LITMIR.BIZ

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see was Nightshade: Nightshade and darkness. There was no hall behind him, no stone floors beneath his feet, no glimmer of torches or lamps; even his hair seemed to blend with the background, highlighting pale skin and sapphire eyes by contrast.

      Kaylin—quickly. Quickly.

      Gods, the ground was thick now. She’d run across mud that had less give—and that had been ankle bloody deep.

      Kaylin!

      She tensed, grinding her teeth as she felt something sharp cut the back of her left calf. She heard roaring; the growling had clearly escalated into something that could handle primal rage. Dragon roars were just as loud, but far less threatening.

      She saw the wavering shape of this hole in the middle of nothing begin to collapse, and although she wasn’t close enough to make a clean leap through what was left of it, she tried anyway. Nightshade—

      She felt his curse; he didn’t speak. But more than that? She felt the mark on her cheek begin to burn. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck straighten as if they were made of fine quills, and she felt the inside of her thighs and her arms almost freeze in sudden protest.

      Magic. His magic. The momentum the ground and her own legs couldn’t give her, his power could. She cleared what was left of the dwindling rent in space, her arms and right shoulder hitting his chest and driving them both back. His own arms fell instantly; he grabbed hold of her, and he pulled.

      Which was good, because something began to pull from the other side. She could feel it grab her legs, and the wound in her calf ached and burned with the unexpected solidity of its grip. She didn’t want to lose her leg.

      But she knew that Nightshade didn’t care if it was only her leg that was lost; she could feel the thought, absent words to shape or form it. All that mattered now was that she remain here, with him. He lifted his face; she felt his chin rise, although hers was pretty much plastered to the front of his robes. She could almost see what he saw: the small gap in space, through which her legs had yet to emerge, and the edges of the place she was trying so hard to escape. Closing her eyes didn’t help; the sudden disorientation, the unwelcome glimpse of Barrani vision and Barrani sight, made her head and her stomach do the same hideously unpleasant lurch that Castle Nightshade’s portal did.

      But even as she began to spin into the nausea of portal passage, she saw what now existed on the other side of the rapidly shrinking tear: darkness, broken by stars and the borealis of a foreign sky. And in it, some shape that was not shadow as she understood it; it was far too solid, far too real, for that. She could see no eyes, no mouth, nothing that made it look like the monsters of her nightmares—but in the lack of those things, she thought the darkest of nightmares lay waiting. And it needed no form, no face, no pathetic rendering of shape to devour.

      No, it just needed her damn legs.

      I am sorry, Kaylin, she heard Nightshade say. Knew that he meant to cut those legs off at midcalf. Knew, as well, that she couldn’t allow it—how could she be a Hawk without legs? How could she patrol, how could she run, how could she do the only things that defined her? She cried out in anger and fear and even the darkness on the other side of life—which was death, all death—didn’t look so bad.

      But she was spinning, disoriented, even while clinging so tightly to him that her hands crushed the fabric of his shirt and his hair. She kicked, struggling to pull herself free. His magic enveloped her, and she felt his desire to preserve her life over what her life meant to her, and she spoke a single word of denial.

      It was not, however, an Elantran word. It wasn’t a Barrani word. It wasn’t Leontine, or Aerian or Dragon, the last of which would have been impossible anyway. It was a true word.

      And true words, she discovered, like true names, had power.

      She heard, for the first time, something rise out of the roar at her back that sounded like language. It had syllables, the shape and texture of words, the small dips and rises in tone; it had the elements of voice, which had always been important to Kaylin. It had the force of will behind it, a force just as visceral as hunger or desire—she knew, because it had those, too.

      What it didn’t have, what she couldn’t hear, were actual words, and she was grateful for it. She spoke again, and this time—this time she heard Nightshade raise a cry of alarm; she felt his arms slide away from her as if she could no longer be safely held.

      But for a minute more of her weight was on the right damn side of the portal. She kicked, and fell free. It would have helped if there had been anything to land on.

      “Kaylin.”

      She pushed herself up off the ground, and saw, as she opened her eyes a crack, that she was looking at gleaming, polished marble. She wanted to heave, she really did. Which was not outside of the norm, because she recognized this room: it was the foyer that graced Castle Nightshade. She had never arrived through the front door feeling human.

      This time, she hadn’t even bothered with the portal.

      Nightshade was considerate, as always; he waited until she could lever herself off the ground and stand—very shakily—on her own two feet. He hadn’t, however, dimmed the damn lights, and they stabbed her vision in a very unpleasant way. She exchanged a few words of Leontine with their bleeding bright haloes; they didn’t respond.

      “Kaylin,” Nightshade said, when the last of the syllables had stopped echoing.

      She looked up. His eyes were a shade of green that was almost, but not quite, blue. This was about as safe as he ever got. Waiting until the last of the nausea subsided would mean she’d be silent for another hour. Keeping her head very still, she said, “Thank you.”

      He raised a dark brow, and offered her the briefest of smiles. It didn’t really reach his eyes. “I admit,” he said quietly, “that I was surprised.”

      “That I called you?”

      “Ah, no. That you have not, since the fief of Tiamaris was founded, returned to Nightshade. One would think it was almost deliberate.”

      The problem with portals, and with Castle Nightshade’s portal in particular, was that she arrived feeling like she’d mixed alcohol on an all-night drinking binge. It wasn’t the best state of mind in which to have a conversation with her friends; it was a dangerous state of mind in which to have a conversation with the fieflord whose mark she bore. “It was deliberate,” she told him, because she knew he knew it anyway.

      “May I ask why?”

      She stopped herself from shrugging, and then met his eyes for a second time. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

      “No. Forgive my lack of hospitality. Let us repair to a more useful set of rooms.” He hesitated, and then added, “Take my arm.”

      “Pardon?”

      “My arm, Kaylin. The Castle will be slightly more difficult for you to traverse at the moment than is the norm.”

      Given what the Castle was normally like, this said something. He offered Kaylin his arm, in High Court style, and she placed her hand on it. It was difficult not to also place a large part of her weight on it. She made the effort. “Why will it be harder?” She asked, because it gave her something to focus on that wasn’t her nausea or his nearness, both of which were difficult for entirely different reasons.

      He ignored her question as he led her along a hallway that seemed familiar.

      They stepped through doors into the safety of a very large, and as usual, sparsely, but finely, furnished room. Only when the doors closed did Kaylin release his arm and step away. While the halls seemed to expand or collapse with no warning and no rhyme or reason, she had never seen the rooms change around her.

      She made her way to the long couch, and sat heavily on cushions that were that little bit too soft. Nightshade remained standing. He had the decency not to offer her either food or drink. Her cheek was warm; the rest of her skin felt cold.

      “How did I travel through the portal?

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