LITMIR.BIZ

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appeared, a window. It was a wall.

      It was a wall with something written across it. She stared at it as the light flared, brighter now, and she understood the word in the same way she understood hunger, pain or fear: instinctively.

      She could still taste blood. She could not feel her lips. But they moved anyway. Barrani was one of the languages that the Hawklord had insisted she study, and if she hadn’t been his most apt pupil, she’d learned. She’d always learned any real lesson he’d decided to teach her, even the ones that scarred.

      Her lips moved over the syllables; she had to force them. She couldn’t make a sound, but it didn’t matter.

       Calarnenne.

      The light went out.

      “My apologies,” the fieflord said softly. His arms were around her waist, his face against her neck. Black hair trailed down her shoulder in loose, wild strands. Pretty hair.

      She tried to speak.

      He lifted a hand and pressed his fingers gently against her lips. “No more,” he said softly. “You have done enough. I have done enough. Come. We must leave this place.”

      Her knees collapsed.

      Teela would have laughed at her. Tain would have shaken his head. But the fieflord did neither; he caught her before she hit ground, lifting her as if her weight were insignificant. He cradled her against his chest, and because he did, she saw blood well against the soft fabric of his odd tunic.

      It was hers. Her cheek was bleeding.

      “I … can walk.”

      He smiled grimly. “You can barely speak,” he said, “and if you touch the ground again, I am not certain that I will be able to stop you from touching the seal.”

      There were so many questions she wanted to ask him.

      Only one surfaced, fighting its way to the top. “Calarnenne?”

      “Yes,” he replied grimly. “My name. Do not speak it, Kaylin.” His eyes were as blue as the light had been, and just as cold.

      “Your name.”

      “I should kill you,” he replied.

      “Why?”

      “Because you are now a bigger threat than even the Dragon.”

      She shook her head. She knew that. “Why did you—why your name?”

      He stopped walking, but he did not set her down. The trees were above them now, and she found their dark presence almost comforting. “The mark,” he said, touching her wounded cheek, “was not enough. You know the Barrani,” he added, his fingers brushing blood away gently. “How many of them have given you their names?”

      She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

      The frustration on his face was the most familiar expression she had yet seen. It reminded her of the Hawklord. “None,” he said curtly. “Because if they had, you would know.”

      When this didn’t seem to garner the right response, he shook her. But even this was gentle.

      “If you called their names, they would hear you. They would know where you were. And if they were not strong, they would be drawn to you. Names have power, Kaylin.” He paused. Frowned. “They have power, if you have the power to say them.”

      And then he spoke the whole of her given name, her new name. “Kaylin Neya.”

      She felt it reverberate through her body as if it were a caress.

      He laughed, then.

      CHAPTER

       5

      He took her back to the rooms she had woken in, and there, she found her daggers. Her clothing, however, was nowhere in sight. When her brows rose, he smiled. His smile was so close to her face it was almost blurred; she could pretend it was something else.

      Her arms ached. Her head hurt. And her cheek? It continued to bleed.

      The fieflord set her down upon the bed. He reached out to touch her cheek and she shied away—which overbalanced her. She really was pathetic. “Don’t.”

      The word displeased him; his face fell into its more familiar, cold mask. “I have no intention of harming you,” he replied. “And I seek to take no screaming mortal children to my bed. Those who are fortunate enough to come to the Long Halls come willingly.”

      “Willingly.” She snorted.

      “Kaylin, I have perhaps made an error in judgment, and you have paid for it. Do not presume overmuch.”

      Another warning. Too many warnings. She fell silent. But she did not let him touch her again, and he didn’t try. They were quiet for some time.

      “My clothing?” she asked at last.

      “It will return to you when you leave the Long Halls. It is, as I said, unsuitable.” He rose. “We will return you to your Hawks for the moment.”

      She waited until he had reached the door; when he did, she rose. “I want to cover my arms,” she said.

      He said nothing; he simply waited.

      Her legs were wobbly, and she made her way, clumsy and entirely graceless, toward him. When he offered her an arm, she bit back all pride and took it; it was either that or fall flat on her face.

      Teela had taken her drinking when she had been a year with the Hawks. It had been something like this, but with more nausea. Not a lot more, though.

      When he opened the door, the forest was gone.

      In its place? A long hall. Funny, that. She felt magic as she walked through the door, and she swore under her breath. It was a Leontine curse. It would have shocked Marcus, if anything could.

      “You will be weak for two days,” he told her quietly, “if only that. Eat what you can eat. Drink what you can drink. Do not,” he added softly, “be alone.”

      “Why?”

      “I do not understand all of what happened, Kaylin. But I understand this much … by presence alone, you activated the seal. In my life, I have never seen it burn. And believe that I, and the mages at my disposal, have tried.

      “It is not, however, of the seal that I speak.”

      “Your name,” she whispered.

      “Indeed. The giving of a name is never an easy thing. It is, in essence, the most ancient and most dangerous of our rituals. It is a binding, a subtle chain. In some people, it destroys will and presence of mind.”

      “You mean—”

      “I did not think it would have that effect upon you, but it was a risk.”

      Her brows rose. He smiled, but it was a sharp smile. “Barrani gifts,” he said softly, “have thorns or edges. Remember that.”

      Like she could forget.

      “I would take the name from you,” he added softly, “but I think I would find it difficult. And if the taking of the name was costly to you, the giving was costly to me.” Clear, from the tone of his voice, which one of the two mattered more.

      “Do not let go of my arm,” he told her quietly. “We will meet some of my kin before you are free of the Hall, and two who have not seen the outer world for much, much longer than you have been alive. They will be drawn to you.” His lips lost the edge that was his smile. “They will not touch you, if they see the mark—but it bleeds, Kaylin, and you will not let me tend it.”

      “I couldn’t stop you,” she said quietly.

      “No. But in this, I have chosen to grant you volition. It is another lesson.”

      The Hall was, as

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