Page 89 of While the Dark Remains

His bald-faced lies enrage me, but there is nothing,nothing, I can do besides keep pretending, as he is, to be something I am not. “Why children, though? What is your fascination with them?”

“I was a prodigy myself, you know,” he returns, tapping on the side of his coffee cup. “Mathematics and science—they made sense to me, from a very early age. My tutors praised me and my parents made me work out complicated equations for my relatives and visiting dignitaries, showing off my brain as if they were responsible for it.”

I am shocked at the resentment in him, years past but still eating him up from the inside.

Kallias drains his mug and snaps his fingers at Ballast, who comes to dutifully refill it. “But the older one gets, the less remarkable one’s skills,” Kallias says, “at least in the eyes of others. My father did not think I deserved power, or was capable of wielding it. I was only good for equations, for party tricks. But he underestimated me.Everyoneunderestimated me.” He clenches his jaw, and fear knits hot and tight inside me as he smiles, sharp and deadly.

“I came to the throne at sixteen,” he says, “when my parents were found dead in their bedchamber during Winter Dark. Poisoned, both of them, by my uncles, who thought to seize Daeros for themselves. They are just bones now, scattered in the glacier sea. I had them executed for murdering my parents.” His eyes glitter, malicious laughter on his brow.

I try not to show my horror—I knew in the vaguest of terms that Kallias had become king at an early age, but none of the sordid details. And I understand exactly what he’s saying without saying it:Hepoisoned his parents, then pinned the crime on his uncles, neatly eliminating them while securing the throne for himself.

He must have played his part to perfection, for the Daerosian governors to accept his version of the truth and not stand in the way of him becoming king. That, or they’re a greater lot of fools than I ever thought.

“I have ruled well, in the twenty-three years since,” Kallias goes on. “And soon I will wield a power stronger than my father could have ever imagined.”

Everything inside me pulls me toward Ballast, but I don’t even dare look at him. “What power would that be, Your Majesty?” I say carefully.

Kallias sets down his coffee mug and stands. “Ballast!” he barks. “Move my chair next to Princess Astridur’s.”

Ballast crosses the balcony and puts his hands on his father’s chair, but he doesn’t move it. “Does Her Highness wish you to be so close to her, sir?”

“Are you in the position to question my commands, boy?”

Ballast moves the chair.

Kallias sits next to me, his thigh touching mine. He takes my hands in both of his, trapping them in a cage of skin and bone. His rings press hard against my knuckles, and I try not to gasp at the pain.

“I am very glad,” he says quietly, almost tenderly, “that the Skaandans have such a beautiful ambassador at their disposal. The treaty was a wise idea, and sending you to tempt me into agreeing to it was even wiser.” He eases the pressure on my hands a little, smooths his thumbs along the backs of them.

My heart beats, beats, but I don’t struggle. I know that’s what he wants. I try to breathe. I tell myself that Ballast won’t let Kallias hurt me, even though I’m not at all sure that’s true. I can sense his loathing of me, from his place at the door.

“Your little country is weak, its military spread too thin. Skaanda could no sooner conquer Daeros and seize Tenebris than win a war against the gods you barbarians cling to. But a treaty. A marriage pact to seal it.” His smile is oil and steel. I want to crawl out of my own skin. “That would do very well, I think.”

I tug my hands out of his, and his rings scratch me. I twist my fingers in my skirt, my whole body aflame. “No woman would bind herself to a man who already has so many wives.”

Kallias shrugs and lays a possessive hand on my neck. “They mean nothing to me. I’m forced to seek the company of other girls because my wives bore me so. And you forget I have no queen.”

I jerk from my chair and am halfway out the double doors before Kallias grabs my wrist. Holds me back.

Ballast is a dark shape in the doorway, his rage coiling off him. Every nerve inside me is screaming, but I force myself to be still.

I am caught in a waking nightmare, trapped by my childhood tormentor, who means to put me in a different kind of cage than the one that housed me before. But it would be a cage all the same. I’ve seen the way he treats his wives, the way he treats his newly named heir no better than a bear trained for party tricks. Everything is a game to him, every person a prize to be hoarded or a token to be sacrificed. It feels inevitable, inescapable. I don’t see any way out. Panic rattles through me, and the world goes hazy at the edges.

“You don’t need to answer me right away,” Kallias is saying calmly. “But an answer I will require, before the end of Winter Dark. The choice is yours—a treaty, sealed by our marriage and a crown for your head. Or death, for you and all your countrymen.”

I try to breathe, but my head spins. I collapse and Ballast catches me. For a moment he holds me up, his eye fixed on my face, his fingers warm through my sleeve. The world is right again.

And then Kallias swears and rips Ballast away from me, shoving him hard to the floor. “Keep your hands to yourself, boy!”

Ballast sits there in a heap. He bows his head.

Coward!I want to scream at him.Coward!But I’m a coward, too, because I don’t go to help him up. My stomach churns and my head wheels and I can’t bear it. I can’t bear any of this.

Kallias turns back to me with a sickly-sweet smile. “Consider your answer, Astridur.” He brushes one hand across my cheek. “Consider carefully.”

Then I’m running through the parlor and out into the corridor. I make it only a few steps more before I’m sick all over the stones.

Twenty-One Months Ago

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