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Logia’s brows rose, her eye color shifting into a liquid silver before once again returning to gold. “One of you can? How
is that even possible?” She was halfway out of her chair and returned to it with effort.
Kaylin had turned to Mandoran as well, but she had an inkling as to which cohort member he was speaking about.
Mandoran didn’t offer a name. Kaylin didn’t ask.
Logia did. “Who? Who can do this?” It was to Kaylin that Logia turned.
“I don’t know,” Kaylin said—truthfully.
“You have suspicions. Bellusdeo can tell.”
“I have suspicions, but they’re not verified, and they’re totally irrelevant to Bellusdeo’s issues with Shadow.” She turned to Terrano.
Terrano cleared his throat and glared at Mandoran, who shrugged. It was a fief shrug, a habit some of the cohort had picked
up from Kaylin. “I was walking in sidestep; I didn’t want to be seen. I mean, two entire war bands—if only two—”
“Wait. What do you mean if only?” Kaylin demanded.
“Teela found evidence of a possible third.”
“What? Where?”
“Ask her later. Let me finish so I can leave.”
Fine. “Go ahead. Finish.”
“I was walking the way I normally walk. I did see the Norranir in the streets, and I did see them enter the border zone. I
was in contact with the rest of us, but . . . I could hear the most noise from the drumming and from other people. Those people
were speaking Barrani; they were panicking. I assumed this was because the Dragon was trying to reduce them to ash.”
“Did she even know about them then? You’re sure you’re not confused?”
Terrano shrugged. “Is this your story or my story?”
“Yours, but we’d like it to be coherent. Until Teela showed up on the chase, Bellusdeo had no reason to be patrolling the
border zone.”
Logia cleared her throat. “She has, now.”
“Her Tower’s power is completely attenuated in the border zone. She’s not as absolute there.”
“In theory she wasn’t an absolute when she lived here, either,” Terrano said.
Logia lifted a brow. Bellusdeo clearly had opinions; the Dragon’s expression shifted. Logia stayed in the driver’s seat. “There
is a reason that the Tower chose a Dragon as its lord. She doesn’t need the Tower to patrol a few streets on the edge of the Tower’s remit.”
Kaylin couldn’t argue with that, and didn’t try. She turned back to Terrano. “That doesn’t explain why you were standing where
they were.”
“Well, the thing is, I could hear them, but I couldn’t really see them, right? I mean, I could see the border zone, but it
was blurry. Don’t make that face—the border zones are always blurry. It’s better to enter those the normal way, but I assumed the small army was in the border zone, so I entered it my normal way.”
“You didn’t, though.”
“I did. But the voices were indistinct to me. I could almost make out words, but they were fuzzy, almost displaced.” Terrano stopped for a moment, looking at his hands, which rested in his lap.
“Let me guess. You wanted to hear things more distinctly, so you moved toward the voices, but they didn’t get any clearer.”
Terrano nodded. “I changed my approach. If walking toward them didn’t help resolve the sound into words, walking a different
path might.”
“Did you not even think that if those voices were coming from another plane, you’d be in trouble once you reached them?”
“I thought I could just slide back to here.”
“Kaylin,” Mandoran whispered, “chill. Sedarias is approaching full-on rage.”
“Bellusdeo,” Logia said, “is in an unusual state. She says this is exactly like Terrano. But even so, she is almost shocked.
She asks me to ask him what were you thinking?”
Mandoran grimaced. He glanced at Terrano but shook his head. There was no saving him from Sedarias’s ire if even Bellusdeo
agreed.
“What I was thinking was: we need information. We need to find out who was behind this assassination attempt.” His gaze was
slightly shifty. Terrano wasn’t one of nature’s off-the-cuff liars. If he lied, it wasn’t a lie so much as a plan.
Kaylin frowned. “They weren’t likely to be spouting names and command hierarchy information.”
“You never know. People say a lot when they’re panicking.” He didn’t quite meet Kaylin’s gaze.
Kaylin exhaled. “You thought you recognized one of the voices.” Her tone was flat and certain; she might have been in the
interrogation room in which possible criminals were questioned.
Terrano wilted. “Yes.”
“From the West March.” When Terrano cringed, she cursed. “Those people already tried to kill the Consort!”
“. . . I know. Look, even then I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“You just didn’t care.”
“I didn’t care if it meant the rest of my friends could be free. We’re not proud of it. We know she’s never going to trust
us—and we know, from recent history, she’s not to be trusted with us, either. But she trusts you, and we—most of us—trust you. I thought if we could identify the culprits, we could make amends.
We could sort of atone.”
“I’m guessing Sedarias didn’t agree with this.”
He shrugged, which wasn’t likely to calm Sedarias down any. “She figures the Consort already evened the score. Or tried. She’s
not worried that the Consort will harm us. She is worried that the people we approached when most of us were still caged could. I was careful. They had no reason to know who I was or am. But she’s afraid they will, and that’s a huge vulnerability to
Mellarionne.”
Logia looked amused. No, it wasn’t Logia. It certainly wasn’t Bellusdeo. One of the sisters. “You really are like me,” she said to Terrano. She wasn’t as bright-eyed as Logia could be, but Logia didn’t strike Kaylin as reckless.
“Which part? People screaming at me on the inside of my head?”
She laughed. “That, too. Did you at least find out what you needed to find out? Were the Barrani there the ones you thought
they might be?” The question was casual; it was spoken in Elantran—which was the tongue Terrano used most of the time.
“We haven’t confirmed it. Things kind of exploded. There was a lot of screaming and yelling and orders given.” Terrano exhaled.
“I’m not supposed to tell you this—well, to tell Bellusdeo this—but when they fled, they fled toward Ravellon, following the border zone streets.”
“I think she’s already guessed that.”
“I couldn’t pursue; they could see me, and when I tried to sidestep, it didn’t work. I’d managed to move to where they were—but moving back wasn’t as natural.” He looked toward Kaylin. “It’s why it took Mandoran so long to bring you to where I was standing.”
“And bleeding.”
“That too. But there was something about the wound that was wrong. It wasn’t just my blood falling out. It was something else
trying to enter.” He grimaced.
“First of all, blood doesn’t fall out. You were bleeding. Second of all, something wasn’t trying to enter. It had already entered—and you knew it. You could have left whichever plane you were standing on. You didn’t. You
were worried about what you might be carrying.”
Bellusdeo’s sister cleared her throat. Loudly. It was a rumble of sound, and her eyes were no longer gold; they were red.
Bellusdeo had returned.
“Well done,” Mandoran murmured.
Kaylin froze.
“Sedarias says you could give Terrano a run for his money if you were competing. But this time you’ve won, hands down.”
“Were you trying to keep this from me?” The walls shook as Bellusdeo spoke.
“Sedarias wants to join us. With Allaron.” Mandoran’s expression made clear he didn’t think it a good idea.
“That won’t be necessary,” Helen said to the newcomers. “I am perfectly capable of preventing unwanted violence. Bellusdeo
has no intention of harming Terrano; she knows he could not enter my domain were he to be Shadow-mutated in a dangerous fashion.”
“How could you even tell with Terrano?”
“I am capable of discerning that degree of change. My duties require some observation if my visitors are to be kept safe. Bellusdeo is a Tower lord now. She knows that Terrano does not present a danger—at least, not in the form of Shadow.” Helen exhaled.
“She is not, however, best pleased to have this information kept from her when it is germane to her duties.”
“Given how trigger-happy she is, she’d likely reduce me to ash and then ask questions,” Terrano snapped.
“If Kaylin says something Shadow-like succeeded in penetrating your defenses, what happened to it? Kaylin?”
Ugh. One of these days she was going to learn to shut up. “It turned into a ball.”
“Pardon?”
“Hope breathed on the wisps of Shadows that exited Terrano’s wound. The blend of Hope’s breath and those wisps became a sphere.”
On the other hand, sometimes the truth was just going to upset people.
“Where is that sphere?”
Hope squawked.
“Pardon?”
“It disappeared when we managed to get back to our normal reality. I’d been carrying it in one hand—it wasn’t heavy—but it
wasn’t there when Mandoran pulled me out.”
“You didn’t drop it?”
“I’d bet money against. But it wasn’t in my hand when I got back to the border zone.” Kaylin grimaced. “I was worried that
somehow I’d absorbed it.”
Squawk.
“But none of the sentient buildings—and their many defenses—sensed anything wrong at all. I didn’t lose or surrender any of
the Marks of the Chosen. I didn’t have to let Hope bite my arm off. It just . . . wasn’t there when I got out.”
Bellusdeo turned to Mandoran. “Did you see what happened?”
“I was kind of busy.”
“You knew that it was something formed of Shadow and familiar’s breath, and you were too busy to pay attention?”
“I was more concerned with leaving—with Kaylin—than I was with whatever she had in her hand. Terrano had been injured—possibly mortally injured—while standing in that plane, and to heal him, Kaylin had to be able to touch him. I wanted her to do just enough that we could pull out without becoming two more casualties.”
“Was any of your cohort paying attention to Kaylin and what she carried?”