” She wheels on me, vicious. “Because that is the only reason I can think of that you would let a murderer, a monster,Kallias’s son, touch you.”
Her jaw works and I feel sick, sick. “I’m sorry, Saga. I didn’t mean—”
“Didn’t meanwhat? To kiss him? To look at him? To fall in love with him?”
“I’m not in love with him.” My heart is beating frantic and wild. I tell it to be still but it doesn’t obey me. “I’m not sure I’ve ever loved anyone besides my sister.”
Saga lays her head on my shoulder, and I hold her while she weeps, bitterly, grief in every cell of her.
“I was so afraid,” she says, later, when we’re both lying on either side of the fire, staring up at multicolored stars. “I was so afraid Kallias would kill me. That I would end lost and forgotten in the glacier sea, reduced to a pile of bones. That I would never see my parents or mybrother again. That I would die forgetting I had ever been anything but a girl in a cage.”
My chest is tight. “I was afraid of that, too.”
We’re quiet for a while, listening to the pop of the fire, to the hoot of an owl in the trees. I forgot about things like owls, and I am glad beyond measure to hear its voice.
“I know he saved us,” she goes on. “I know he healed me and led us faithfully through the tunnels, and I am—I am grateful. I am. But I wish the gods had sent us a different savior. Because when I looked at him, all I saw was Kallias. All I saw was Hilf dying, over and over and over. I was helpless. Trapped. At his mercy.”
“I know,” I say.
“I am so glad you are free of him. So glad we never have to see him again.”
I don’t answer, shutting my eyes and watching him turn a blue pebble over and over in his hands. I see the child version of him, laying out cards on his bed, turning the pages of his beloved Iljaria book. I feel his fingers in my hair, his cheek against mine, his lips hot as fire.
“He was my friend,” I tell her softly, longing for her to understand. “Before the tunnels, and—and Hilf—before all that, when we were children, he was my friend. I was a girl alone in a cage, and he was kind to me.”
“He grew up to be a monster, just like his father.”
My gut wrenches.
“You can’t love Kallias’s son,” says Saga.
“I don’t.”
She takes a breath. I’m not sure she believes me. I’m not sure I believe me, either.
She says, “Tell me about your sister.”
