Page 65 of While the Dark Remains

“Who guards you when you sleep? Or don’t you need to?” It’s not at all the question I want to ask and comes out sharper than I intended.

Ballast shrugs. “Asvaldr, when I ask him to. But sometimes his family needs him.”

“And then?”

“Then I sleep lightly, with a sword in my hand.”

I ponder this, picking at a stray thread on my shirt. “How are you here, Ballast?”

His jaw tenses. “I stumbled into the tunnels by accident, through a forgotten door in the palace cellar. I was ... lost, when I left Tenebris. I was ... feral. Raging. Despairing. And then I tried to control the cave demons, and my magic turned on me.

“Asvaldr is the one who found me, saved me, brought me back into my right mind. He asked me to help his cub, who’d gotten himself trapped in a rockslide and sliced his gut open. So I did. I lived with them for a while, Asvaldr and his family. He showed me underground streams where I could fish, showed me the passages in and out of the mountain, taught me how to fight the monsters.”

“You’ve been down here this whole time? It’s been nearly a year, since—”

“I know how long it’s been,” he snaps.

I bite my lip to keep from snarling at him. “What about the wood and the blankets and the rest of your supplies? Where did it all come from?”

“The wood was down here already. I spent weeks collecting it, leaving it at various points in the labyrinth so I’d always have it on hand. Some of the caves are filled with things the Iljaria left behind. I’ve found kettles and dishes, books that go to dust when you touch them, dried-up paint and ancient jars of food long since turned to mush. The Iljaria built a whole civilization here, before the monsters came.”

“I know that,” I tell him pointedly. “I read it in your book when we were children. Before you decided we were no longer friends.”

He recoils like I slapped him, and I grind my jaw.

“Surely the Iljaria were powerful enough to destroy the cave demons,” I say, when he offers nothing further.

“Perhaps. But the Iljaria do not like to kill, and they were the Black Lord’s children, after all.”

I glance out into the passageway, where winged shadows scrape against the rock. I try not to shudder.

“Are you going to hide down here forever?” I ask him quietly.

His shoulders go taut. “Where else am I supposed to go? To the Iljaria? They turn up their noses at half bloods like me. Skaanda, then? They would cut me into a thousand pieces and scatter me about the plains. What about my father? Do you think I should go back to him? Do you know what hedidto me, Brynja?”

I jerk upright, filled with a wild, vicious anger. “I don’t know,Your Highness.”

He flinches.

“Has he starved you?” I demand. “Whipped you? Kept you dangling in a cage over his head and made you risk your life every damn time he snaps his fingers? Don’t think that just because he ordered you to make your pets do tricks for him, you’re the same as me. As Saga. As all the rest of us. You had achoice, every time, and you always chose to mind him. Even when it meant murdering an innocent man. He was Saga’s bodyguard. They loved each other. And now he’sdeadbecause ofyou.”

He hunches in on himself in the entrance to the cave. I’m shaking with rage, spots dancing in front of my eyes. But the next moment I’m sliding down to the stone floor again, crying so violently I can’t breathe. I sag against the rock, wrapping my head in my arms, sobs choking me.

A hesitant touch on my shoulder breaks me from my hysteria enough that I stop crying, manage to catch my breath again. I look at him through bleary eyes.

“There is nothing I can do,” he says quietly, “to atone for the things I did then, and the things I didn’t. To atone for my father’s cruelty. But this is me, now, making the other choice. I won’t be his any longer. I will not bow to him, I will not obey him. I’ve been lost here, slaying monsters in the dark instead of facing my own. But I was going back, Brynja. To save my mother. To save ... everyone else. To stop him. That’s why I was near enough to help when you and Saga stumbled in.”

He watches me, face tight with grief and regret. He knows exactly what his father did to me—to all of us. Because he was there, enduringit, too. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I know it doesn’t mean anything. But I’m so sorry.” His voice breaks.

“Why did you send me away?” The air catches hard in my chest. “Was it your father?”

“My mother was there that night, outside my door. She—” He swallows. “She was afraid of what he would do if he found us out. To you. To me. And he very nearly did. She had come to warn me that he was on his way. It could just as easily have been him who heard us that night.”

The tears are pressing hard again. “You could have told me that.”

He shakes his head. “The fear of discovery would have lessened, bit by bit. You would have come to see me again eventually. I couldn’t risk it. But I caused you pain, Brynja. And I’m sorry. You can’t know how much.”

I gnaw on my lip, not quite able to meet his eyes. “It meant everything to me. My visits to your room. Our friendship.”

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