Page 138 of While the Dark Remains

For half a moment Vil meets my gaze. “You had better be, Brynja. Betray us again and I’ll kill you myself.”

My stomach churns with the memory of his pronouncing Indridi’s fate. “I know,” I say.

Then I’m gone, back up the cellar stairs, around a corner, into the safety of a heating vent.

I stop briefly in my room, long enough to finally wash the blood from my hands and change into sturdy trousers, a heavy shift, tall boots. I shrug into a fur-lined coat and bundle supplies into a pack, and then I’m ready.

It’s the twenty-second hour by the mantel time-glass. I don’t know how far Ballast is ahead of me, but if I want to find him, I’m going to have to hurry.

I scramble back into the vent and take the shortest route possible to exit the mountain. Ballast knew the Skaandan army was coming through the tunnels—he wouldn’t have gone that way and risked running into them.

I slip out a side door meant for dumping wastewater and am hit by a sudden onslaught of frigid, stinging wind. I bow my head and trudge into the dark and the snow, pulling up the hood of my coat and cinching it tight.

When I’m a little ways from the mountain, I shut my eyes andfeelfor the echo of Ballast’s magic, to give me some sense of which direction he’s gone. I reach, reach, beyond grateful that my sensitivity to magic wasn’t locked away with the rest of my power. This, above anything, gives me hope that I’ll be able to find it again.

If Ballast can help me, that is.

I reach, reach.

Then—

There.

I catch my breath and open my eyes. For a heartbeat I see a faint spark of blue, bobbing far east beyond the mountain. I blink and it’s gone.

I pull an Iljaria light globe from my pack and lift it high, illuminating my way.

“Wait for me, Ballast,” I whisper, bending my head into the wind and trudging west, wet flakes of snow clinging to my eyelashes. “Wait for me. I’m coming.”

I remember the heat of him, the taste of his magic, and I know very well that needing my own magic back is not the only reason I’m going after him.

I walk on, shoving through deeply mounded snow, pulling my hood tight against the wind. The Iljaria light doesn’t waver, my only companion in the cold dark.

My thoughts drift again and again to the Bronze God, pulling my magic out of me with long silver hooks. I try to reach him in my own mind, but I cannot find him, or he does not wish to be found, and I am left with my panic, driving me onward.

I am terrified that the Iljaria queen will arrive with an army of her own before the Skaandan and Daerosian armies can join forces. I am terrified that Brandr won’t even wait for the queen and will unleash the Yellow Lord at his own whim. I’m afraid that Saga and Vil will die thinking I betrayed them again.

And I’m afraid Ballast won’t ever forgive me, and I won’t be able to find him, and that both of us will die all alone in the light of the Yellow Lord’s power.

Violet Lord,I pray.Let me reach Ballast in time.

I trudge onward, uncertain if I’ve been walking for one hour or ten. But I know time is running out.

Soon Brandr will unleash the Yellow Lord, and all will be lost.

It stops snowing after a while, and I glimpse the sparks of Ballast’s magic again. I bow my head into the wind and push on.

The eastern sky begins to glow bit by bit, and it grows so unbearably strong I have to squint against the light. Before my eyes the landscape is illuminated, a wide snowy ridge, with a globe of fire rising beyond.

This isn’t Ballast’s magic.

It’s the sun.

“Yellow Lord,” I whisper.

I tilt back my hood and lean into the sunlight, its fingers touching my skin with delicious, impossible warmth. I love the light, beyond welcome after so long a darkness.

I squint against the sunrise, because someone is coming over the ridge.

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