But it was something that you grew into, and in the end, it was part of what you chose to become.
“Marai, listen to me.”
The great, dense shadow that was half Leontine, half beast, and a menagerie of things in between, stopped. Just—stopped. And then its—no, her—great head turned, and a growling started behind a row of teeth that looked like it belonged in a dozen animals at that same time.
The Ferals were on the border now, and then, just as the Leontines, across it. Tiamaris breathed on them. She heard their howls of pain and fury—more fury, really—before she let her attention shift. They were, for once, someone else’s problem.
Marai’s body was already angled toward Kaylin, and the arm that Severn had lopped off had already reasserted its existence. Her claws were as long as swords now, but they suited the cast of her hands, which were also grotesquely large.
What did she know about Marai?
Almost nothing. She faltered, and the Leontine crouched, gathering to leap. “Severn, no,” she shouted, but it came out in a whisper, in a sound so thin she couldn’t even be certain it was heard; she could hardly hear it herself.
She could hear, more clearly, the keening of Meliannos, and wondered how in the hells she’d missed it the first time she’d seen it in Nightshade’s hand.
She could hear, much more clearly, the syllables of Nightshade’s true name, and she knew damn well she hadn’t tried to say that. Louder still, distinct and deadly, the syllables of Makuron’s name, the name Nightshade had guessed that she knew. She did.
But it was so long, so complicated, so terrifyingly dense, she couldn’t have spoken it had she tried—it would be like trying to read the whole of Rennick’s play out loud in a single breath.
And blending with these things, the syllables, the tone, the texture of the name she had taken for herself in the halls of the High Court, where the Barrani were given life. She did not speak this, either.
She spoke Marai’s name again, but the speaking felt wrong; she knew what she was trying to say. What she said she couldn’t even hear.
But Marai did. Around her, like a shroud, the strokes and lines of something that might be language to gods, grew sharper and harsher. The misty quality, the smudged movement, was gone. Those words, Kaylin thought, were speaking. No, that wasn’t right. But it would have to do.
She wished, briefly and uselessly, that she had asked Sanabalis what the story of the Leontine origin actually was. Not the gist of it, but the words. Because she had Marai’s attention, and in the space of at least two minutes, that attention was not focused on ending her life as quickly as possible.
“Marai,” she said again. And then, taking a breath, giving up any attempt to force her lips to conform to what she thought she was saying, she added, “You were loved.” Because that felt right, to her.
“Loved?” Orogrim’s harsh voice. What she had said to Marai, he had heard. It had stilled him in the same fashion, but the eyes he turned on Kaylin—not Leontine eyes, not even close—were burning like Dragon fury.
She risked a glance at Nightshade. Saw that he was bleeding, that his perfect skin had taken gashes. But his expression was neutral, and he met Kaylin’s glance and offered the slightest of nods.
“Yes,” Kaylin replied.
“We were almost destroyed at birth,” he snarled. “And we are hunted now by those who would destroy us. What love in that?”
But she shook her head. Her hair was matted and sticky, and the movement was graceless. She could feel the whole of her arms, her back, her thighs, throbbing as if the skin had been peeled back and everything beneath it lay exposed to air.
“When the Leontines were created,” she said softly, “they were loved.”
His snarl matched his eyes. He tensed to leap, and Marai lifted one of those misshapen hands in warning. Her eyes were the color of night—a quiet, cloudless night.
“They will kill us,” she said, speaking for the first time. Sibilance in the phrase, hissing that cut the ear, as if hearing it were exposing a vulnerability.
Kaylin ignored the comment, but it was hard. It had always been hard to ignore the truth. “But the Old Ones didn’t understand their creations. They had hopes for their future. Maybe plans—I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” She hesitated and then said, “We birth children, and we love them, but we don’t know them. We don’t know who they are because they’re almost not anything. They’re helpless, and we protect them with everything—everything—we have. But we have to wait, to see who they are, who they’ll become, what their choices will be.”
“They feared us,” Orogrim said coldly. He was inching closer to Marai, and his lips were moving. As they did, the Shadows tightened, and Marai’s form shifted.
“Yes,” Kaylin said quietly. Her voice stilled the shifting. The word felt Elantran—but wasn’t. “They did. Look at yourselves. Tell me that they were wrong. Tell me that you don’t intend to kill us. Tell me that you won’t leave the fiefs and return to your people and kill those who will not follow you.
“We’re mortal. We know death when we see it.” Most of the time. “We fear it, and we kill before we can be killed. It’s ugly, but it’s what it is. The Leontines were loved,” she continued.
“And we are not Leontine?” Marai asked.
“You were not killed,” Kaylin replied softly. “You were not hunted.”
“They would kill my son.”
And those were the magic words, Kaylin thought. “No,” she replied. “Not while I live, they won’t. I gave you my word, Marai. Whether or not I now regret it doesn’t matter. He is not what you now are. And I will do everything in my power to make sure he never becomes it.
“Is this what you wish for him?” Kaylin said. “Look at yourself. You’re covered in blood—some of it mine, some of it—” she gestured widely “—theirs. Is this what you want for Roshan?”
“I want his survival,” Marai said. Her voice changed as she spoke, becoming almost familiar. “And I will do anything, as you said, anything at all, to ensure that.”
“He will be powerful,” Orogrim told her. “We will tell him the truth, and he will be free.”
“To do what?” Kaylin countered. “To live in the Shadows? To kill his kin?”
“I…have…not…killed my kin,” Marai replied. Her face was changing now, the fur paling, the fangs receding into the shrinking line of her mouth.
“Orogrim has,” Kaylin said. And then she stopped because her brain had caught up with her mouth. And she understood, finally, what the tainted meant. What they could do. “Marcus’s friend. You never met him—”
“I met him,” Marai told her slowly.
“But he’s—”
“I have no Pridlea. I met him.”
“He’s dead.”
“Marcus killed him.”
“No, Marai—he was dead before he met Marcus.”
“He was not dead.”
“What’s life?” Kaylin said urgently. She felt Severn’s restless movement. Yes, she snapped, along the invisible line that bound them, I know this is not the time for a philosophical discussion. I have a point, and this is the only way to make it.
She felt the odd shape of his smile, his half smile. It caught her by surprise, but…she clung to the feel of it anyway.
“Marai, what does life mean? Everything that the Elder knew or believed, everything he loved—all the stupid things, all the smart ones, all the ugly and beautiful moments—they were wiped away entirely by Orogrim’s words. The words weren’t strong; they weren’t spoken here, at the heart of the oldest of the Shadows. But they were strong enough. His body still moved, his mouth still spoke—but everything that made him what he was, like or hate it—was destroyed.”
“That will not happen to our son,” Orogrim told Marai. “You know this to be true.”
“No, it won’t. That’s what makes you special,” Kaylin said. “It’s not the taint. It’s the fact that, in the end, with enough power behind
him, Orogrim’s son could remake the whole of your race. It wouldn’t be Leontine anymore, but it wasn’t Leontine to start with. Your people—your sister—would be as different from Leontines as the Leontines were from the animals out of which the Old Ones made them.
“And they wouldn’t have much choice,” Kaylin added. “But you do. Your son will. Orogrim does.”
“They feared rivals.”
“No,” Kaylin said wearily. “They feared the loss of what they’d brought to life. Not more, not less. But life is unpredictable. There are those born who can not only hear the words, even if they don’t understand them. They can use them.”
Kaylin took a deep breath.
And as she did, Makuron the Outcaste cried out in fury, his wings expanding in the darkness. Black fire filled the sky, and even before it lifted, she saw that he had crossed the border.
Orogrim smiled. Nothing about him had changed. The prominent jut of too many fangs glistened. But Marai hesitated. She stood in the light of the moons, one just shy of full, the other a perfect, silver circle.
This was important, somehow. One more night, Kaylin thought. It wasn’t her thought, but it took her a moment to realize where it had come from: Nightshade. Bleeding but unperturbed, he raised his sword, shifting his stance. He held it two-handed, standing his ground. And it was his ground; she could almost feel the link between them, fief and Lord.
“Marai,” Kaylin said, the word a quiet act of desperation.
The Leontine—and she was that—turned. “My only living kin are my sister and my son,” she said. “But my sister has her Pridlea.”
“I will not let them kill Sarabe. I will not let them harm our son.” She emphasized the possessive. “But, Marai…understand that I cannot let you harm him, either.”
Orogrim growled, tensed to leap.
Marai met him in mid-air. She had not taken the Shadows back; she was smaller, her fur paler, the reds silvered by moonlight so they were almost invisible. “Tell me,” she shouted to Kaylin. “Tell me my story. Tell me, Eldest.”
Kaylin started to speak, and fire rained down upon her. It should have killed her. It didn’t. Instead, it passed to either side of her, like rushing water against a standing stone.
Nightshade was there, as if he were Severn.
She held out her arms, as if in plea, and saw Orogrim’s claws pierce Marai’s shoulder. Marai snarled and staggered back, and her form shifted, and the words around her began to swirl again. But they were different, now. Kaylin could see them clearly: as clearly as she had Sanabalis’s words what seemed like months ago.
“Give them choice,” Kaylin said. Her throat hurt. It was like speaking in Dragon, which she had done only once, and only to the dead.
“Give them thought and will and volition. Give them dreams and the ability to see beyond the next meal, the need for shelter. Give them hope, and light, and a span of days greater than the span they now have.
“Give them—” She faltered. Orogrim’s claws raked across Marai’s chest, and blood flew in a black, beaded fan. “No, Marai—”
But Marai snarled, growling, the wounds closing as she struggled. The Barrani were thrown back by the wind of Dragon wings, and Tiamaris charged, roaring, into the side of Makuron the Black. The larger Dragon snapped his neck to the side, his jaws grazing Tiamaris’s flank. Scales snapped.
And Marai grew darker, again, and her face lost the Leontine shape that Kaylin knew in her heart she loved best of all mortal faces. The Pridlea’s face. The mother’s.
“Kaylin,” Marai said, her voice lower, deeper.
Kaylin swallowed. She couldn’t move; Dragon breath had melted stone.
But she could speak.
“Give them song, and story, give them fire. Grace them, in all things with the choice to do and be.” Gods, her throat hurt. Her eyes hurt. Her arms, her legs, her back—it was like the chorus of a very badly sung song.
Marai struggled, returning claw for claw, bite for bite. Hers was now the shorter reach, and she had a lot fewer teeth. But she was shining now. The moonlight alone did not illuminate her—something else did; something brought the red fur to light, and gave it the semblance of…flame.
“I choose,” Marai said, and her voice was exactly the voice of the Leontine woman who had given birth, almost alone, to a single cub. “I can choose. Orogrim—the Shadows offer power, and we have taken power. But what have we given?” Her mouth was black with blood. His mouth, red with it.
“We chose life,” he snarled. And then, maddened, said, “I chose life. You—you have chosen to throw life away.”
“This isn’t life,” Marai replied. “But she is the mother of my son. She was there. I will not let you kill her.”
“You will not stop me,” Makuron roared. And rose. Tiamaris lifted wings, and Kaylin saw, by the way one trailed ground, that flight would be denied him.
“Kaylin,” Nightshade said. She could hear his voice so clearly she thought he must be speaking in the silence of her very crowded thoughts. But she saw his lips move. And she saw the Dragon rise. She thought the whole city must be able to see him; he eclipsed the very moons.
And she stood, watching him rise, until the Shadows called her back. The story was unfinished, and she knew that she would see it through to its end; its end was written, somewhere, on her body; had been a part of her for all of her adult life.
“Give them the peace of death, when age descends. Give them the freedom of death. Let them leave these lands when life is burden and not joy. Let none of us stand in their way, who know no such peace.”
And she understood, for just a moment, why the Old Ones had chosen to fashion life from things already living. Just a moment. We all want things for our children that we could not or did not have. And we try, and we’re not perfect, and we can’t always get it right. But when we fail, what do we do?
She spoke a single word. It wasn’t Elantran. It couldn’t be. She couldn’t even think of it as Elantran, although the rest had seemed very like it to her.
No names. No words to bind them. No words to give them life. No eternity. A life beyond words, outside of them.
We keep trying. We love, and we try not to fail again in the same way. We find other ways to fail. But we have to keep trying.
She saw Marai in the moonlight. She saw Marai begin to speak, and the words that bound her, the words that gave her power, faltered. It would kill her. And, Kaylin saw, in a brief flash, Marai would let it.
“No!” Her own voice. Her own thin voice. “No! Marai! Marai, you have Roshan!”
“My choice,” the Leontine said, and for the first time, the only time, she was entirely calm and free of fear or need. “You will let me make it, Eldest. You will not take it from me. You will tell my son—our son—this story, when he is old enough to understand it. You will tell him that he was loved. You will tell him that love, in the end, is not an excuse. You will tell him that what I want for him is what you want. He will choose. And he will face the consequences of that choice, as I face them. You will tell him that I pray to the ancestors that he makes a different choice and faces happier consequences.” And she reached out with Leontine hands, and those hands brushed Orogrim’s unrecognizable features, as if they could discern what lay beneath them.
Orogrim tore her chest apart with his claws. And then he lifted his face and stared directly at Kaylin, who stood too shocked to move.
Severn was there in an instant. Severn, blade drawn, bleeding. He would face Dragons for her, she knew. And the Shadows. And memories.
Orogrim leaped and Makuron descended, and two blades rose: Severn’s and Nightshade’s. One devoured flame. The other impaled shadow. But this time, this time, the Shadows were solid. One misshapen arm lay on the ground, shuddering into stillness at the force of the blow; the rest of the arm was still attached.
Wordless, Orogrim looked at the long stump, and then, eyes rounding, he looked at Kaylin. He looked at Marai’s body. He looked at Severn, and he moved then,
but he was slower, now. He was not recognizably Leontine; that much, he retained.
And it was a kindness, in its way.
As much of a kindness as angry gods allowed.
“They did not love us,” he roared, and one-armed, hampered, he turned to Severn. He could still fight; he could not fight and ignore the weapons and the blows aimed at him.
“No, Orogrim,” Kaylin said, uncertain that he would even hear. He had just killed Marai. “They feared you, and love can’t exist when there’s that much fear.”
His long, long claws caught the rotating chain of Severn’s weapon, but the momentum of that chain pulled him off his feet. He rolled along the ground, clumsier, tried to put a hand out, and misjudged; he had no hand on that arm.
“But Marai loved you, Orogrim.”
And Marai, child of shadows, had graced him—with death. Kaylin looked away as Severn closed, hating Orogrim and pitying him, and wondering if the face of death and danger was always tinged by this pathos.
Never wondering if she could have killed him, had she been Severn. She watched, bore witness to his furious struggles. His blood was dark, but crimson where it splashed stone; it sizzled where it splattered against molten rock.
Severn leaped, and landed; his blade was dark and wet and it didn’t reflect moonlight—or any light, really. She saw it strike, fall, saw at last the misshapen head roll away from its shoulders. Saw Severn fall to one knee. She started to move toward him, and stopped. The ground that she stood on was a small patch of solid rock, and to her front and sides, what had once been dirt or rock was now orange and glowing.
She heard Tiamaris roar, and she saw Makuron, haloed now by moonlight, as he roared his fury and his rage. Wordless, animal, very like Orogrim, he plummeted from the sky that was, for a moment, his fief, his empire.
Nightshade was there. Nightshade, the fief. Nightshade, the man. She thought she felt the ground rise just in front of her feet, before she was borne back by the glancing blow of a single talon.
Her arm broke beneath her and she lost the ability to breathe. But she felt the force of the Outcaste’s ancient name, and she struggled against it, the sharp pain of bones fading into a throb.