Cast in Honor (Chronicles of Elantra, #11)(143)

Hearing him in echoes, in fear, in hope. The other voices were there, but so muted, she could barely touch them.

It is different, the familiar said. You gave Severn your name.

She placed the word she carried against the forehead of the Arcanist. In the darkness of her closed eyes, the word seemed to melt into his forehead; its golden glow spread from there across the surface of his alabaster skin, changing white to something warmer, something that might actually be alive.

Kaylin! No!

She felt Severn’s panic—a sharp tug, an insistent, almost overwhelming pull.

Not yet. Not yet. It was gone before she had to fight it.

The Barrani Arcanist opened his eyes.

*

Barrani had beautiful eyes. She thought this without desire, without warmth. The length of his lashes, the color like a dusting of perfect snow; the width of his eyes and the shape of them; the placement across the bridge of an unbroken, perfect nose.

They were beautiful. They were nothing like her eyes.

And they were a shade of purple Kaylin seldom saw. Purple was the color of loss, of funereal grief; the Barrani offered it to very, very few.

Grief.

As his eyes widened, as his face took on lines of expression, they darkened as well, becoming a much, much more familiar midnight. She might have taken an involuntary step back—in part because it was the only smart thing she could do—but he began to fade from view almost before the color of his eyes had fully made the transition.

*

Kaylin. She felt the same visceral pull she’d felt the first time, but this time, she obeyed it. She had nothing left to fight with, and even if she did, she had no desire at all to fight.

*

She couldn’t see. She couldn’t see, and if she’d had the strength, she would have panicked. But Severn’s voice—no, all of the voices she’d gathered and touched—came rushing in, to fill the void left by darkness.

She could hear.

She felt heat above her upturned face; she felt stone—suspiciously warm stone—against her arms and chest, and remembered the stone bell. It was still now. It did not vibrate. Nor did she hear the oddly staccato voices of the three men.

She heard blades clashing, and then she remembered.

She remembered the eyes of the Barrani Arcanist. He would die here, no matter how powerful he was; she was certain of it. If he was forced to actually face the people in this room—the least of whom was exhausted to the point of diminished vision and apparently clinging blindly to a rock—he wouldn’t last five minutes.

But his grief—grief, not rage—cut her. She knew what would have happened had it not been for Gilbert, but she thought that maybe, maybe, the destruction the Arcanist had caused was unintentional. And maybe, if his only desire was to somehow be free, if he had somehow met Gilbert on his own, he might be at peace.

It was a stupid thought, and pointless, because he’d be at peace now, regardless.

“Kaylin.”

She tried to speak, but apparently she’d been screaming, because her throat felt raw and scraped, and she could barely hear her own voice over the rest of the almost overwhelming noise in the basement.

“Kaylin, you need to let go.” She recognized Annarion’s voice.

“Are my eyes open?” she asked him.

“...Yes.”

“I can’t see you—”

“Let go, Kaylin.” Pause. “Your cheek.”

She smiled. “Yes. Your brother is...in his Castle.” She groaned as Annarion apparently attempted to remove her arms—or her skin.

“You need to let go. The Arkon says we need to break these stones.”

She looked, tried to look, at Annarion’s face, which she assumed was in roughly the same direction as his voice. And she saw one thing: Gilbert’s eye. Gilbert’s only remaining eye; the others, she could no longer use. She couldn’t really see out of this one, either, and realized that it was probably still embedded in Annarion’s forehead.

He lifted her. He carried her. She cried the whole way because her skin hurt so much. She wished she’d removed all her clothing before she’d arrived in the basement, which was not technically legal.

The eye began to move. She could see no word in it; it was a simple, and small, golden orb, with a pupil that seemed to have depth; it reminded her, in a tiny way, of the small pond at the heart of the Keeper’s Garden.

She tried to speak, but failed. She closed her eyes. She wanted to beg Annarion to put her down, but before she could, he did—and she watched this lone part of Gilbert, whose Shadow, whose presence, she couldn’t otherwise see, move to what she assumed was the exact spot on which the Arcanist had been standing when he’d cast his spell.

She didn’t know what Annarion was doing. She’d have to ask him, later.

But the sound in the room grew sharper and more distinct—which was not, in her present condition, a gift, exactly—as Gilbert’s remaining eye grew less distinct.

She could hear Dragon roaring. She’d learned to differentiate between “discussion” and “argument” while living in the Palace. Most native draconian spoken in the Palace, on the other hand, was the latter.

And she thought, with increasing confusion, that one of the two voices—three voices—raised in argument was the Emperor’s, which made no sense.

It was the last thought she had before she slid into a very blessed unconsciousness.