“This is a test.”
“Of a kind, yes. You must approach the Tower as yourself.”
“I’malwaysmyself,” she snapped.
Hope’s wings shifted. “You are always yourself, yes. But you understand the difference.”
“Do I have to like it?”
“Demonstrably not.”
She wanted to say it was none of the Tower’s business, and gave herself a very deserved mental kick. Teela was fighting for her life—for both of their lives. Severn was fighting for the Consort. The Consort was fighting, in the end, to free the names of the trapped. Kaylin was only being asked to be completely honest.
An exchange was being demanded: the Tower’s truth for Kaylin’s truth. It was better than having a face full of Feral armed with only two daggers. It was. She knew it was. It didn’tfeelthat way, but feelings were irrelevant.
She’d learned the hard way that the secrets she kept, she kept because they had the power to destroy her; because they lived on the inside of her, and forced her to acknowledge, time and again, things she didn’twantto be true about herself. She judged herself harshly, which was what she deserved. But even so, she didn’t want others to see and judge her the way she saw and judged herself.
This, she thought, was the real cost, the real weight, of some of her earliest decisions. They were a shadow from which she couldn’t escape. She could understand why she had made them. She could even justify them with a semblance of logic, of reason. She could point out all the ways in which the choices she’d made were only barely choices: do something terrible, or die. She’d chosen to survive.
On bad days, she wondered about that. And there had been very bad days. They were fewer now. Less overwhelming. Why? Because she believed that she would never make—never have to make—those same choices again. She thoughtthis time, as a Hawk, she could choose “or die” and mean it; that fear wouldn’t swamp everything else.
Of course, with people, you never knew. Especially when one of them was you.
But conversely, her history gave her a sense of confidence in the future. She knew where she’d been. She knew where she was. And if even Kaylin could cross the divide between self-loathing and self-respect, no matter how much of a struggle it was, others could do it, as well. There was nonever, no immediate dismissal of the potential of a person.
Sometimes other Hawks did. She understood why. It was hard to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who was trying to kill you, rob you or make your life vastly more difficult. When knives and clubs were drawn, there was no thought, because there was notimefor it.
But after, there could be.
So she spoke to the Tower. She discovered, as she did, that she didn’tneedto speak out loud. But she needed to think, clearly. She needed to examine herself truthfully enough that the Tower could hear her thoughts, could touch them, could test them—and, ultimately, could accept them. If there was judgment offered, it would be offered only when she reached the Tower’s core.
There were all kinds of ways to protect oneself. Kaylin knew most of them. From early childhood on, the easiest, simplest and therefore first of those lessons was: hide. As a child, there hadn’t been many other options. She’d resented that enough to learn how to fight. To learn how to protect herself—and others. She’d learned to push fear out of the equation, although she’d left enough there for caution.
Clearly, some visceral impulse to hide remained, rooted very deeply in the fear of others. She pulled those out, as well.
Sometimes she hated the Barrani. They were proof that the universe wasn’t fair. They lived forever, they were beautiful and the strength they were born to was enough to make the Ferals that had terrified the mortals in Nightshade a nonissue. She hated the fact that money and power devolved to them, and to those they chose as allies in the mortal Courts. No, theHumanCourt. She hated the way they looked down at mortals for the very differences Kaylin resented. She resented being born mortal, when they had been born Barrani, with all of the advantages of their race.
She accepted this. Sometimes it stung. Sometimes, when things were dark or days had been too damn long, she resented them for having everything that would have made her life so much easier.
She didn’t argue with herself, as she so often did.
She didn’t resent the Aerians in the same way. Sheenviedthem flight, but they were mortals.
And the Dragons? No. She didn’t resent the Dragons. They were far enough above her that she couldn’t imagine being one. Couldn’t imagine the power of the dual forms. Couldn’t imagine possessing their breath, their muscular flight. Didn’t want to imagine the weight of the crown.
Why?
Ah. Because the Barrani were her friends. They were her comrades. They were Hawks. They had the same responsibilities, and pay was defined by rank. She saw them all the time. She heard them all the time.
And it wouldkill herto lose Teela or Tain. Because if she hated the Barrani some of the time, she loved Teela and Tain all of the time. Did they have things she lacked? Yes. They always would. But their lives hadn’t been simple or easy, either. Kaylin’s mother had died, impoverished, of an illness. Teela’s mother had been murdered in front of her eyes. All of the advantages that accrued to Teela because of her birth hadn’t saved her mother, her friends or the things she had, as a child, loved.
It was hard, most days, to think of TeelaasBarrani. Or Tain. It was hard, she thought as she continued to walk, to think of Bellusdeo as a Dragon. To think of the cohort as Barrani—although, to be fair, Sedarias was probably the ideal Barrani to her own people. Why? Because she thought of them, first, as friends.
As people. Only as people. Their advantages and disadvantages weren’t things to be measured on most days. On the bad days? Yes. She did. But on the bad days, so did they. It was a waste of time. It was stupid. But...living people had bad days. Barrani did. Dragons certainly did. Mortals did. Marcus probably had more bad days than anyone else Kaylin knew, but maybe that was only because his bad days were death to ignore.
No two people were alike. Severn was mortal, but he was Severn; he wasn’t like Kaylin at all. The Dragons? They were all different. And the Barrani were all different, as well—but they looked very similar if one didn’t know any Barrani.
She couldn’t get rid of the darker impulses, the darker thoughts, the envy or the resentment—not entirely.
