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Kaylin.
She exhaled. Nightshade. Then: Calarnenne.
What are you doing? The question was asked in a tone of almost idle curiosity. At another time, she would have found it enraging; now, she was
just annoyed.
The annoyance amused him.
I’m trying to reach you.
Ah. Perhaps I was not clear. What you see, I now see, and you appear to be surrounded by the ghosts of a young Barrani woman.
Yes, but it’ll take time to explain, and given the sounds I’m hearing, we’re really short on time. She exhaled. Teela is here, and she’s drawn Kariannos; we apparently have invaders.
Are you not within Helen’s perimeter? The question was much sharper.
We are. She followed the thread, leaving the last of the Yvonnes in her wake. But when she turned to look back, she saw that the formation
that had protected the trace Kaylin had tried to follow to its source had closed; they stood behind her, their eyes the one
feature that didn’t look Barrani. You’ve been unconscious since you were attacked by Barrani assassins. We reached you in time, but you were injured. I think by a magical poison—but that’s not my specialty, so that’s just a guess.
Are you saying I am also within Helen’s perimeter?
Andellen didn’t think we could get you back to Castle Nightshade safely. You were unconscious. Apparently, your sword was
protecting you. I know Barrani hate to be healed—but you were in really bad shape. I tried to heal you.
Again, she felt a flicker of amusement. I understand the reluctance on the part of my people, but you already know my name. There is nothing in the healing that could
be a greater weakness than that. But I see you’ve been busy.
Very. She found his amusement annoying. She was almost certain there would be no attack mounted against Helen if Nightshade weren’t
in residence.
Very well, Chosen. If you can reach me, if you can heal me, I will not fight you.
Did I mention you’ve practically been in a coma?
Ah. Yes. You believe that means I could not defend myself should your healing be unwanted?
If Annarion could hear his brother now, he’d be less frantic with worry.
Kaylin opened her eyes.
To her surprise, the room was empty of everyone except the convalescent, Yvonne, and Kaylin herself. Severn was no longer
in the room; neither was Mandoran. She knew they’d shifted to meet the enemy; she’d heard—could still hear—the distant echo
of swords. An’Tellarus had, according to Severn, joined the fight, and An’Tellarus didn’t have the ability to shift across
planes the way the rest of the cohort did. Neither did Severn.
Her hand still rested on her cheek; she lowered it. Blood had dried, darkening the lines of her palm. Yvonne met Kaylin’s
gaze as Kaylin glanced toward her; the young Barrani woman’s eyes were normal, given the circumstances; they were blue. Flecks
of green appeared as Kaylin moved toward the Teller’s crown.
“I don’t think you can touch that,” Yvonne said, voice soft.
“I think he has to wear it.”
Yvonne hesitated.
“What do you know?”
“Not yet,” Yvonne whispered. Kaylin couldn’t tell if she meant that the regalia wasn’t ready, or if Yvonne wasn’t willing to talk about what she knew. But Kaylin thought she could lift the crown, could
place it across Nightshade’s brow. He’d worn the crown on the way to the West March. Even as outcaste, he’d been spared the
contempt and murderous intent of the Barrani who traveled with the Consort to the green itself.
Kaylin didn’t understand the purpose of the regalia. She didn’t understand how a ritual that occurred in the distant West March could hold so much meaning for the Lords of the
High Court. She knew that children weren’t meant to witness the regalia. The cohort had arisen from the breaking of that ancient law. She wondered if Yvonne would be considered a child.
But Yvonne had spent time in the green, according to Severn. How much, she didn’t know. Enough to understand the will of the
green?
Kaylin sat on the chair beside Nightshade; she lifted a hand to his brow but hesitated. If she still couldn’t reach him with
the power of the Chosen . . .
You can, Nightshade said. You already are.
She nodded. The crown, she left where it had appeared. Yvonne might be right, and if she could heal Nightshade fully, he could
put the damn thing on his own head.
Once again, she felt a familiar amusement.
Grinding her teeth, she placed her left palm across Nightshade’s brow. She realized she was holding her breath only when she
released it. “Helen—can you tell Annarion that I can finally reach his brother?”
Helen didn’t reply.
Where is my brother? Amusement left the fieflord instantly.
He’s fighting intruders. Barrani intruders who managed to find a back door in.
Do what you must do. Do it quickly. There was no force behind the command.
Kaylin, far more aware of Nightshade than she would have been otherwise, let the power of the Marks go, pushing it out to
meet the fieflord, and to examine the injuries he’d taken. She couldn’t heal blood loss, and he had lost blood, but he’d been
unconscious and recovering as much as he could; it wasn’t the major problem.
She’d assumed poison, or magical poison—if that even existed. The Barrani were endlessly inventive when it came to causing
death and destruction, as if the tools they created could be contained and aimed only at their chosen enemies. Kaylin had
worked in the Halls of Law for long enough that she would never believe that.
Poison was present, eating away at organs; the damage done was not enough to kill the fieflord—but it was very close. She
could sense traces of it, carried in Nightshade’s blood, but she could also touch the traces of a strong, protective magic,
fighting the damaging invader. Meliannos.
She heard the sharp reverberation of thunder even as she thought the sword’s name. She knew better than to touch it. In some
indefinable way, it was part of Nightshade.
For now, the fieflord said. Hurry. I must wake.
She heard Annarion’s name beneath the syllables he shared with her; felt the force of intent and—rare for Nightshade—fear.
This wasn’t caution, which was fear’s smarter, wiser, older sibling. This was just fear.
As if Annarion were the key to Nightshade’s injury, Nightshade’s intent, images of Annarion flooded in through the healing connection: Annarion as a baby.
Calarnenne had been calm upon waking; Annarion’s furious, infant cries showed outrage at the very idea.
He had been fast to walk, fast to grow; he had been better with a sword than Nightshade, but had taken poorly to magic, to start.
He could speak almost before he could walk.
He could bespeak the animals kept for use by the Solanace clan. He couldn’t sing, although he loved singing, and often joined
in with a voice far stronger—if off-key—than the other infants. But to Nightshade, Annarion was gentle—far too gentle for
the Solanace fray. It was not a trait that was prized by their kin.
It was a trait that had always seemed precious to Nightshade, perhaps because it was so rare. He had become protective of
his brother and had learned to do so with subtlety. His father—and mother—believed that a child who could not survive their
youthful naivete was pointless; it would not strengthen the family. It would not add to their prestige.
Being the parents of a weakling was, in fact, an embarrassment. Annarion was the perfect test subject in the eyes of his relatives:
he was weak, he was naive, and he did not grow out of it. He was good with a sword. He could wield basic magic. He had the
potential to become a good son, a worthy child.
Calarnenne attempted to train his brother. To teach him the rules of power. He made clear what the cost of his brother’s warped
sense of right and wrong would be—to both of them—if Annarion could not hide his views and beliefs. But he could not do as
his parents had done: he could not break the child, could not disparage him, could not humiliate him. Nightshade himself had
undergone similar things in his distant, dim past.
He had proven the right of his parents’ approach. He had grown strong—much stronger than the cousins who nipped at his heels
in an attempt to remove the most promising candidate for heir of the line. He had learned magic, and found it fascinating,
but even that fascination, he hid; it was not seemly to be too interested in anything.
But he could not surrender his brother.
To Calarnenne, that child was a spark of hope, of a kindness, a joyful loyalty, that was absent in his life. His parents could
not see it, or did not desire it. Perhaps Calarnenne himself was broken in dangerous ways. He attempted to feign disinterest
in his brother, but that was all he could manage—and his family’s many servants were the eyes and ears for his parents, his
uncles, his cousins.
The first person he had killed, when he stood on the edge of childhood, was a cousin. The second, a cousin as well. He’d been
injured in the second death, and that had taught him to focus, to practice, to become strong enough that he wouldn’t face
injury again. He accepted that death was the natural outcome of laziness or weakness.
He accepted, as well, that Annarion, if weak, would face that death. His attempts to deny affection for his younger brother
had ended with an ultimatum: kill Annarion or be killed. A test. Life was full of bitter tests.
Kaylin almost pulled back at the searing rage, the pain, the fury, that blossomed in the wake of that memory, understanding
again why healing was so inimical to the Barrani. Their lives depended on their ability to keep secrets, and the older the
Barrani, the more secrets they had.
She didn’t pull back; it took effort. For just a moment, she was swamped with a murderous rage and an endless hollow of despair.
What stilled them, what interrupted them, was a young woman. Kaylin recognized her because the color of her hair was so different