The cavern was more or less what it had been before she had lifted her sword and walked across what could barely be called a bridge. Mandoran and Terrano decided they’d come far enough and Kaylin could bloody well—Mandoran’s words—carry her own damn weight.
Hope, in his actual, portable form, swooped in to land on her left shoulder. Kaylin couldn’t see Spike. Hope squawked loudly in her ear.
He’s here.
If she’d been carrying him, she would have dropped him—not that it would have done him much harm.
“What did you just say?” she demanded.
He’s here.
She turned to look at him, her mouth half-open. His voice was still unpleasantly squawky, but...there were actual syllables in it. Maybe. She could both understand him and fail to identify the language.
Chosen.
Terrano and Mandoran looked around, as if trying to discern what had surprised her so badly. “Heads up,” the latter muttered as Sedarias marched into view. She was injured; her left cheek was bleeding; blood had run down the side of her neck.
“Allaron looks worse,” Mandoran said, voice much quieter, although there was no hope that Sedarias would fail to hear him, because there was very little noise in the cavern. Even the subtle crackle of fire had vanished the moment Kaylin had returned; the armor that fire had become no longer protected her. She wondered if Evarrim was still conscious, but with an approaching face full of Sedarias, she didn’t have time to look.
She did ask Ynpharion about the Consort.
She survives. She is weakened, he added with just a trace of panic.
She sang, Kaylin told him, gentling her internal voice because she understood the panic. In Ynpharion’s position, she would probably have felt it herself. She felt panic of a different kind as Sedarias, bloodied, reached her, like a nightmare soldier that had once been, in a different land, a friend.
The hush held. Kaylin saw fallen bodies, which she’d expected. She saw the injured; they were huddled somewhere in the vicinity of Evarrim’s feet. Ah, no, not just Evarrim; Nightshade and Teela were also there. She didn’t see Severn immediately, but she felt his presence, and there was a watchfulness in it, but no fear.
“What,” Sedarias demanded, “did you do?”
“I...”
Sedarias’s eyes couldn’t get more blue; her expression couldn’t be more martial. Kaylin would have bet on it. Apparently her betting instincts had atrophied in recent weeks. But Sedarias was looking past Kaylin’s shoulder, and Kaylin, without the anchors called Mandoran and Terrano, could turn to see what Sedarias was seeing.
It was a door.
It was a door in what was now a flat, seamless wall that extended beyond their ability to see its top. Had the door been on any other wall, or in any other location, Kaylin might not have noticed it; it was slightly taller than doors that weren’t meant to impress the public—at least in the Halls of Law—but was otherwise unremarkable.
She started to speak, because Sedarias was still almost in her face, but the ground shook beneath their collective feet, and the words hadn’t been that important, anyway. To Kaylin’s right, near a rough wall, she caught movement and turned. The Consort. The Consort, Ynpharion by her side, also made her way to where Kaylin was standing.
The Consort trumped Sedarias. Even in Sedarias’s opinion.
Where is Edelonne?she asked Ynpharion.
Ask her yourself.
Oh. Right.Edelonne?
I am with Lord Evarrim, Edelonne replied.One of the handful of criminals that have survived. My fate will be decided at a later date.She did not sound fearful; she sounded both weary and bitterly, bitterly angry. Kaylin recognized the anger. It was the worst of the anger she sometimes felt, aimed at herself, at her stupidity, at her own helplessness.
She had no comfort to offer; when she felt this rage, there was nothing anyone could offer that might ease it.
She turned away, mentally, and faced the Consort.
As she approached, Kaylin saw that her eyes—unlike the eyes of every other Barrani present—were green. She was bruised; her left eye was reddened, as if she’d been struck, hard, across the face. She was also paler than usual, and her hair was a bit of a mess.
When she stood five feet away from Kaylin, she hesitated briefly, and then closed the distance and enveloped Kaylin in a hug. If she looked like she’d taken a stroll through fire and death, she smelled like sunshine and comfort. Kaylin had had her disagreements with the Consort, none of them minor. She had no doubt that she would continue to disagree with some of the Consort’s decisions, even if she understood the reason for them.
But for this moment, in the arms of this woman, she finally felt that the battle was over, and that she’d survived to come home.
