He froze, his midnight eyes returning to her face.
“I’m sorry,” she said, holding on to the visceral fear this much anger and magic invoked in anyone sane, “but I think that’s a really,reallybad idea here.”
“Where,” he asked, his voice thunder,“is here?”
“Can these windows be broken?”
Annarion and Sedarias had passed through them. But Candallar had opened the doors anyway, and there was no sign of the two members of the cohort anywhere. Severn moved to the open doors but stayed on the right side of them as he scanned the stairs and the grounds immediately in front of the building.
“Not easily. There was some difficulty with younger students and their various games. What,” he added, voice sharpening, “was that?”
“The purple fire?”
“Isthatwhat you saw?”
“That’s what it looks like to me. To us,” she added. “I’m not alone here. I think Candallar might be trying to find another way in.”
“Candallar is the source of that...fire?”
She nodded.
Larrantin exhaled. “Take the book—or see that the book is delivered—to Killianas. I will guard the building.”
“You couldn’tseehim.”
He was clearly not a man accustomed to argument, even if the argument made sense.
“We’ve lost Sedarias and Annarion,” Bellusdeo said. “Can you see bodies?”
It was such a pragmatic question. Kaylin turned toward the open door. She didn’t borrow Severn’s vision; what she could see through Hope’s wing, he couldn’t see. Nor did she tell Hope to fly to Severn and allow him to look through the same wings.
Instead, she crossed a hall that suddenly seemed short and squat, it provided so little time to gather her thoughts, to center herself. Battlefields of any kind always contained corpses.
This one was no exception. She’d seen Annarion fight. She’d seen Sedarias fight—although that fight, broken as it was with fights of her own, was less fixed in her mind.
Kaylin could immediately see the injured; she could see the dead. Some had lost limbs, and the bleeding would probably kill them. Some had not. But neither Annarion nor Sedarias were among the fallen.
Did she care about the people no one else could see? Did she care about people who had intended to kill them? Was she willing to spend the power to try to heal those who might—just might—survive if she did?
No. Not now, and maybe not ever.
She exhaled and turned.
“Your color is terrible,” Bellusdeo said.
“Try looking in a mirror before you tellmethat,” Kaylin snapped. “Sedarias and Annarion aren’t on the field. Candallar hasn’t come down, either. And if you are going to go full Dragon, inside is not the place to do it. If you break parts of the building, Larrantin is going to be upset.”
“You are speaking to Lannagaros?” Larrantin asked.
“No, I’m speaking to Bellusdeo. Lannagaros is less martial.” But not, Kaylin thought with a twinge, less desperate.
“I do not know this Bellusdeo. She was perhaps not a student here.”
Kaylin was silent for a long beat. “No,” she finally said. “Lannagaros wants to know why you’re here at all.”
One brow rose.
“He didn’t ask, but he does want to know. I think he’s hoping that he’ll be able to see and speak with you soon. You can’t leave this building.”
