Page 131 of While the Dark Remains

I stand eye to eye with him and am overwhelmed with the sudden sensations oflonelinessandsorrowandanger. They taste bitter on my tongue, and I peer at the Yellow Lord with greater understanding. He’s been chained down here for centuries. My measly eight years in Kallias’s cage don’t even compare.

“One person’s pain does not negate another’s,” says the Yellow Lord quietly, reading my thoughts. “I have been down here longer, but that doesn’t make your experience meaningless. You have been hurt. Deeply. Haven’t you?”

Another wave oflonelinesshits me, and I gasp under the weight of it.

The Yellow Lord puts his hands on either side of my face, like my father did all those years ago; his fingers are gentle and cool, where I’d expected them to be rough, hot. Magic rushes through me, raging as rivers, quiet as spring rain. For an instant the memory of my own magic sparks bright on my tongue, and I want to weep in relief.

But the next moment it’s gone again.

The Yellow Lord withdraws his hands. He studies me, solemn and small, and I think again how very strange it is that a First One who has lived untold centuries looks to be little more than a child.

“Your magic is not gone,” he says after a moment, tapping his fingers along his jawline, “but it is buried deeper than I would have guessed. Your father used your own magic against itself. Only your magic can unlock your magic.” He grins at me.

I choke back a Skaandan curse. “But I can’tusemy magic.”

“Therein lies the dilemma. You still sense magic, as easy as breathing. I perceive the effect I have on you. You see it everywhere, don’t you? What does it look like?”

I blink at him, shocked. How could a First One not know? “Magic is color,” I say softly. “It turns and twists in shapes and patterns; it sparks or glimmers or pulses. Some magic is sharp and some is bright, some dark, some cold. And it tastes like—” I shrug. “I don’t know. It tastes like magic.”

“Perhaps you have only to reach for it in the right way. Perhaps it is not as impossible as you think.”

I huff in frustration. “Could my brother help me?”

“The Prism Master?” The Yellow Lord laughs. “Certainly, if he could be bothered. But you have already asked him, haven’t you?”

I slump in on myself. “Why won’t he help me?”

The Yellow Lord looks at me with a sort of regretful frankness. He smiles, thin and haunted. “Because he’s afraid of you, Eldingar. Your brother is hungry for power—he is afraid that yours will surpass his.”

“But he has Prism magic. I only have mind magic.”

The Yellow Lord raises one white eyebrow. “I read your brother when he came to me the first time. He was sickly, once. He could hardly walk. What little magic he had was eating him up from the inside. What happened, do you think, that so changed him?”

Dread worms through me. “He said he learned to control his magic. He said our father taught him.”

The Yellow Lord studies his hands, light dancing once more between his fingertips. “Or perhaps he learned how to tap into your father’s magic. To sap it from him. Have you ever heard of a Prism Master who died before they reached their third century?”

“Brandr wouldnever—”

The Yellow Lord catches my arm, his eyes piercing me as his light dances from his skin to mine. The light doesn’t burn me. It isn’t even hot.

“Do you truly know,” he says, “the things your brother would never do? Do you know him at all?”

Images flash through my mind: Lilja bent over her worktable, her fingers covered in grease, her spectacles sliding down her nose. Me, perched on a stool at her elbow and barely acknowledged. But Brandr isn’t there. He never is. He’s always shut away in his room, reading. Resenting me.

The Yellow Lord sighs and I see his age, suddenly, behind his eyes—he’s older than the mountain, older than the ice, older than I can possibly imagine. He lets go of me, and I take a step back from him.

“Now,” says the Yellow Lord, “I must rest before my trial of power in the morning.”

“What exactly does this trial of power entail?”

His eyes glitter. “You will have to ask him that. He bid me to silence.”

“Must you obey him?” I demand.

“I am bound to the one who unchained me.”

“And when he ... unleashes you ... you will consume everyone and everything outside of the mountain, except Iljaria.”

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