“Eeew.”
She almost laughed. Or punched him. She decided against the punching because she wasn’t certain what the Shadow would do to Mandoran, and she really did not want Mandoran to be reshaped and redefined by the outcaste who lived at the heart of Ravellon.
But if Mandoran was squeamish—and clearly he was—he wasn’t a coward. “Teela,” he said in an ominous tone of voice, “was right.”
“Oh?”
“You’re never boring.” He reached out with both hands, flinched, and then grabbed the Shadow that had pooled around Kaylin’s hands, seeking further entry. “And Tain might be right as well—and I’ll kill you if you ever tell him I said so.”
“Bordeom is underrated?”
“Yes. Apparently thereistoo much of a good thing.” His eyes were a bright shade of...gray. It was not a Barrani color. Kaylin didn’t consider this a good sign, but said nothing. Or tried. “What are you doing?”
“I’m—Helen calls it phasing. Remember how Annarion fought the ancestor outside of the Barrani Halls? This is like that, but without the swords.”
“And where am I?”
Mandoran twitched. His hand moved through the Shadow as if it were a very thin liquid.
“In both places. There, where the Dragons are. Here, where the Shadow is.”
“Here,” an unfamiliar voice said, “where theDragonis.”
Both of them looked in the direction of that voice. A man was standing maybe five yards to Kaylin’s left, where the literal tail end of the Emperor had been.
Chapter 28
Kaylin could still hear roaring. She had seen Annarion fight the ancestor, and in that space, the only noise was the two not-quite Barrani and their weapons. Here, it was different.
“You are a very annoying mortal,” the man continued. His eyes were black, not a regular Dragon color. She wondered what color her own eyes were; she assumed they were brown, because human eyes didn’t shift color with mood.
“You’re a very annoying Dragon,” she replied. Her hands were stiff and rigid as they began to rise. She wasn’t lifting them.
Mandoran, however, seemed to understand this.
“I am not, according to Dragons, a Dragon at all.” He began to approach them; he moved slowly and deliberately. She looked for Severn. Severn wasn’t here. Mandoran was.
“That is harsh,” a familiar voice said. Or rather, a familiar’s voice. To her left, the familiar materialized. He was not in his Dragon form. Nor was he in his small and portable form. He looked almost human.
No, she thought. He looked almost Aerian. She had seen him this way once before: mortal in form, glowing slightly and winged. Her eyes slid off him, to the outcaste and back, and she thought of the form the outcaste had worn in the real world.
Real world.
If this wasn’t real, what was it? It wasn’tknown. It wasn’t familiar. She hadn’t been trained to handle it. The tabard in which she took so much pride—sometimes to the embarrassment of the rest of the Hawks, who considered the tabard a job—was almost irrelevant.
Almost.
“You were born a Dragon,” the familiar said.
“I was. What of it? She was born an infant.” He meant Kaylin, of course. “She drew breath on her own, without interference. She required no name, no external blessing, to become what she was meant to become.” He spoke with the faintest trace of resentment.
“She bears more words than you yourself house,” the familiar replied. He glanced, briefly, at Mandoran, and then more pointedly at Kaylin. She flushed and turned her attention back to her hands, to the Shadow that surrounded them, to the Shadow that had already invaded them and was seeking further entry.
She felt no pain.
No wonder Bellusdeo hadn’t noticed the injury.
The familiar’s gaze was fixed on the outcaste. “I will ask you, once, to cease what you are attempting.”
