Accustomed as she was to Barrani blue, Kaylin still found the instant transformation daunting. Lord Barian was not a Lord of the High Court, but Barrani across the world hated the Dragons. Mortal memories were fragile and imperfect. Barrani memories, like Dragon memories, were not. It made Kaylin wonder what she would have been like if her memories of life in the fiefs never dimmed with time.
She didn’t really like the answer.
Kaylin almost blurted out a groveling apology, but held her tongue. She was not ashamed of Bellusdeo; the gold Dragon didn’t deserve that.
Lord Barian’s gaze went instantly to Lirienne’s, held it for a few seconds, and then returned to the Dragon. Bellusdeo stood quietly, arms by her side, chin slightly lifted; her eyes were orange, but at this point orange was the new gold.
“Lord Bellusdeo,” Kaylin continued, when no weapons had been drawn. “This is Lord Barian, the Warden of the West March. The responsibility of the Hallionne Alsanis has been his line’s.”
Bellusdeo offered Lord Barian an exquisite Barrani bow. It was lower and more exact than the bow she’d offered the Lord of the West March. Kaylin wondered if Lirienne noticed. Wait, what was she thinking? He was a Barrani man of power. Of course he’d noticed.
Yes. It is interesting. She is not what I expected of a Dragon.
I don’t think she meant to insult you.
No, kyuthe, she did not. The bow she offers Lord Barian is exact and correct; it is also graceful, something for which the Dragons were not noted. The bow she offered me is the bow she might offer to the respected head of a familial line.
Pardon?
She understands that you are kyuthe; you are kin to me. Lord Barian, however, has made no such claim; you are not under his protection, and your death or injury will not be his to avenge.
It wouldn’t be yours, either.
He chuckled as she turned once again to face Lord Barian. She had a habit of turning toward the person speaking to her if he was in the room—and Lirienne was. Bellusdeo was giving her the pointed side-eye, as well. Think, Kaylin, she told herself. You are in hostile territory. Every window could carry a person with a crossbow. Every shrub could conceal a person with a dagger. Or worse. Think. You’ve done this before.
But when she’d done it before, there had been no making nice. There had been no bows, no courtesies. Just silence, fear, focus. The price of failure had been clear: injury or death, and probably not the fast painless kind, either.
No. But you are kyuthe to the Lord of the West March, and it is his duty to avenge you. Even if he arranged for your death, someone would have to publicly pay the price of it; they would sacrifice their own lives—or the welfare of their family—in order to kill you.
Hello, Ynpharion. Kaylin’s head was a crowded place, these days.
The Consort feels you will be safe if you remain with her brother. She feels, however, that the Dragon is best housed in the Hallionne.
And Terrano?
She is not entirely certain what to make of him. Silence, and then, as if thought were whisper, She is worried.
He did try to kill her. Or capture her.
You do not believe he will do so again.
No. He won’t. I think the only thing he cares about is the safety of his friends. Wait—she’s not coming here, is she?
Silence.
It’s too late—it’ll take her weeks.
More silence. It was not replete with disapproval, and Kaylin realized, with surprise, that Ynpharion actually agreed with her. And was powerless to change anything.
I’m telling her brother.
No. Do not. There was a hint of plea in the words, which must have been costly. Kaylin accepted them. Ynpharion was never going to like her, but he was the bridge between Kaylin and the Consort, and he understood the Barrani Court—High or low—far better than Kaylin was ever likely to understand it.
She stopped talking to Ynpharion when her familiar bit her ear. She glared at him, but became aware of a widening circle of silence. Bellusdeo had raised a brow in her direction, but had done nothing else to catch her attention.
Lirienne was amused. Lord Barian has asked you if you wish to request the hospitality of the Hallionne.
Damn it. When?
Perhaps a minute ago.
Kaylin, red-faced, bowed to Lord Barian, mostly to hide her expression. She composed it as she rose. “My apologies, Lord Barian. We did not intend to travel to the West March, and we were not prepared for the journey; I am a little fatigued.”
Lord Barian’s smile was perfect, genial; his eyes, however, remained blue.
“If it is acceptable to the Hallionne, I request his hospitality for both myself and my companions.”
“And your companions are?”
“Lord Bellusdeo of the Imperial Dragon Court, my familiar, and Terrano of...Terrano.”
“Terrano may speak with the Hallionne on his own behalf; he has been guest here before.”
Kaylin, however, did not retract the request. “I’m aware that Terrano is not considered a friend of the Barrani High Court at the moment. But he is a friend of Annarion and Mandoran’s, and they currently live with me.” Clearing her throat, she added, “I consider them family.”
“You have claimed them as kyuthen?”
Kaylin nodded. “And Terrano is their brother.”
“He would not be considered kin among his own people.”
“I’m not even sure who ‘his own people’ are. Other than the people he lived with while in captivity in the Hallionne. But Annarion and Mandoran would make that claim themselves, if they were here. I’m pretty sure they’d die defending him. And they aren’t here to make the request.” She flushed as she realized she’d dropped into Elantran, and repeated the phrase in High Barrani, which took longer.
Terrano was staring at her. His eyes were natural in appearance, except for their color, which was brown. “I will ask the Hallionne about me,” he told her. “Let me be responsible for my own mess.”
“What mess?”
“You pointed out that I’m not what I was. I don’t always recognize what I’m doing. No—I know what I’m doing, but I don’t always see how it affects the rest of you. I don’t want you to be responsible for my mistakes.” At Kaylin’s expression, he exhaled noisily. “Just let me speak for myself.”
Lord Barian waited until he was certain Kaylin had nothing else to say, and then he turned toward the large arches that led away from the courtyard in which they were all standing. “Lord Kaylin, if you will make your request of the Hallionne, make it in peace. No harm will come to your companions until Alsanis makes his decision.”
He led Kaylin toward the arches. Terrano followed. Bellusdeo and the Lord of the West March remained behind.
I know you hate Dragons, she told the man who had publicly claimed her as kin, but please, please, please keep her safe.
* * *
The arch led not to the interior of the Hallionne, but to a cloister of smaller arches that bounded an interior garden with a fountain as its centerpiece. Standing by that fountain was a man she did not recognize until he turned to greet her. His eyes were all of black.
“Hallionne Alsanis?” she asked.
His smile was both deep and warm. “Lord Kaylin.” He bowed. “I did not expect to see you again so soon.”
She relaxed in his presence and allowed herself to think of the events that had brought her here. It was easier by far than speaking about them, and she felt no need to pretend that he couldn’t hear what she was thinking.
“You did not intend to bring a Dragon to the West March. I see. She is kin to you, as are Annarion and Mandoran.” His expression was openly troubled as he turned to Terrano. “You understand the burden you place upon Lord Kaylin.”
“I’m not placing a burden on her—I’m making the request for myself.”
“That is not, sadly, the way it must work. I would accept you—and willingly—at any other time. But you tried to harm the Consort.”
“She was going to—”
Kaylin clapped a hand over Terrano’s mouth. “I’ll accept responsibility for Terrano as well as the Dragon. The Dragon is not a threat to the Hallionne. She’s not a threat to the West March or the Barrani.”
“No. But she is not as Terrano is; she lives in the same space, and under the same constraints, as you do. Dragons are not much loved by the Hallionne. But we were not, as you believe, created as tools in the wars between the Dragons and the Barrani; we are older than that.”
“Lirienne thought—”
“Yes. I understand his thought. And were she to arrive here without you as kin and sponsor, we would not accept her. It is not the way of the Hallionne to accept guests we intend to kill.” He nodded to Kaylin, then. “If you will sponsor Terrano—”
“Terrano can speak for himself!” Terrano was almost shouting.
Kaylin glanced at the young almost-Barrani man, and noticed he’d lost control of his eyes again. She exhaled heavily. “He knows that. No one knows it better than he does. Look—I’d rather you stay in the Hallionne than in the Lord of the West March’s residence. So would the Lord of the West March. You’re not being practical.”
“And you are?”
“Demonstrably. I’m staying as well. Look—what we want is to stay in the Hallionne. We’ve been given permission to do that.” She forced herself to switch to High Barrani. “We can mark that as accomplished and worry about more important things. Or you can argue with Alsanis, but my prior experience in arguing with buildings doesn’t imply you’re going to win.” She wished, fervently and briefly, that Annarion and Mandoran had come along with her; she thought they’d be able to influence Terrano in a way she couldn’t. Hells, even Teela would have been helpful. Angry, but helpful.
Terrano did look as if he wanted to argue. Alsanis looked serene and immoveable. It was therefore a bit of a surprise when Terrano abruptly exhaled. He said something in Barrani which she didn’t recognize and assumed was a curse word.
“It is,” Alsanis said. “And no, Lord Kaylin, I am not about to teach it to you.”
Terrano, however, calmed down. “Teach her what I just said?”
“Indeed.”
“I’ll teach you,” he said to Kaylin.
“You have more like that?”
“A lot more. You don’t?”
“I generally curse in other tongues.”
He brightened. “Maybe I should become a linguist.”
“Maybe,” Alsanis said, more severely, “you should go and retrieve the rest of your companions.” He gestured Terrano toward the cloister, and placed a hand on Kaylin’s arm when she went to follow.
“He should not have returned,” he said quietly. “He is not what he was.”
“We don’t understand what he was, never mind what he is now.”
“You are beginning to. My apologies for subterfuge.”
“You could have accepted him.”
“Yes. It would have been difficult; I did not lie. He attempted to harm the Consort, and there is no greater crime, where the Barrani are involved. Not even matricide or patricide comes close. But I am accustomed to being shunned by the Barrani; I have had centuries of experience with it.
“Were he, however, to be held responsible for his own actions, he would not attempt to confine those actions. He is now aware that you will suffer for what he does, and I believe it will—how do you say it?—rein him in. I am no longer a cage for Terrano—for any of his cohort, as you call them—but it would be best for you, and for the rest of the Barrani in the West March, if he at least made the attempt to cohere and interact as if he were one of them.
“As for your Dragon, you need not worry. While she is a guest in the Hallionne, she will come to no harm. I admit to curiosity, but she is not the first Dragon to have kept me company in my long existence, and if she is willing to stay, she does not appear to have the distrust most of her kind would have of my kind.”
“She’s practical.”
“Oh?”
“It’s you or the Barrani Court of the West March.”
He smiled, then, a flicker of expression on an otherwise serene face. “Stay here a moment, Lord Kaylin. Ah, apologies, Kaylin.”
“Where are you going?”
“I have something of a gift for you.” He faded almost instantly from view.
Beware of Barrani gifts, Lord Nightshade said softly. She felt the edge of his curiosity. You must learn caution, especially now.
He’s not Barrani, he’s a Hallionne.
Yes. But remember, Kaylin: Annarion’s friends—Nightshade did not care for the term “cohort”—departed from Alsanis.
Before Nightshade could continue, Alsanis returned. In his hands he carried a small, wooden box, into which had been carved both leaves and flowers. It was small enough to be a ring box.
“It is not a ring,” the Hallionne said quietly. “And it may be of no significance to you at all in future. But if it is, you will know when to use it.”
“What is it? Can I open this?”
“Try.”
She did. The lid would not budge. “I don’t get it.”
He smiled. “No, Kaylin, you don’t. It is a gift. What you call a home, some call a cage. Remember.”
She slid the box into the small pack she wore across her hips.
“It is time to go back to your companions. Terrano is not malicious. Nor are his friends. Even the harm they did—the great harm—they did for the sake of each other. If the Hallionne are both Immortal and all powerful within our boundaries, those boundaries are fixed and immoveable. You have a power that we do not have: the freedom to choose. To judge. Judgment is oft misused, as any other weapon. Therefore, use both wisely.”
* * *
Bellusdeo and Lord Barian appeared to be involved in lively conversation when Kaylin returned. Lively, even friendly, conversation. Although their eyes retained the racial hue that implied caution or danger, both the blue and the orange had lightened somewhat. Lirienne stood to the side in silence, but looked across the courtyard when Kaylin entered it.
What are they talking about?
The war, he replied. Or rather, the shape of the lands before the final war. The placement of Aeries. The appearance of flights that have long since ceased to grace the skies. She remembers some few of their number and name—and of course, so does Barian.
Weren’t they trying to kill each other, back then?
Ah, yes. But as is oft the case with those who stood on the front lines of war, they have more in common with their individual enemies than they have with those who were not affected by war at all. The Dragonflights were worthy of fear and respect, but so, too, the Barrani units.
I thought Barian was younger.
None of us are young compared to you.
She looked pointedly at Terrano, who appeared to be trying to catch a butterfly. Loudly.
The Lord of the West March smiled, but even as Kaylin turned to catch a glimpse of actual warmth on his face, it drained away, and not slowly, either. She felt the moment amusement gave way to alarm. Before she could speak, the familiar did: loudly, and in her ear.
Both the Dragon and the Warden stopped speaking; they turned toward the familiar and then away, to Terrano. And Kaylin realized then that her assumptions of immaturity were very, very wrong. Yes, he was chasing a butterfly.
And no, it wasn’t playful.
“Go,” she told the familiar, as she drew a dagger and started to move. “Alsanis!” There was no reply.
“We are not in his dominion, yet,” Lirienne said. He had not drawn sword, but had brought both of his palms together in a strangely deliberate way that implied prayer without any of its actual reverence.
The familiar flew to Terrano. No, she thought, he flew to the butterfly. And now that she looked, she realized it had the appearance of a butterfly, but not its delicate, haphazard flight. Its colors were bright, the wings strangely glittery. And as she watched, she realized that the colors were not fixed; they were changing.
The familiar roared, its voice a kind of high screech given his size. Where the butterfly darted—with speed—from place to place, the familiar did not; his wings allowed him to hover as he inhaled. And inhaled. And inhaled.
“Terrano, watch out!” she shouted, and Terrano turned to see the familiar just as the small, translucent lizard exhaled.
No fool, Terrano leapt to the side, rolling along the ground, and uttering more unfamiliar Barrani as he did. Both Lirienne and Lord Barian appeared to be shocked by whatever it was he was saying. Bellusdeo didn’t, but then again, she lived with Mandoran.
A stream of silver smoke left the familiar’s open jaws, billowing as it expanded in a rush, like a kind of portable fog that could be wielded on command. It enveloped the courtyard, and Kaylin ran into it, unafraid. Bellusdeo did not move; Lord Barian attempted to withdraw. Lirienne, however, did not.
From his hands, sprouting suddenly, came a familiar globe; it covered him. It was permeable enough to allow Lord Barian entry. More than that, Kaylin didn’t see, because the fog lifted itself from the ground it had first touched and rose.
“I’m not sure this is wise,” Bellusdeo said, somewhere to Kaylin’s left.
Terrano continued to curse.
“We don’t want to hurt him!” Kaylin shouted. She could no longer see Hope.
“It will not hurt him,” a familiar voice replied. Her familiar. “Unless he attempts to control it or fight it, it will not cause him harm.”
The barrage of cursing stopped. “What are you doing?” Terrano demanded.
“I am attempting to contain the creature you were chasing,” came the reasonable reply. “Did you recognize it?”
“Not exactly.”
“You attempted to apprehend it.”
“Yes.” This was said with unraveling patience. “It wasn’t exactly subtle.”
To Kaylin, until Terrano began to chase it around the courtyard, it had been entirely inconsequential. “It looked like a butterfly.”
“Are you blind?” he shrieked. She could imagine his expression, which was just as well, because she couldn’t actually see it.
“She is not,” Bellusdeo replied. “To my eyes, and to the eyes of Lord Barian, it resembled a butterfly.”
Kaylin could not see a butterfly. She couldn’t see anyone. She couldn’t hear Lord Barian or Lirienne, either.
Lirienne?
No answer. She wheeled, then, heading back in the direction she’d come from. “Hope! Drop the fog!”
“That is not the way it works,” the familiar replied, “and I do not think it wise. The Lord of the West March attempts to protect himself, and his Warden.”
She knew, then, where the butterfly was headed. “He’s not answering me!”
“Kaylin—he’s the Lord of the West March,” Bellusdeo rumbled. And she did rumble. Kaylin stumbled, righting herself. Bellusdeo could speak perfect Dragon when in her human form. But Kaylin had a sinking feeling that wasn’t what was happening here. “He is not helpless, he is not an orphan or a foundling, he is not mortal. He has had to hold his title against all who would wrest it from him, by either force of arms or magic. You are not responsible for him.”
She felt the earth shake beneath her feet.
A plume of raw fire cut through the fog.
“I’ve got it!” Terrano shouted. She couldn’t track the direction of his voice; it seemed to surround her. The fog rippled; the familiar squawked in outrage, presumably at the Dragon’s fiery breath. “I have it now,” Terrano repeated. The fog continued its odd climb, and Terrano cursed liberally. Kaylin was too worried to memorize the words.
“Kaylin, can you do something about him?”
“I don’t think he thinks it’s safe.”
“He’s making it less safe for some of us! I’ve got the damn thing—tell him to cut it out!”
Shouting he doesn’t listen to me in front of Lirienne and Lord Barian didn’t seem like a wise idea.
It is not, Lirienne said. And we are both safe. He is yours?
He stays with me. Yes, he’s mine. I don’t think he’d do anything that he thought would really upset me.
But?
Well, he’s not me, and he’s not mortal; he can keep up with Mandoran and Annarion, but he doesn’t cause the issues they can—she stopped. Turned her thoughts to something else: Terrano’s language.
This amused the Lord of the West March. You are becoming wiser.
Can you see?
I see fog. And Lord Barian. I admit that the fog is more pleasant. No harm has come to us. Although it pains me to concur with a Dragon, Lord Bellusdeo is correct. I am not your responsibility.
Can you see her?
No.
“Bellusdeo—”
“Yes, I understand.” Her voice was a rumble of sound. Kaylin turned to her right, because unlike Terrano’s voice, Bellusdeo’s seemed to come from a concrete location. The fog drifted slowly away, and Lord Bellusdeo of the Dragon Court now stood in gleaming plate armor. Of course she did. Dragon clothing wasn’t magical; it didn’t change shape and form when its wearer did. It turned into expensive cloth scraps.
Both Lirienne and Barian froze as Bellusdeo crossed the courtyard to join Kaylin. The Dragon’s eyes were a dark orange. She carried no weapon; Dragon armor didn’t include swords. But they weren’t really necessary for Dragons. She couldn’t exactly bow well in the armor that she now wore, but ditching the armor—while it seldom seemed to cause Bellusdeo any embarrassment—wasn’t an option at the moment.
“Lord of the West March. Lord Barian.” She couldn’t bow, and didn’t make the attempt. “Terrano?”
They were staring at her, but there was, in their regard, both respect and something that might have been admiration. Kaylin did not understand the Barrani, and thought she never would. She had expected anger, fear, hostility.
Lirienne bowed to the Dragon. “We are unharmed,” he said quietly. “You considered this a danger?”
The Dragon exhaled. “I do not know what you’ve been told about my life before my return to these lands, but most of it was spent fighting Shadow. And that small creature was very like the small Shadows sent ahead to scout communities that were not—yet—infested.” She lifted her head. “Terrano?”
“Here,” Terrano replied. His voice echoed, and Kaylin felt a sudden, sharp chill in the air.
Damn it, she thought.
Bellusdeo’s eyes were almost red, because Dragon eyes were not quite the same as human eyes, and she caught sight of Terrano before Kaylin did. He didn’t seem to notice her.
He was, unfortunately, not the Terrano of very recent memory; he was oddly, darkly beautiful, his limbs literally shining, as if they were composed of polished steel. Or silver. His eyes were completely black, and his clothing drifted off his shoulders and toward the ground in a moving swirl of color. A continually moving swirl.
His hands were cupped, as if around a sphere. “We’re going to have to move inside,” he said, entirely unaware of the way everyone was now staring at him. “I don’t think I can hold it for long.”
* * *
“What is she so angry about?” Terrano asked. He had drifted—and that was the right word for a movement that did not resemble walking at all—toward Kaylin, but stayed on the side of her that the familiar didn’t occupy.
“She’s not angry,” Kaylin replied. She kept her voice low, but knew that Bellusdeo and the Barrani would catch every single word. “She’s worried.”
“Well, yeah. I’m not sure how this thing got in—”
“About you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Not about your health. About what you might do.”
He stopped. “I’m not going to do anything. To any of you. I have no reason to try to hurt you.”
“You did, once.”
“And I explained that.”
Kaylin believed him. Lirienne, however, was far more suspicious and remote. “You know you look like a silver statue with moving skirts for legs, right?”
His expression literally rippled with his confusion. “Do I?”
Bellusdeo snorted smoke. But her eyes retreated from the dangerous red into a more neutral orange. Not a pale orange, though. “Yes.”
“Ugh. Look—I’m sorry. I can’t really try to mess with my form while I’m containing this Shadow bit; I think I might lose it. It’s...not really happy, and it’s been trying to sting me continuously. And no, it only looks like a butterfly. It’s got teeth.”
“You realize that you look very, very similar to one of the more impressive Shadows?” the Dragon asked, her tone casual. Her eye color remained a steady orange.
“Not to me, I don’t.” He didn’t particularly like Dragons, but could force himself to speak to one—or so his impression implied. “What exactly about me looks like Shadow?”
Both of the Dragon’s brows rose. “Would you like to field this question?” she asked of Kaylin.
“...Not really.”
Squawk.
Fine. “It’s your form.”
“The silver statue bit?”
“Silver isn’t the word I’d use—unless silver is mostly black, but shiny anyway. No, it’s the fact that you don’t really have a fixed form as far as the rest of us can tell. You could probably just sprout a dozen arms—or heads, or whatever—if you felt like it.”
“Yes? And?”
“Shadow does that, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
He continued to walk, as if concentrating, and as he did, his skin tone shifted from shiny, polished metal to something that looked far more natural. His arms, however, remained as they were: silver, reflective, hard. “That’s how you tell the difference?”
“Yes. Normally.” But she thought of Gilbert. And she thought, as well, of the Hallionne Bertolle’s brothers, who thought of physical form the way rich people thought of clothing. Maybe he was now like those ancient brothers.
“It’s not Shadow.” Terrano was clearly annoyed. “We’re tied to the forms of our birth by other things. But we mostly can’t access our inherent power. Or we couldn’t, before.”
“And you can now.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“This is what you did to Ynpharion.”
“I didn’t do anything to Ynpharion that he didn’t want done. Surely you must see the advantage in being able to control one’s shape?” The doors that Terrano approached led directly into the Hallionne, and they were open, as if Alsanis was holding out his arms for the return of the prodigal. It was an odd thought, but Kaylin didn’t think she was wrong.
“How do you see Shadow, then?” she asked.
“It’s part of a web,” he replied. “If you look hard, you can see it as it lies across the landscape. This?” he added, lifting his cupped hands, “is attached by a strand. It doesn’t exactly have a will of its own. No, that’s wrong. It has some initiative, some ability to adapt to its setting. But it doesn’t have its own personality.”
“I would think some of you have far more personality than is good for anyone,” Bellusdeo said.
“Annarion doesn’t.”
“No. He’s responsible. Mandoran, however, more than makes up for it.”
Terrano chuckled. “Just wait until you meet everyone else.” The amusement faded almost as quickly as it had appeared.
“We’ll find them,” Kaylin said.
“How can you, if I can’t?”
“We wouldn’t be here if the water hadn’t thought we could do something.”
“Meaning you have no idea.”
* * *
The moment they cleared the threshold, the doors which had opened so invitingly rolled shut. They didn’t slam, though.
“No,” Alsanis said. His Avatar was waiting patiently. “I am Hallionne now, not prison, and my guests are free to leave should they so choose. That, however,” he added, staring at Terrano’s cupped hands, “is not a guest.”
“Can I let it go now?” Terrano asked, as Kaylin said, “Is it safe?”
“It is safe.”
“But—”
“It is too small and too insignificant to alter my structure in any meaningful fashion. Terrano and his kin were far more likely to cause difficulties—”
“And it took us centuries.”
“Indeed. You were guests,” he added quietly. “Available options to deal with you were not the same as the options open to me in regard to your captive. The thing you carry is causing you pain,” he added, his expression one of concern. “Release it.”
Terrano practically threw it from his hands.
It careened in the air as if it were drunk, wobbling in what might have been an arc of flight. But the wings that had seemed, in shape and size, butterfly wings were something different now. They were silvered, hard, dense; they seemed to make flight itself very difficult.
Terrano had said that the butterfly bit him. Kaylin wondered, idly, if it were vampiric in nature.
“No,” Alsanis replied. “It did not absorb. It attempted to infect, to alter.”
Bellusdeo turned the color of old cheese, which didn’t suit the red of her eyes.
“It cannot effect Terrano in that way,” the Hallionne continued. Very quickly. “But Terrano reversed the flow of that infection; the Shadow is now infested with...him.” He turned, just as quickly, to the Lord of the West March. “No, he is not like the Shadow. Perhaps, were he the Lady, he might have some hope of becoming such a force—but it would be the work of millennia, and I do not think, in the end, he could achieve it.”
“Who wants it?” Terrano demanded. “I hate being told what to do. I hate having to tell other people what to do. It’s boring and frustrating. They don’t understand half of what I say. Or more. There is so much to see. So much to try. So much to be.”
“But you are here.”
He exhaled. “They’re here. No, they were here. I heard Sedarias.” He grimaced. “You’d think, after a lifetime of hearing Sedarias, I’d be happier with the silence. Ask Mandoran,” he added, not bothering to look in Kaylin’s direction.
“She called you?”
“I think...she tried.”
“And you came.” The Hallionne’s voice was warm.
Terrano said nothing for a long beat. Kaylin thought he would say nothing. She was wrong.
“I can’t hear them,” he finally whispered. “I can’t hear them at all, anymore.” Something in his voice spoke of loss, of grief, of the confusion it caused; it cut Kaylin, hearing it, because she knew how he felt. And wished that she didn’t.
“No,” Alsanis said, in the softest of voices. “You left your name here; you understood that it would be a cage. And Terrano, you were not wrong. The words are a cage. But cages have other names, and there are some creatures that cannot survive outside of them. Songbirds, for example.”
Kaylin looked at Terrano’s slumped shoulders. She realized that he had been part of the cohort for almost all of his existence; that he had heard their voices, their thoughts, as if they were part of his own. Teela alone had been sundered from the Hallionne and her kin.
“He can’t be what he wants with a name,” Kaylin said, hazarding a guess.
“I do not know what he wants to be—but he cannot hear them or see what they see the way he once did. And you should understand this, Chosen.”
She nodded, watching the flying creature as its shape continued to change. It was disturbing—but it was no more disturbing than watching the effects of Shadow’s infestation. “Could you maybe stop that?” she said to Terrano.
“Stop what?”
“Stop trying to transform the Shadow.”
“Is that what you think I’m trying to do?”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to do. It’s what you’re doing.”
Bellusdeo, however, said, “What are you trying to achieve, exactly?”
“I’m trying to free it.”
Freedom had never looked so unappealing. “What were you trying to do to Ynpharion?”
“Oh, that was different.”
She could feel Ynpharion in the back of her thoughts; the Hallionne had clearly allowed those thoughts entry. He promised freedom. Ynpharion’s presence was a ghost, a whisper. There was yearning in it, which surprised Kaylin. You have always been free.
Since freedom, for half her life, had included serious danger of starvation or freezing to death, Kaylin bridled. She didn’t think about all of the other things that freedom had included in that childhood, because most of them had been the freedom to die.
“I’ll stop now,” Terrano added, with an undercurrent of smug that really did remind Kaylin of Mandoran. She had the sudden, visceral desire to take Terrano home to Helen, where the rest of the city would be safe from him, and where he could see some of his friends again.
But Alsanis said, “He is not, now, what they are, Lord Kaylin. He is not what they are trying so desperately to be, to remain. I do not think your Helen would have the ability you ascribe to her. But...he is correct. He is done.”
She watched. The butterfly—badly drawn and not quite solid—was gone. In its place was something that looked like a sphere—with glittering spikes, most of which were silver. It had no eyes, no wings, nothing that suggested that it should be capable of flight. But fly it could; it drifted toward Terrano. He held out a palm, and it came to land, once again, in his hand.
Only once it nestled there did it reveal actual eyes. And teeth. Because it opened its mouth and screeched. The screech felt like it contained words, but Kaylin’s hands were already covering her ears in an attempt to muffle the noise.
* * *
“What is it?” Bellusdeo asked. Her eyes were once again a darker orange. If she did not trust Terrano, she did not suspect his intent; she understood that Terrano was a walking, natural disaster. Those could easily kill the unwary, sometimes by the thousands, but there was no intent in earthquakes or hurricanes.
And regardless, earthquakes or hurricanes were unlikely to harm a Dragon.
Terrano frowned. It was a long, slow, fluid motion which changed more than the lines of his face. The screeching continued as he stared at it.
“What is it—”
“Be quiet. I can’t hear it if you talk.”
Since Kaylin could barely hear her own voice above the high-pitched, unpleasant whine, she stared at him, but she did as he asked. The familiar whacked her face with one extended wing, and she sighed. Loudly.
Terrano frowned. At this rate, he was going to tell her to stop breathing. But she obeyed the familiar’s unspoken command; she looked through his translucent wing.
What she saw in Terrano’s hand was entirely different than what she saw when she relied on only her own eyes. For one, it wasn’t the size of a fruit pit. It wasn’t spiky. It remained an odd silver, but the silver was illuminated and glowing. No, worse, pulsing. The pulse was irregular, unlike a heartbeat. But that wasn’t the worst thing about it. It was the size, the shape, of a man. No, an older child. The face, however, was diffuse, as were all elements about it except the thing Terrano had his hand around. It was as if Terrano had shoved his hand into a living person’s chest, and cupped it around their heart, except the living person wasn’t screaming in terror or pain.
“They are not in pain,” Alsanis said. Kaylin noticed that the Hallionne didn’t get told to shut up.
“Ah, no, Chosen. I understand the nuance of voice and pitch.”
“Is this what you see?” she asked.
“I cannot see what you see. But I believe you are now seeing what I see, with small variations. It is...not what I expected. His heart is what you see without your familiar’s aid, but you see it askew. It is his heart that was infested.”
“What is he?”
“I do not know, Lord Kaylin. Ah, apologies. Kaylin.”
You must learn to accept the title that comes with your position; it is one of the very few advantages you have, Ynpharion said.
Where I came from, an advantage was an invitation to robbery. Or worse.
It is not so different, here—but it signals, to the would-be thief, that there are consequences.
She would have answered, but at that moment, the stranger looked up to meet her eyes, through the veil of familiar’s wing. She realized one of the disturbing things about him was that he had no eyelids.
The second disturbing thing was the eyes he did have: they looked like...bee eyes. Or bee hives. Like something was living in them that might emerge at any minute. She wondered, as she controlled a shudder, what he saw when he looked at her. As if in reply, the marks on her arms began to glow.