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? Did you carry me?”
“No.”
“Did I walk?”
“No.”
Are we going to play twenty bloody questions while my head pounds and I want to throw up?
She didn’t say the last out loud. It didn’t make much difference; his smile was very chilly when he offered it.
“You dislike the portal of Castle Nightshade. I would have thought, given how deep that dislike is, that you might recognize it when you see it.”
“Oh, I do.” She paused as her thoughts, such as they were, caught up with her mouth.
“You were standing in the portal when you found me.”
Very good.
She closed her eyes. It helped, a little. Portal travel was bad enough to make her queasy—or worse—but it usually passed a lot faster. At the moment she wanted to fall over onto her side and curl her knees into her chest. Maybe sleep a little. Instead, she was having a conversation with Lord Nightshade.
“I was at Evanton’s,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. “I walked into his Garden. Or I thought I walked into his Garden. But it wasn’t. It looked the same. It wasn’t the same.”
He nodded.
“So I tried to leave it. I ended up…nowhere. I could see his shop—but I couldn’t reach it. And eventually, I couldn’t see it, either.”
“That is when you…called me?”
She nodded. “You know where I was.” Not a question.
“I have some suspicion. Don’t rearrange your face in that expression. I am a Barrani Lord, Kaylin. I am not more, or other.”
“What was chasing me?”
He said nothing.
“Nightshade—”
“I have no definitive answer for you. I will not condescend
