“You are carrying something in your hand. Hope can sense it; I cannot. But I am aware of what you can see. What do you carry, Kaylin?” Helen’s question was gentle and measured, as if it had been asked in a classroom and not an emergency.
“I don’t know.” But she held the orb up. The threads that had been pulled from Nightshade—the threads that had spread throughout his comatose body—had been absorbed by the orb; it looked the same as it had looked when she had first taken it from wherever it was Terrano had been.
But she’d never seen it in this house. She’d never seen it, as she did her Marks, with her eyes closed. She hadn’t seen it—before—through Hope’s wing. Something had changed, or was changing, and it was happening here, where Helen was the most vulnerable.
She held the orb up, and saw, as she did, that the eyes ofthe Yvonnes followed it. They could see what she held. But in their eyes, the reflection of that orb was much, much brighter; it changed the color of their eyes. It changed the pallor of their skin. Ghostly skin seemed to gain the warmth of flesh tones that had been absent, as if their Barrani roots were reasserting themselves.
Mrs. Erickson had seen them as ghosts—as ghostly ghosts, which the dead didn’t look like most of the time. Maybe that was because they weren’t actually dead. Maybe it was because they’d never been alive. Yvonne herself was alive. The many Yvonnes had, according to Severn, been surrounding the real Yvonne without harming her.
They would have hurt Severn if he’d allowed it. If they had appeared to be Yvonne, they weren’t. They’d taken her form, her shape, for reasons that weren’t clear to Severn. If he didn’t understand it, Kaylin wasn’t going to—not right now. But he had found Yvonne, found the many Yvonnes, in the heart of the green, in a place even the most respected of the Wardens had never seen. They were Shadows to Severn. No one who grew up in the fiefs thought of Shadow as anything but death.
Not all Shadows were death. Kaylin knew that. If these Shadows, these ghosts, these Yvonnes had existed to guard and protect the Yvonne who was in Nightshade’s guest room, they couldn’t be enemies.
She felt Nightshade’s brief flash of anger. She hadn’t really missed that. But he could lecture her later.
If you survive. If Helen does.
Definitely angry. Or disgusted. Sometimes it was hard to separate the two.
She exhaled. As the orb remained in her uplifted palm, the Yvonnes continued to stare at it. None of them blinked. Even if their eyes had been normal Barrani eyes in appearance, the lack of any blinking would have been disturbing.
But not so disturbing as what happened next: all of theYvonnes opened their mouths, as if they were part of a harmonious choir. No words emerged, no song, no harmony; it was a storm of sound, syllables, notes, oral textures, overlapping and crashing into each other. Kaylin would have lifted her hands to cover her ears if one of them hadn’t been occupied.
The orb in her hand began to vibrate as the sound of the Yvonnes touched it, coming from all directions. It began to wobble as if it were an egg. Kaylin almost dropped it in her shock.
Squawk!
“I don’t want something to hatch!”
Squawk. Squawk.
She would have argued. Opened her mouth and drew breath to do exactly that. But the sound of cracking stone filled any small space left between the sounds of the Yvonnes.
Helen cried out a warning in a language that felt like a physical blow. The Yvonnes replied in actual concert, the cacophony of different sounds blending and cohering into one extended cry. Kaylin’s Marks, suspended above her skin, began to lose their gold, as if the power at their core had cracked the surface of their shapes to reveal what lay within them.
She’d never seen the Marks like this before. Couldn’t tell if it was in response to the Yvonnes or Helen’s warning.
None of the cohort entered this room. None of the guests did, either. But something had broken the floor just ahead of where Kaylin stood; she could see the crack clearly; beneath it was darkness. She knew the stones with engraved True Words were just an appearance. But as the crack began to expand, she wondered what would happen if the stones themselves broke; the crack had appeared between words.
She’ll die, Severn said, the words sharp with worry.We can’t come to you.He wanted her to leave; she felt that clearly—as if he’d spoken the actual words. But he knew she couldn’t. Sheunderstood that no one else would come to her rescue—or Helen’s, more importantly—here; they couldn’t reach the space that Kaylin now occupied. The only person in residence who could was Kaylin.
Kaylin, and whatever it was that caused these cracks to form.
She looked to the Yvonnes as the Marks of the Chosen grew larger. Although they weren’t attached to her skin at the moment, she felt their weight, their feverish heat; she would have closed her eyes if she thought it would help; she squinted instead. The light was so bright, the dim Yvonnes could only barely be seen.
But the orb in her hand remained visible, blocking light, quivering with sound.
“Hope—tell me that this isn’t some kind of weird egg.”
Hope said nothing.
“If we were standing anywhere else, it would be fine—but nothere. Not at the heart of Helen!” She’d come here because this was where Helen was concentrated. If this space vanished or broke, none of the protection she offered her residents and guests would hold. Helen had always stood alone, above the passage of time and the changes time inevitably brought.
“I am not alone now,” Helen said. Her Avatar didn’t appear. “You are here with me. I understand the fear of risk, but I trust you. Trust yourself. Do what must be done. There is more than one force that seeks to root itself within my domain. I cannot see the guests you brought with you; I am uncertain that they can see me at all.
“What is it they seek to do?”
As if they could hear Helen, the ones Kaylin could see beyond the light of the Marks of the Chosen opened their mouths. This time, there was no sound. But it was worse than that. This time, Shadow tendrils emerged from their mouths.