lesson, then. She raised a hand to cover her cheek.
“She bears the mark,” one of the two said. It confused Kaylin until she realized they weren’t talking about the fieflord’s strange flower; they were talking about the ones on her arms. “Leave her here. Do not meddle in the affairs of the ancients.”
“She is mortal,” the fieflord replied. “And not bound by the laws of the Old Ones.”
“She bears the marks,” the Barrani said again. “She contains the words.”
“She cannot.”
Silence then. Shadows.
“She is almost bound,” a flat, cold voice at last replied. “As we are bound. We grant you passage, Lord of the Long Halls.”
Kaylin passed between them in the shadow of the fieflord, but she felt their eyes burning a hole between her shoulder blades, and she swore that she would never again walk through a shadow gate, not even if her life depended on it. She’d been hungry before, but never like they were, and she didn’t want to be whatever it was that satisfied that hunger.
“You will not speak of them here,” he told her.
“I—”
“I understand that you will speak with Lord Grammayre. I understand that, if you do not speak well, he will summon the Tha’alani.”
She shuddered. “He won’t,” she snapped.
“You already bear the scent of their touch. It is … unpleasant.”
“Only once,” she whispered, but she paled.
“Do not trust Lord Grammayre overmuch,” he said softly.
“Your name—”
And smiled. “Not even the Tha’alani can touch it. No mortal can, if it has not been gifted to them, and if they have not paid the price. The name, Kaylin Neya, is for you. If he questions you, answer him. I give you leave to do so.”
“Why?”
“Because the Lord of Hawks and the Lord of Nightshade are bound by different laws. We have different information, and I am curious to see what he makes of you, now.”
He stepped through the doors, and they began to close slowly behind them. When Kaylin turned back to look, she saw only blank, smooth walls. But at their edges, top and bottom, she saw the swirled runic writing with which she was becoming familiar.
“Not even I can free them,” he said quietly. “I tried only once.”
She started to say something, and to her great embarrassment, her stomach got there before she did; it growled.
His beautiful black brows rose in surprise, and then he laughed. She wanted to hate the sound. “You are very human,” he said softly. “And I see so few.”
Which reminded her of something. “Severn,” she said.
“Yes. Perhaps the last of your kind that I have spoken to at length.”
“Why?”
The laughter was gone, and the smile it left in its place was like ebony, hard and smooth. “Ask him.”
“He won’t answer.”
“No. But ask him. It will amuse me.”
When they left the next hall, she heard voices.
One was particularly loud. It was certainly familiar. She closed her eyes, released the fieflord’s arm, and stumbled as she grabbed folds of shimmering silk, bunching them in her fists. She lifted the skirt of her fine dress, freeing her feet, and after a moment’s hesitation, she kicked off the stupid shoes, the snap of her legs sending them flying in different directions. The floor was cold against her soles. Cold and hard.
Didn’t matter.
She recognized both the voice and its tenor, and she began to run. The lurching movement reminded her of how weak her legs were. But they were strong enough. She made it to the end of the hall, and turned a sharp corner.
There, in a room that was both gaudy and bright—as unlike the rest of the Halls as any room she had yet seen—were Severn, Tiamaris and the two Barrani guards that had accompanied the Lord of Nightshade.
The guards held drawn weapons.
Severn held links of thin chain. At the end of that chain was a flat blade. She had never seen him use a weapon of this kind before, and knew it for a gift of the Wolves.
And she didn’t want to see him use it here.
“Severn!” she shouted.
His angry demand was broken in the middle by the sound of her voice. It should have stopped him.
But he stared at her, at the dress she was wearing, at the bare display of shoulders and arms, her bare feet, at the blood—curse the fieflord, curse him to whichever hell the Barrani occupied—on her cheek, before he changed direction, started the chain spinning.
And she knew the expression on his face. Had seen it before a handful of times in the fiefs. It had always ended in death.
This time, though, she thought it would be the wrong death. She moved before she could think—thought took too much damn time, and she came to stand before him—before him, and between Severn and the fieflord, who had silently come into the room as if he owned it.
Which, in fact, he did.
“Severn!” She shouted, raising her hands, both empty, one brown with the traces of her blood. “Severn, he didn’t touch me!”
Severn met her eyes; the chain was now moving so fast it was a wall, a metal wall. He shortened his grip on it, but he did not let it rest.
“Severn, put it down.”
“If he didn’t touch you, why are you dressed like that?”
“Put it down, Severn. Put it away. You’re here as a Hawk. And the Hawklord wants no fight with the fieflord. You don’t have the luxury of dying. Not here.”
If he did, she wasn’t so sure that his would be the only death. “Don’t start a fief war,” she shouted. Had to shout. “He didn’t touch me. I’m not hurt.”
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
“The mark is bleeding,” she snapped back. “And I don’t need you to protect me, damn it—I’m a Hawk. I can protect myself!”
He slowed, then. She had him. “I don’t need protection,” she said again, and this time the words had multiple meanings to the two of them, and only the two of them.
His face showed the first emotion that wasn’t anger. And she wasn’t certain, after she’d seen it, that she didn’t like the anger better.
“No,”
