“Some cultures have wedding bands,” Helen said, possibly attempting to be helpful.
Kaylin didn’t really understand those, either. Why was it necessary? Why did someone else’s claim matter so much? Was italwaysabout power and ownership? Ugh. Her cheek was warm. Possibly the rest of her face had warmed up as well because she was flailing. Asking all the questions, but not in a way that would actually get useful answers.
What was acceptance?
Did it mean that she had to somehow love the fieflord? She cared very much for Annarion, his brother, but she’d hated life in Nightshade, especially after she’d seen what Tiamaris had begun to build. Her life in the streets, her hiding from Ferals, her scrounging for scraps of food—that was a function of a lord of territory who considered the people living in it like any other form of wildlife. They survived or they didn’t.
She even understood it on some level.
But the Emperor’s Elantra and Nightshade’s fief were so different. It wasn’t that people on the right side of the Ablayne were somehow richer—Kaylin had struggled to make endsmeet before Helen—it was that they were safer. There were orphanages. There were doctors in their large medical buildings. There were Hawks and other officers of the Halls of Law. There werelaws, and people like Kaylin were meant to enforce or uphold them. They werepaidfor their allegiance to those laws.
Nightshade hadn’t cared. He barely saw the fieflings as people at all. Before Kaylin met the cohort—and Annarion in particular—she would have said Nightshade was incapable of what she herself called love. He saw power—all Barrani did. Hehadpower. But love existed outside of power, didn’t it?
The foundling hall was run by a Leontine who treated the orphans as if they were her children. What did she gain from that? Kaylin at least got paid.
It was impossible to accept the Erenne mark as a symbol of love, because therewas no loveinvolved with its placement. Not on his part. Not on hers. But there was attachment or maybe hope. She was Chosen. Annarion had been trapped in the West March. She’d suspected, since meeting Annarion, that the purpose of marking her, of staking that claim, was to bring the Chosen under his control, or at least into his orbit.
She’d never asked.
“Serralyn,” she said to thin air, “I understand what Androsse thinks he’s asking me to do—but I don’t think it’s relevant. If he’s saying the mark itself was placed one-sidedly, and the bleeding I’ve been experiencing means that it was placed there as an act of love or communion, he is totally, utterly wrong. If there was love, it wasn’t something I recognizeaslove. And maybe that’s how the Barrani operate—but the cohort is what I would consider loving, which is proof that it’s possible that notallBarrani do.”
Think. If it weren’t for Annarion, would she care what happened to Nightshade at all? He would be like most of the High Court to her: irrelevant to her life, her work, and her job.
Except she was here, trying to figure out how to use a mark she’d never asked for and didn’t understand. Maybe because of Annarion. Maybe because Nightshade had saved her life, possibly more than once. Maybe because he’d given her his True Name, but he’d never tried to use it to control her.
Did it matter why?
She wanted to save him. She’d wanted that on the day he’d been attacked. She’d brought him to Helen, where he’d be safe, because she wasn’t certain she could get him to his Tower in one piece. He was here, in her home, his brother hovering over him.
“I need to know how to accept it,” she finally said. “I can’t love him the way the Ancestors loved. I don’t think I could loveanyonethe way the Ancestors loved. And I can’t love him the wayImight, in theory, love someone in the future. But he didn’t love me when he marked me, either. If Androsse is right, there’s no way the Erenne mark should work in either direction.”
“Serralyn says Androsse finds the question upsetting. He is not impressed by either your ignorance or Nightshade’s. He is, however, willing to allow that Ancestral love and possessiveness were almost inseparable. In the absence of love, one might call the result slavery; in the presence of love, one might call it exaltation.”
“There was no exaltation, believe me.”
“But no slavery either?”
“If Androsse is making the argument that Nightshade actually cared about me as a person, he’s clearly been stuck in the fiction section of the library for too long.” She hesitated. “I’ve seen the fate of those who love him. They’re living statues. Sometimes he lets them out to breathe—but otherwise they’re stone. Whatever I felt, whatever I accepted, would lead to that fate.”
“Are they mortal?” Helen asked.
Kaylin nodded.
“And they chose to be so transformed?”
She nodded again. “I think, maybe, time doesn’t pass for them unless they’re with Nightshade. In his way, he cares for them. But it’s not a way I could ever accept. My whole life isn’t Nightshade—and it would never be Nightshade, even if I could convince myself I loved him.”
“I doubt you could join that statuary, regardless. You bear the Marks of the Chosen. You have Hope. What do you, Chosen, sorcerer, Hawk, want to do?”
“I want to kick his ass out of bed. I want him to wake up, to be healed, and to figure out what the hells is going on in the Barrani High Court.”
Annarion coughed. To Kaylin’s surprise, he was almost laughing. How long had it been since he’d done that?
“Honestly,” she said to him, “I want the two of you to stop fighting. I want you to forgive him because you’re the only other person I could say, with no hesitation, he loves. And the fighting seems like a waste of love, because it’s clear you love him, still. You’re not ready to cut him out of your life, and he’s willing to endure your anger and disappointment until you can see beyond it. I understand the disappointment. I get it. But there’s more than just disappointment there.”
“Do you think he’ll know what’s happened?”
“He’ll know what’s happened to him. If nothing else, it gives us more information. This is bigger than your brother—but he’s central to some of it. The first time I encountered Barrani who’d ditched their names was in Nightshade. And if our enemies consider Nightshade enough of a threat they’d send war bands into the fiefs, he’s someone we need.”