Cast in Sorrow

How did you live with that? How did you look yourself in the mirror without seeing the face of a coward and a liar?

The small dragon bit her ear.

She inhaled. Exhaled. You lived with it the same damn way you’d lived with the deaths and the failure the first time. Badly. Badly, at first. But it was just another thing to hate. Just another thing to survive. She’d done it before, but honestly? She’d been so certain that she couldn’t. She’d been waiting for life to end, too afraid to end it on her own.

And she wasn’t that child anymore.

“I can’t give you words that won’t come,” she told the small dragon, looking up at the face of the water as she spoke. “But I’m not sure they would bind you anyway. I’m not sure they would give you form or shape or whatever it is you need. I’m not a sorcerer. I’m not immortal. I’m nowhere near ancient—although I’m going to feel like I am tomorrow. If I wake up.

“I understand how you relate to my life—my small, tiny life. You’re my dreams. You’re my daydreams. You’re my what-if’s. You’re the way I torture myself at night, when sleep won’t come, or sleep won’t stay.”

The small dragon was utterly still; he might, for a moment, have been made entirely of glass.

“But without some of those dreams, without the pain and the what-if, without the guilt, I wouldn’t be a Hawk. When I was five I couldn’t even imagine crossing the bridge. I stood on the outside of a life I thought I wanted, but I couldn’t make myself walk over the river. I don’t know what’s possible, most of the time. Hells, on a bad day? I feel like walking across the street safely is impossible.

“You’re not hope,” she continued. “Because when I think of Steffi and Jade, I have none. I have the dreams of who they might have been if they were still alive. I have dreams about arriving in time to save them. You know what those dreams are. You saw them. You heard them.

“But you’re the place hope comes from, and sometimes, that’s the only thing that keeps me moving. So. I need you in my life. I need you like fire or water or air or earth. Without what you are, I’d be dead a dozen times over. More.”

The small dragon tilted his head to one side. His eyes were now the size they’d been for almost all of his short life, or at least the part of it that overlapped with Kaylin’s; his wings were not. But they thinned as she watched; she saw them as gauze now, but they were as long as the skirts of the reformed dress.

“I don’t want to live without you, because I don’t think I can. I don’t think anyone can, not even Teela.”

“I heard that.”

Of course she had.

“But I don’t know how to chain you. I don’t know how to cage you. I don’t know how to control you or keep you—”

He bit her ear again.

She briefly considered strangling him. His wings tightened, but they were so thin now, they had no strength. Yet they were warm. She let the water go, and gathered an increasingly tattered cape around her shoulders and her arms, hugging it as if it were fabric and she were a child again.

But she wasn’t a child. She wasn’t surprised to see the wings slowly vanish, but their warmth remained as the small dragon sat up on her shoulder and yawned.

“Kitling.”

She looked up at Teela, whose eyes were now blue. Happiness—no, joy—apparently didn’t last long.

“What is he doing?”

Kaylin frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Can’t you see them?” Teela said something about survival instincts in distinctly uncharitable Leontine. She marched over to Kaylin, her boots striking stone hard enough to break it. She caught both of Kaylin’s wrists. “What are you holding in your hands?”

Kaylin started to say “wings,” but fell silent; she was holding strands of multicolored light. They were becoming insubstantial, even as she tightened her grasp. “Mostly...nothing.”

Teela shook her. “Look at your marks.”

She did, and her eyes widened. The marks were no longer the dark, coal-gray they were when they were inactive. Nor were they gold or blue. They were multihued and scintillating; they looked very like black opals; like the eyes of the small dragon.

The small dragon hissed. It was the continuous exhalation that passed for laughter in winged lizards. And he was that now. He looked unchanged.

She poked him. He bit her finger, but not hard enough to break skin. He did hiss at Teela, in an entirely less amused way, when she failed to let go of Kaylin’s wrists.

It was never about names, the water said, from a remove. You are mortal, Kaylin; not even the Ancients could contain the whole of the elemental you hold in your hands. They did not try.

“But what is he now?”

What was he when you found him? He is not less. He is, I think, more. But he has chosen. He has named you.

“But—”

It is not a name in the Barrani sense of the word, no. But the story you told him was the story he chose. He will not be what he almost became, she added softly. His power is dependent upon yours, and you are...mortal. But while you allow it, he will remain with you.

“If I ask him to leave, will he leave?” He bit her ear.

I have one task to perform for the green. There is one other mortal who waits in the greenheart; he waits for you. Tell him to come to the waters of my fountain.

“Why?”

He will understand. Or perhaps he will not; the greenheart is not what it was when last he ventured into it. She lifted a hand again. Come home. Ybelline is concerned.

“About me?”

No, Kaylin. But she will speak to you if you approach her. It is time.

* * *

Kaylin walked out of the heart of the green, and into the heart of the green, Teela by her side. “I’m fine,” she told the Barrani Hawk. She even gave her a shove in the direction of the rest of her kin. “I’m honestly fine. There’s nothing that can hurt me here.”

Teela snorted, but it was a halfhearted sound; she wanted to join the others. After a short while, she did.

Nightshade wore the crown of the Teller and the Teller’s robes; they were unchanged. Kaylin’s dress was not. It was still green, but the skirt hadn’t shrunk any. She grabbed the train and bunched it in her arms.

The Lord of the West March stood by the side of his Consort, his eyes blue. The Warden stood between Nightshade and Lirienne, his eyes even darker. Ynpharion stood behind the Consort, his hand on the hilt of a sheathed sword. His eyes were the usual blue of caution. The Consort’s eyes, however, were the color of Kaylin’s dress.

Annarion was speaking with Nightshade. The others were loosely grouped around them. Kaylin glanced at Severn; Severn was watching, but he kept his distance from every other person in the clearing. He smiled as Kaylin stepped into view.

Where’s Iberrienne?

I believe he chose to retreat.

To where?

The Hallionne Alsanis. It wasn’t entirely his idea; the eagles came.

Kaylin swallowed, and Severn offered a wry grin. He is invited to remain in Alsanis with his brother. I may visit if I so choose.

You can’t kill him in the Hallionne.

No, was the grave reply.

She shouldn’t have been happy. She was. Oh. You’re to go to the fountain.