"There are worse things than waking from a nightmare to find yourself in the arms of the woman you love. Say, waking in a cell. Sweet dreams to you too, brother." Gavin touched the glass and it went dark, and once more the cell began its slow, slow rotation into the earth.

Gavin leaned against the cold wall, trying to calm his racing heart. It wasn't a loss; he'd learned some things from his brother. First, he had indeed been cheating on Karris. Kip was Gavin's bastard. Second, Gavin had known Kip's mother-and she wasn't a prostitute. If she had been, he would have said, "Karris would never take a harlot's bastard." Instead, he'd said, "That harlot's bastard," which meant he intended the word as a slur, not a description. Third-unless he was far, far smarter than Gavin gave him credit for, which was possible-the real Gavin still wasn't getting information from the outside.

That was why Gavin had put all of this lies all in the past tense: Kip's discovery. A month of not sharing a bed with Karris, decisions already made about raising Kip. If someone were passing him news, the prisoner would be confused by the chronological disparity-which, because it didn't seem to serve a purpose, he wouldn't expect to be a lie. Gavin didn't expect his brother to voice his confusion, of course, but he was hoping to see it in his eyes. There had been none.

So Dazen wasn't getting information from the outside, which meant he wasn't plotting with this "Color Prince," whoever the hell that was. So the Color Prince was merely using a retelling of the Prisms' War to agitate dissent. All the world believed Gavin had won, and the Color Prince didn't like how things had turned out, so he was pretending to be in league with the losing brother-whom he had no idea was actually alive. This Color Prince was a liar and an opportunist then, not a zealot who knew the truth.

Which meant there was only one place the Color Prince could be: Tyrea. Either King Garadul was the Color Prince himself, or the two were connected.

Thank you, brother. Very helpful. And you used to be better at lying than I was.

But after the prison finally settled into place, he checked and double-checked all his chromaturgy. Nothing was out of place. And yet, even as he ascended up the shaft and out of the evernight he'd created down here for his brother, he trembled. He was as trapped as Gavin was.

I could just stop feeding him. I wouldn't even have to do anything. I could just take a vacation, tell Marissia not to drop the dyed bread down the chute while I'm gone. He'd simply… die.

He remembered when they'd been children and Dazen had climbed the lemon tree to prove he could do everything his older brother could-and fallen. They thought he'd broken his ankle. Gavin had carried him all the way home. A small thing, for an adult, but Gavin had been reduced to tears by the effort. But he refused to give up. His little brother had never forgotten it.

And now the little brother is going to kill that man in cold blood, without even having the courage to face him as he did it?

Enough. All the world knows your brother is dead. You are all they know. Besides, you need your wits about you. You have to tell the Spectrum you started a war. And then you need to convince them to fight it your way.

I do have a chance. Just as long as the White's in a good mood.

Unless…

Oh, Gavin Guile, sometimes you do play a deep game, don't you? He grinned to himself. Seven years, seven goals. One impossible prize. A small failure could serve his greatest success.

Gavin made it back to his room and was putting everything back in place to disguise the door in the closet again when there was a sharp rap at the door. He threw the closet closed as the White opened the door.

"Good to see you, Lord Prism!" she said.

Gavin was painfully aware of the mess in front of him and the burn on the back of his shirt-a burn he had no good way to explain if she saw it. "And you, High Mistress," he said, smiling. "Just the person I wanted to talk to, if we could meet in a few moments, perhaps in your chambers?"

Orea Pullawr looked at him sharply. "I'm afraid that's going to have to wait. There's a class waiting for you. A class you promised me you'd teach." Her nose twitched. "Did you burn something in here?"

"Um, yes?" Gavin said. It came out as a question. Damn it.

" 'Um, yes?' "

Gavin cleared his throat. "Yes."

She waited.

He said nothing more.

"Very well, then. Be like that. I thought you left to take care of that color wight."

Ah, she was angry because she thought he'd neglected a mission whose abandonment might mean people dying. And she would have been sure, it being a blue, that he would go immediately. And she didn't know why he'd summoned the Spectrum. The White didn't like to be left in the dark. "Consider it taken care of," Gavin said. Which she would interpret to be him blowing her off, but he didn't know how to not tell her about the skimmer if he was fully honest.

After showing it to the boy and Karris, it was a secret he couldn't expect to keep much longer, but that would be a big conversation, and he wasn't ready for it yet.

She lifted her eyebrows, like, You're going to be dismissive, to me?

A thought hit him. "The class is superviolets?"

The White nodded, suspicious.

"There's a girl from Tyrea in that class, isn't there? Alivia?"

"Aliviana Danavis, from Rekton."

So he'd remembered correctly. A girl from Kip's town. Perfect.

He hesitated. Kip had said Corvan was there, but…"No relation, surely?"

"Actually, she's General Danavis's daughter."

Gavin let the shock show as dull surprise, like he'd just heard about some minor tragedy on the other side of the world. He'd heard the girl's surname was Danavis before, but he'd assumed it was some distant relation, if any. Corvan's own daughter? And why had Corvan been living in the same town as Gavin's bastard? Coincidence? If so, that was a heavy coincidence.

Regardless, it required Gavin's attention, right away. "Huh. You're right, I need to go teach that class. It's a holy responsibility." Juggling, always juggling.

"I always distrust you when you get dutiful," the White said.

He smiled, blandly innocent.

Chapter 37

It seemed to Kip that the entire first floor of the Prism's Tower was a jungle of benches, desks, signs, queues, and clerks. Obviously, the whole business of the Chromeria passed through this room. There were queues for traders seeking contracts for food, queues for traders delivering contracted food, the same for every other trade good Kip could imagine, queues for redress of grievances caused by Chromeria residents, queues for laborers seeking work, queues for adjudicating fee disputes on Big Jasper. There were even queues for nobles-although there were many more clerks staffing that one than any of the others. The room had a busy hum, but despite the crowd, it was obvious that the Chromeria ran like a well-oiled mill. The people were impatient but not angry, bored but not surly.

Commander Ironfist led Kip to a desk with a single clerk, and no queue at all. "All the rest of this year's darks were admitted weeks ago."

"Darks?" Kip asked.

"That's what people like you are called. Unofficially. Supplicants, officially: you want to be part of the Chromeria, but you aren't yet. So you're a dark. Darks, dims, glims, gleams, beams. But you don't need to remember any of that right now."

Kip opened his mouth, shut it. Ironfist said nothing until they reached the desk. The clerk, obviously daydreaming, sat bolt upright when he noticed Commander Ironfist.

"Yes, Commander? How may I assist you?"

"I have a supplicant for immediate testing."

"Immediate as in…"