She felt Ynpharion stiffen when the familiar’s wings rose. Since he’d plastered a wing across her eyes on the way to the High Seat, Kaylin wasn’t instantly panicked. When he pushed himself, squawking loudly, off her shoulder, she made up for lost time.
Severn did not freeze; he unwound his weapon’s chain, pulling blades from their nearly invisible sheaths. Teela was a step behind. Kaylin had assumed that she’d carried the blade—Kariannos—to make a statement to the rest of the High Court. This was, even on the face of it, a stupid assumption. What the cohort faced, Teela intended to face at their collective side. She wanted the most powerful weapon she owned at her disposal.
But they weren’t anywhere near the Tower or the heart of the cage it formed; they were at the very edge of the Consort’s chambers. Hope flew, his wing clipping the Consort’s pale, perfect hair as he veered to avoid the back of her head.
Spike became a heated, weighted presence in Kaylin’s hand, and as he did, she bled on the perfect, spotless marble—if the stone was marble, which was Kaylin’s generic word for shiny stone floors—beneath her feet. Spike, like Hope, separated himself from her for the first time since she’d reached the High Halls. He rose, wingless, his body pulsing, his spikes shrinking and growing as if the beat of their shape change were as close to wings as he could come, and followed in Hope’s wake.
The world sounded unnaturally loud to Kaylin’s ears. This close to the chamber in which very private audiences were held, Kaylin could hear the attenuated sound of crying, of screaming, of words that were inaudible, but only barely. This was the sound of the height of Barrani power, because in this chamber, the sound could not be dimmed. It bled up through the floors, causing subtle vibration in the walls, a storm of accusation and pain.
Kaylin would have gone out of her mind with it—and with what it said about her lack of power, her inability to help—within a week. If that.
But the High Lords and their Consorts were not, had never been, Kaylin. And maybe, she thought, heading as quickly as she could toward Hope and Spike, this waswhythe Barrani had to be callous. Caring too much would break them.
“Lady!” one of the guards shouted.
The Consort was frozen in place, but as Kaylin reached her side she saw no fear in the Consort’s expression. No anger, either. Just a moment of weariness. She couldn’t see what Hope or Spike could see, but clearly it was close by; both the familiar and Spike had stopped ten feet from where the Consort stood, casting shadow in the opulent lights of her own entryway.
Kaylin’s arms were glowing. She was used to that. They didn’t ache, however. She could—and did—draw daggers, but lifted an arm as she heard footsteps come from behind. Ynpharion stopped just short of her.
What do they see?he demanded; she could feel the hilt of his sword in his hand, as if that hand were her own.
“Lord Kaylin,” the Consort said quietly.
Hope inhaled.
“Please give us permission to defend you,” Kaylin said in a rush that left almost no room between the words.
“You have my permission,” the Consort replied, although she didn’t take her eyes off the familiar. Or Spike.
Kaylin raised her voice. “Spike, Hope—the Consort isthe most important personin this room. Do whatever you have to do to preserve her.”
Teela’s sword gleamed in a way that didn’t imply the light was reflected; the sword itself seemed to glow. Kaylin could make out the traces of runes across the flat of the blade. She joined Kaylin, her eyes so dark they might have been all pupil.
The floor ruptured.
No, Kaylin thought, that was the wrong description. The stone itself seemed to groan beneath the collective weight of the Consort and her companions, straining against something invisible to Kaylin’s eyes. Hope might have changed that, had he stayed on her shoulder, but whatever the familiar had seen had caused him to leave her in a furious rush. His squawks were louder, and the high-pitched squeak that seemed to adorn them had deepened.
Hope exhaled a stream of opalescent, pale smoke. Where it hit floor, the stone melted; the melting gave off no heat. But the breath itself spread across the floor, and the floor shifted in a large circle around Hope. Hope, however, wasn’t finished. His wings widened, his neck thickened. Kaylin was afraid that he was about to go full Dragon in a room that hadn’t been designed for the draconic form.
He didn’t. In some ways, that might have been better.
He lost transparency as he transformed; his foreclaws became hands, his spindly legs, arms; his hind legs became actual legs. Had he been clothed, it might have been better, but even as she thought it, the rising mist that had, moments ago, been an expulsion of opalescent cloud swirled around him, solidifying in layers as they watched. He looked almost like an Aerian—but no Aerian had wings of feathered glass.
“There is danger,” he said in perfect Elantran.
Kaylin glanced at the Consort, who appeared to be staring at her feet. Or at what remained of the stone beneath them.
“The ground was...compromised. It will remain solid now.”
Severn—can you see Hope?
Yes.
What does he look like to you?
A larger cloud.
“Kaylin,” Hope said. “Ask the Consort to remain where she is for the moment. These rooms have been compromised; they are not currently habitable. Not for her.”
