Page 124 of While the Dark Remains

“Father trained me,” says Brandr. “After he was done with you.”

Resentment bubbles up in me at the bitterness in his words. Here is the Brandr I remember—but what does he have to be bitter about anymore?Hewasn’t sent away and forgotten, wasn’t sacrificed for the greater good. He’s shed his weakness like a butterfly bursting from a cocoon. He has power now. He has everything he ever wanted.

I take a deep breath and ask another question I know isn’t safe. “Father locked my magic away inside of me. Can you unlock it?”

Brandr gives me an infuriatingly indulgent smile. “We will discuss it later, Brynja.” He turns to speak to Gróa, who gladly soaks in his attention.

“I have sent word to Her Majesty,” Gróa tells him, putting one hand on my brother’s arm and tracing his tattoos with her fingers. “I expect her reply via blue kestrel within a day, possibly two, with her arriving shortly after. Drengur and I will of course ready the grandest rooms for her we can find.”

“The queen is cominghere?” I blurt.

Brandr frowns but doesn’t answer.

Gróa looks at me with utter condescension. “Naturally our queen wishes to be present at the Yellow Lord’s unleashing and the long-awaited cleansing of our world.”

“Did you think our father orchestrated this entire plot alone?” Brandr asks me pointedly. “Did you thinkIwas here against our queen’s will? I am not the ruler of the Iljaria.”

You’re certainly acting like it,I want to tell him, but don’t quite dare.

For the remainder of the dinner, Brandr ignores me. Drengur, Brandr’s steward, tells me briefly about how his power of music—his patron is the White Lady—is actually more useful than I might think. If one’s magic is strong—which his is—the vibrations of musical notes can be used to manipulate and move matter, similar to the power of the Brown Lady, although her power is generally limited to earth and rock. When I don’t display the correct amount of awe at this explanation, he tires of me quickly and turns to speak with someone else.

I have outlived my usefulness, I suppose. Fulfilled my duty. And what good am I now, an Iljaria with no magic? Not even worth the effort of conversation.

As soon as dinner is over, I catch Brandr’s arm and pull him into an alcove off the main corridor, where wine bottles are locked in a wood-and-glass cabinet. Their scent permeates the air, sweet and strong.

“Can you unlock my magic or not?” I demand, not even attempting to hide my anger.

Brandr jerks his sleeve from my grasp, magic crackling over his skin. He’s angry, too, and his anger terrifies me. “Your magic has nothing to do with me. It never has.”

I’m thrown back to our childhood, him shut up in his rooms with his books, me making the plates and silverware dance out of their cupboards in the kitchen, seeing how many I could keep track of at once. The answer was all. All of them, until a servant came in and startled me and every last one came crashing to the floor.

I got shouted at and banished outside, where I tried the same thing with seashells and pebbles on the shore. I was there until the sun set and the stars began to appear, and then my mother came out and found me with sand and fish and water swirling about my head, unsure of how to put them all down again without causing a hurricane. I got quite a few lectures after that.

“My hair color is coming back,” I say, “so that spell is wearing off. Why isn’t my magic returning? If one reverted on his death, why not the other?”

Brandr sighs, like I’m the most troublesome thing in all the world. To him, maybe I am. “It is possible that locking magic can’t be reversed at all. Did that never occur to you?”

It occurs to me now, and I want to scream and rail. I need my magic back, a second heart I’ve been living without for all these years. I’m not sure how long my other heart, my frailer heart, can go on beating without it.

“Won’t you eventry, Brandr?” I ask him quietly. “You’re the most powerful Iljaria alive right now. If there’s a way, surely you can find it. And—and you of all people know what it is like to be weak.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and I take a step back as his magic pulses off him white-hot.

“Your sympathies with the Skaandans and even the Daerosian children run far too deep. How can I trust you?”

“So you’ll damn me to live forever like one of them?”

“I’d imagine you’d be used to it by now.”

I bite my lip hard to keep from screaming at him.

“Prove yourself to me, Brynja. Prove your loyalty to the Iljaria, and I will do my best to reunite you with your magic.”

“What do you think I’ve beendoingall this time?” I demand. “I sacrificed a decade of my life for our people. I betrayed my friends and handed you the keys to the Yellow Lord. I’ve done nothingbutprove my loyalty.”

His mouth thins. “It isn’t enough. Simply calling Skaandans and that half-Iljaria bastard your friends attest that you’ve grown too much like them, that you don’t know what true loyalty even means.”

“But—”

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