Page 87 of While the Dark Remains

Ballast stands, and I’m surprised to realize that he’s several inches taller than his father.

“By my name,” says Kallias, “and by your blood, I seal you as heir apparent to the throne of Daeros, with all the power, privileges, and responsibilities afforded you by that role. Do you pledge your life and blood to Daeros, to its people and its stones?”

Ballast dips his head. “I pledge my life,” he says, his voice quiet yet strong enough to echo around the hall. “I pledge my blood. To Daeros, to its people and its stones.”

“Do you bind yourself to this throne, until your life is spent or taken?”

“I bind myself to this throne.” Ballast’s hands shake. “Until my life is spent or taken.”

Kallias nods, satisfied, and draws a dagger from his belt.

Ballast holds out his already scarred right arm without a word.

I clamp down on my lip as Kallias cuts Ballast’s arm, once, twice, three times, in a crisscrossing pattern just below the elbow. Ballast stands stone-still and lets him do it, his face blank, his eye fixed on some invisible point in the distance. This is not the first time Kallias has hurt him. I don’t even think it’s the first time Ballast volunteered for it. When the cuts heal, the scar will look something like a spiderweb—the mark of the Daerosian heir.

But right now there are only the wounds, and the blood leaking out. Nausea churns in my gut, and I hate this. I hate all this. I want to save him. I want to pull him far from this place, where Kallias can never hurt him again.

Kallias dips one finger in the wound and traces a line of blood across Ballast’s forehead. Then he opens the square, flat box offered him by Nicanor and takes out a gold circlet. He lifts it for all to see. “By the mark of your blood, the bond of gold, and my own word and faithful witness, I name you, Ballast Heron Vallin, heir to Daeros.”

Kallias lays the gold circlet on Ballast’s white-and-dark hair.

Then it is done, and Ballast turns to the crowd, gilded and shining.

I blink and see Gulla’s words, traced through the air in this very room:He has become too much like his father, desiring only power.

I look at Ballast. And I see Kallias. And I wonder if she might be right. It rattles me to my core.

I spend most of the following day hiding in the ceiling above the sprawling, cavernous library. I am angry at Ballast. Wildly, viciously angry. I try to parse out my anger, and I can’t quite do it, or don’t quite want to. Because underneath the anger is hurt. How could he so align himself with his father and his father’s agenda? How could he put himselffurther under Kallias’s power? How can he claim he is saving his mother and all the rest and yet stand back and do nothing?

The voice of guilt screams in my own mind that I am also doing nothing, that Gulla and the children remain caged, and Kallias is yet on his throne, and nothing has changed. I tell myself I am following the plan, that in less than two months Vil and Saga and I will put an end to everything that Kallias stands for.

But it doesn’t make me feel any better, and I don’t know if I’m more angry at Ballast or myself.

Kallias hasn’t forgotten his private dinner invitation, and when I ask Vil to get me out of it, he tells me it isn’t worth offending the king by refusing to go.

“We have to keep up our facade, Brynja,” he says, pouring himself a cup of wine from the sideboard in his receiving room. “That means we have to do hard things.”

I swear at him, up and down the pantheon, as colorfully as I can. “What hard things areyoudoing?” I demand. “You promised me you’d keep me safe!”

Vil turns to look at me, a stoniness in his face that is there now more often than not. “You are safe, Brynja. And the hard thing I’m doing is not taking Ballast’s damn head off his damn shoulders.”

I grind my jaw and swear at him again, to hide the fact that I’m trying not to cry. I go back to my and Saga’s room without another word.

Saga dresses me in a gold gown with a skirt that flares out at the hips, then weaves strands of little suns through my hair, and clasps a heavy gold collar—also in the shape of a sun—around my neck. Gold powder on my eyelids, brows, and cheeks, and gold kohl around my eyes complete the look, a not-very-subtle nod to the Yellow God—the god of light.

Saga nods, satisfied, though she won’t quite meet my eyes. I’ve been avoiding her today, not ready to discuss with her in detail the ramifications of Ballast being named heir, though last night she gave me a taste of her feelings: vindication that she was right about his graspingambitions, and further fuel on the fire of her hatred. In her eyes, Ballast truly is no different than his father.

I thank her for helping me get ready, then step out into the corridor to meet the waiting attendant, feeling very, very alone. I almost turn back to beg Saga for the headdress with the hidden blade, because as it is, it will only be me, unarmed, before the king. I tell myself thatsurelythere will be dinner knives, and the thought braces me enough to keep going.

It takes a full fifteen minutes of various twists and turns through the palace corridors before the attendant deposits me in front of an arched, ivory door carved with suns. He opens it and waves me into a small parlor.

A pair of doors at the back of the room lead out onto a balcony carved from mountain stone. Kallias waits there, turning at my step. He’s dressed in a black velvet robe embroidered in gold, with a heavy coat of black furs. He smiles. “How lovely you look this evening, Princess.”

I think about dinner knives and force myself to curtsy.

He lifts me to my feet again, his hand cold and hard around mine. “You must be hungry. Come.”

He pulls me through the doors and out onto the balcony, where a small round table is set for two. A pillar of fire blazes impossibly in one corner, lending a measure of warmth to the frigid winter air: Iljaria magic, sparking red and gold.

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