The Dragons had stopped their roaring. She couldn’t hear the echo of either the Emperor or Bellusdeo. Even the familiar and the outcaste had fallen silent, as if sound itself was some kind of profanity and they had all entered a very stuffy cathedral.
Kaylin looked up, and up again, craning her neck back. Mandoran did the same, but raised his arms to cover or protect his face as he did. The Shadow within him froze and then began to melt away. This was good; he didn’t seem to be aware of it. Whatever he saw was somehow worse than Shadow that intended to devour him from the inside.
Most of the Shadow within her arms melted as well—but not all. In particular, the strands she’d wrapped around her hands to give her some purchase over the ones inside Mandoran remained where she’d wound them.
But she forgot about them as Moran dar Carafel descended, at last, from the sky.
She had known Moran for the entire time she’d known the Hawks. Moran had been in the infirmary before Kaylin had even been the official mascot. She had seen Moran give Marcus a dressing-down—in the infirmary—that had been impressive and awe-inspiring. Marcus caused a visceral fear in most people simply by growling; Moran had put her foot down, claiming control of her space and everyone who was in it.
That had been nothing compared to this.
The Aerie was not the infirmary. The Aerians were not the Hawks. They had a political hierarchy that had, by all accounts, made Moran’s early life a living hell. It had almost killed her.
Watching her now, Kaylin knew that this would never happen again. She wasn’t certain the Aerie would survive it. She couldn’t speak, but had stopped trying. Moran’s wings were, end to end, larger than Dragon wings. They were feathered, each feather distinct, concrete, although it hurt to stare at them for long. At the height she occupied, the color of her eyes should have been impossible to discern.
It wasn’t.
They were blue.
They were a blue that bled into black, and they matched her expression. Moran was angry. Moran had always been angry.
Chunks of rock fell away from the curve of natural cave walls. Chunks of architecture—obviously less natural—fell as well, shaken free from their moorings. If Kaylin couldn’t make herself heard, she could move—and she did. She grabbed Mandoran first; he was still staring, openmouthed, at Moran.
At the Illumen praevolo of the Aerians.
At the Aerians who fell from the skies above. They didn’t dive. Kaylin watched as their wings—which seemed to be flapping—lost the innate magic that kept them in the air. As if they had gained a density, a weight, that their visible wings could no longer support, they were captured by gravity.
It wasn’t clean. Kaylin was almost certain there would be broken limbs and possibly even deaths. But the Hawks who had accompanied Moran remained in the air, flying patrol circles above and beyond her spread wings.
She looked down at the outcaste. She looked down upon the Emperor and Bellusdeo—and Kaylin could now see them both. She could see the Aerians in the distant sky. She could see Diarmat and Emmerian.
She was back in what she thought of as the real world. So was the outcaste—but he’d never really left it. He existed, as Mandoran and Annarion could, in two places simultaneously. Or more.
The outcaste pushed himself off the stone floors of the cavern; the Emperor and Bellusdeo watched him rise. But they were hesitant now. Everything about Moran implied that this was her territory, not their battlefield. They didn’t doubt that the praevolo was in control of the Aerie.
And they didn’t doubt her intent.
The outcaste opened his mouth. He breathed as he spoke—and he did speak. Kaylin didn’t understand a word, which would have been fine if he’d been speaking his mother tongue—she didn’t expect to understand Dragon. But he spoke almost familiar syllables. He did not speak in rage, but he didn’t speak as a supplicant, either.
Moran looked down at him.
He continued to speak, and as he spoke, the mass of his body shifted; he lost the Draconic form. Kaylin wasn’t certain she would take the chance, given the proximity of Dragons who had reason to want him dead. None of those Dragons were enfolding themselves into their much more human forms. Given the color of their eyes, it wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
She cringed when she saw his wings. They were as wide as Moran’s, as impressive; they were, however, ash gray, and if there were spots across their breadth, they were multicolored and did not seem fixed in place. Moran’s wings were pale and speckled, as they’d always been.
Moran’s reply, like the outcaste’s, drifted just beyond the edge of her comprehension. It was frustrating. It was more frustrating because, across her skin, the marks of the Chosen began to glow. To thrum. There was almost a musicality to the noise they made, or there would have been had it not been so uncomfortable.
She looked at the Shadow that remained in her hands. It seemed both weightless and inert. It had no temperature, and no actual texture, but it was fine, thin, dark.
Kaylin.
She looked up at the sound of her name. She didn’t recognize the voice that spoke it.
Private.
It was Moran.
Come here.
Kaylin stared at her. She then looked mutely at her familiar; like the actual Dragons, he was large and scaled. Unlike those Dragons, he was translucent. He understood what Kaylin hadn’t dared to ask, and he moved toward her.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mandoran whispered, proving he could still be heard.
“You think ignoring her is a better one?”
He shrugged, flexing and shaking his hands. “I think we’re going to leave.” Annarion appeared beside him.
“Is Moran okay with that?”
Mandoran grinned. It was weak, but genuine. “We’ll find out, won’t we?”
Kaylin. It was Ynpharion.
What now?
The Consort says you must do as the praevolo asks.
She’s not exactly asking.
He was frustrated. So was she. The Lady says Moran is calling you for a reason. She is newly born, newly come to herself; she is not what she was. She needs an anchor. The Lady says that that anchor must be you.
I can’t be an anchor—
Or it will be the outcaste.
Over my dead body.
Yes. Over all of their dead bodies, saving only the two who are fleeing. Wisely. An’Teela will not leave, he added, as if this were necessary.
What the hell is an anchor anyway? Kaylin demanded as she began to run toward her familiar.
The Consort says you will not understand the words she might otherwise use. She offers only this one: friend.
She needs a friend?
I am conduit, Kaylin. I do not presume to divine the whole of the Lady’s thought. But that is the word she bid me use. She did not think the rest would suffice.
It was enough, though. She clambered up the back of her familiar; he had not shrunk or diminished, as if Moran’s appearance had decided his shape. Or perhaps he’d understood what was happening. To Kaylin, the fight was over the moment Moran had punched a hole through the ceiling and forced them all to exist in the same space.
Or it had been. She was afraid, now. The familiar pushed himself off the cracked floor at the same time the outcaste did. Bellusdeo opened her mouth to breathe; a plume of fire left it. The outcaste stood bathed in flame without condescending to notice it. Bellusdeo leapt—or tried. She seemed to struggle with both gravity and weight.
Kaylin had no doubt that her forced inaction was entirely due to the praevolo. The golden Dragon was not going to be happy with Moran.
And did it matter? It wasn’t like Moran was going to be living with them anymore. It wasn’t like she could just turn around and come home. This was her space.
This was her home.
“Can you please, please hurry?” she asked the familiar.
I am moving as quickly, he replied, as I am allowed.
“Allowed?”
She is defining the space we occupy. She is creating the rules for it, and everyone who remains within its boundaries.
“What are its boundaries?”
He didn’t answer. He flew, but his flight was heavy, ungainly; his wings seemed to labor against gravity in a way they never had before.
And above them both, Moran waited.
* * *
The outcaste, unencumbered by the attacks of the Dragons who were pretty much honorbound to destroy him, rose as well, and he rose far more gracefully, far more easily, than the familiar did. Kaylin ground her teeth. He looked Aerian now—or rather, he looked like Moran. His wings were as prominent as hers; his voice as clear.
Moran had been angry. She was still angry. But the anger itself had lost some of its heat, some of its dangerous rage. She remained standing in the air as if the wings were mere decorations; she didn’t move them because she didn’t need to move them. The air was hers, and it held her, carried her. As Kaylin approached, she thought she could hear the faintest trace of the elemental air’s voice.
She had always found Moran intimidating; Moran was a sergeant; Moran was the head of the infirmary; Moran had threatened to have Marcus strapped to a bed when he was injured—and Marcus hadn’t even tried to tear the Aerian’s throat out.
But she hadn’t found Moran so intimidating that she hadn’t offered, many times, to heal her injured wing. She hadn’t found Moran so terrifying that she hadn’t pressured her to live with Helen. Moran was a Hawk.
And Hawks, to Kaylin, were family. Having spent years listening to mess hall gossip, Kaylin was aware that “family” involved a lot of conflict, that mothers could be terrifying, that siblings could refuse to speak to each other for months. Or longer. She didn’t expect Hawks to be perfect. But she was part of them. They were part of the Halls of Law.
Moran was part of both.
Moran was praevolo. Moran had been born praevolo. But Kaylin understood the Consort’s words as she approached the Hawks’ sergeant. Whatever the wings had signified, whatever the bracelet had signified, neither had prepared her for this.
The familiar said she was remaking the space they all occupied. Moran, a handful of hours ago, couldn’t even see it. Something had changed—obviously—since their arrival. And that something was...Moran. Kaylin couldn’t see the bracelet on Moran’s wrist anymore. It wasn’t necessary. Nothing, Kaylin thought, would be necessary again. If the Aerian Caste Court was allowed to continue to exist, it would be a Caste Court of one: Moran dar Carafel.
Or Moran something or other. Kaylin wasn’t exactly confident about the survival of the dar Carafel flight, either.
The outcaste glanced at Kaylin, at the familiar on whose back she struggled to rise.
“You are not wanted here,” he said. He flicked one wing in her direction. It knocked her off the familiar’s back.
Chapter 29
Kaylin fell.
She could feel gravity assert itself in the absence of her familiar; she could feel the familiar’s concern, could see the cloud of his breath as he turned to the outcaste; she could hear the sudden blurred rush of sound and voices as everyone watching reacted at the same time.
But she didn’t land. She didn’t hit rock. The familiar didn’t catch her.
The air did. The air, or something else. She rose, and she rose far more quickly than she had while clinging to the back of the familiar. The familiar, in response, dwindled in size, his shape changing as he once again became the small and squawky conversation piece that was so much a part of her life she could forget he was there until he shouted in her ear.
“You will not fall,” the praevolo said, “unless I desire it.”
“I don’t have wings, Moran.”
“No, you don’t. They are not, however, necessary—not here. Not when you are with me.” She spoke Aerian, but it was stiff and formal to Kaylin’s ear, and she had to really listen not to lose the words to the syllables. She wondered if there was a High Aerian, like there was High Barrani.
Moran then turned to the outcaste, her expression neutral. “You are supplicant here; you are not lord. Kaylin is of my flight. Harm her, and I will destroy you.” She spoke without any doubt at all; it wasn’t even a threat. It was a simple statement of fact.
The outcaste nodded in acquiescence.
His calmness annoyed Kaylin. “You told the Aerians you were the praevolo.”
Moran glanced at her. The outcaste did not deny it. Kaylin glared at him; he looked down his nose at her, as if she were inconsequential. But his brows rippled, because the marks on Kaylin’s skin were beginning to gain dimension.
Moran didn’t ask him if this were true. It was, and she knew it. She seemed to know a lot that she hadn’t known a few hours ago. Above her, the Hawks flew in formation. They hadn’t changed. The air carried them.
“Do you even understand what the praevolo is?” he demanded—of Kaylin.
“I know she’s not you. She’s not yours. You wanted the power of the praevolo because you saw it as simple power. But that’s not what it is.”
“Kaylin,” Moran said.
Kaylin understood that she was being asked to shut up. But it wasn’t an actual command, not yet. “That’s not all it is.”
“You do not understand—”
“Neither do you!”
“Kaylin—”
“For you, it must have been a nameless, central power. Something you could siphon. Something you could divert or adopt or abuse. But that’s not what it is. It’s not what it was supposed to be.”
“And how would you know anything? You are mortal; you are only barely considered of age among your own kind. You lack knowledge; you obviously lack wisdom. You are not, and will never be, a power, because you cannot understand what power is.”
“Power is a tool,” Kaylin countered. “A sword is a tool. A crossbow is a tool. A crowbar is a tool. It’s something we pick up and put down. People aren’t meant to be tools. Moran is praevolo—whatever you think that means. But she’s a person. She has a choice. She has will. She has goals of her own. She is not simply a tool you can take and use for your own ends.”
“Moran is not you. You are Chosen, but you were not born to be Chosen. You are an accident. Some might say you are an act of desperation or folly on the part of the dead. But you are not what she is.”
“Neither are you. And only one of us has claimed to be something we’re not.”
“Private.” Unlike the use of her name, the use of her rank pulled her up short. She glanced at Moran, closing her mouth.
“Without my presence,” the outcaste said, “without my planning, the praevolo would never have emerged. She would have remained trapped in a cage of potential whose door she could not open.”
“And you’re telling me you did all this to free her?” The scorn in the question should have been lethal.
Moran said something brief—in Leontine. Kaylin’s face flushed. Moran didn’t generally curse, and when she did, she didn’t use Leontine. “He is not making that claim. He is, however, strongly implying it.” Moran looked down at her feet, or rather at what was beneath them—which was almost everything. “He claimed to be praevolo. He could wear the bracelet and it did not consume him.”
“He’s—”
“Yes, Kaylin. He could wear it; he could not use it.” She turned to her right, whistled something sharp and brief. To Kaylin’s surprise, the Arcanist—the reason they had come to the Aerie in the first place—flew in from the distant right. He could fly.
He could fly because the praevolo desired it. He bowed—to her. He glanced at the o
utcaste; it was a murderous, enraged glare, but he didn’t add words to it. Probably because they weren’t necessary.
“Some of my people believed him, because he could. Some believed him because he could do other things—things attributed to the praevolo in our long history.”
“Such as?”
“He could deprive the people of flight.”
“That’s the opposite of what the praevolo was supposed to do.”
“It is the other edge of a sword. What one can give, one can take away. The ceremony of the outcaste is some part of that.” She lifted her arm; the bracelet was invisible. Or gone. “I do not understand it all, but I understand enough. When someone is exiled, when they are made outcaste, the power of flight is literally removed from them. That power returns to the praevolo. If there is no praevolo, the power returns to the bracelet.
“It is a power meant to be used only by the praevolo. It is meant to be used only by an Aerian.” She gave Kaylin a much more familiar look, the one that meant now please shut up. She then focused her attention on the outcaste. “You are not an Aerian.”
“I am not a Dragon.”
“Define yourself as you please. What you are—or are not—is of concern to me only in this regard. You are not an Aerian. You are not praevolo, and cannot be. I do not understand how you used the power of the praevolo; it is clear to me that you somehow did, and could.”
“You must ask your servant,” he replied. The Arcanist flinched.
“I have.” Her wings spread, and spread again, the flight feathers ranging in size and shape, their essential color unchanged. “You are not of my kin. You are not of my people.”
And the outcaste said, “Perhaps not. But are you?” And his wings spread as well, stretching and extending as he mirrored her posture. He gestured, and wind howled, as if it had been trapped in those wings, and was now being released.
The implication was clear. Moran was as he was: different, other. Moran had always been that. But she’d never been what she was at this moment.