"Do not make me hit you," Teela said through clenched teeth. She threw one backward glance at her mother, now suspended, blood no longer running from multiple wounds. "Do not make me do this. I have seen this day every day of my life, kitling. Every. Single. Day. It drove me to kill my father, the single act I refuse to regret in a long history littered with regrets.
"Do you understand? This made me. It made me what I am now. Whatever you profess to love about me-it comes from this."
Mandoran came to stand beside Teela; he put a gentle hand on her arm. "Teela-" And then he stopped, his eyes widening.
Teela's eyes widened, as well.
Mandoran turned to the others, who stood frozen as if holding breath. "I can-I can hear her. I can hear Teela!"
"What. Did. You. Do." Teela grabbed Kaylin's left hand; there was no longer a mark on her palm. She froze, looking into the eyes of the familiar; eyes that now seemed to stretch halfway up to the sky, the words there multiple and endless.
"I-"
"Kaylin."
"I healed it, Teela. The name. I-I healed it."
Teela let go of her hand. She closed her eyes. Then she turned and threw her arms around Mandoran's neck; he laughed, although he was clearly surprised. Kaylin would have spoken, but there was something in the hug that made her feel like a voyeur. She wasn't part of Teela's life; not the way these people were.
But she understood what Teela's anger meant, what Teela was trying, around the shape of her own pain, her past, and her grief and loneliness, to tell her.
And Kaylin turned, at last, to the words.
Chapter 27
"I know," Kaylin said to a creature that was no longer small, no longer a dragon, no longer simply an annoying but unique pet. "I know what you are, now."
She felt the rumble of his voice; she felt the voice of the green. She understood that the moment was almost done, and she understood what she had to do, because she understood that it was all she could safely do.
She approached Terrano first; he frowned, the way any Barrani with little experience of mortals would. She tried not to hold it against him. She wasn't surprised to find that he wasn't solid; he had no flesh, nothing to impede the progress of her palm as she pressed it against, and then through, the center of his chest.
He frowned and stepped back. No. His lips moved; nothing else did.
Kaylin closed her eyes. "We don't have time for this. You can stay, Terrano, or you can go. But you can't live between, like this. The word at the heart of your existence here, the word the green has tried to somehow preserve, belongs here. Leave it, and go, or stay with it and become it."
"Terrano," Mandoran said.
But Terrano shook his head, his lips quirking up in an odd smile. "I can't go back. There's nothing for me. My family is dead now. I didn't even kill them," he added, without a care in the world, and without any sign of grief. "I waited for Teela. But I waited so we could leave together. There are worlds out there," he added. "Not like this one. Different. Better. We can be anything. We can be nothing. I won't. I won't do it. I don't want it." Terrano was part of Teela. Teela was part of Terrano. "Save her mother. Save her, and she won't lay her curse on Teela."
"It wasn't a curse."
"It was. Save her."
And at this moment, it didn't matter. "I can't do what you ask."
He laughed. "You are the only one who can."
And she wanted to. She wanted to do it because if she could, she could save all her own dead. There would be no ghosts to lay to rest. There would be no paralyzing, self-destructive guilt, no self-loathing, no loss.
"This is the lie," she told Terrano softly. "I didn't understand how lies could be told with True Words. And they can't. Everything you can say with a True Word is itself. But we don't speak True Words. We don't speak true language; we speak its echoes. We dimly understand the shape of the words-but they don't mean the same thing to two different people. They can't.
"This is the lie," she continued. She turned to the giant eye of the familiar. "I can see what you want. Can you see it? It's there. And beside it, the heart of what I want. The only thing I've truly, desperately wanted in my life; the only thing I would die for.
"And they're the same, Terrano. They're the same. There are some words that can't exist here, not in the real world. Not in our lives. We can daydream them. We can pray for them. We can hope, and plead, and grieve. But we can't make them real-because they aren't. There's no way back. And the lie is that there is.
"Maybe familiars can grant that. Maybe they have the power to make the lie real. I have to guess that's exactly what they can do. But-it's still a lie. Because it's not part of the real world. It's part of our dreams. It's part of our nightmares. It's part of the us that we carry around inside of our heads. But that's all it can ever be."
He stared at her for one long, frozen moment. "No," he said. "It's not. It's not."
And Teela said clearly, "Vote."
Her voice carried; it rippled through the green. It was, in all ways, a Sergeant's voice. Marcus would have been proud.
But Kaylin said, "It's not a matter for vote. Mandoran didn't have a choice. I'm sorry for that. But you've lived centuries since the day your mother died. So have they. If you can't go back, if you can't deny what those centuries of living mean to you, they shouldn't have to do it, either." She turned to Mandoran and said, simply, "I'm sorry. I can't undo it.
"I won't force that change upon anyone else. I can't. But I won't let you run wild. Hundreds of people have died because of you. I won't let you kill the Hallionne or destroy the green."
"If we die here, the names will be lost-"
Kaylin shook her head. "Chosen, remember? I won't let the words be lost to the green. I'll return them, in the end, to the Lake."
"Terrano," Mandoran said again.
But Terrano shook his head. "I can't. I can't do it. I love you. I love you all as if you're part of me. But I'd lose all my limbs first. I'd go blind, deaf. I can't do it."
Kaylin closed her palm into a fist and withdrew it. Terrano's eyes widened. They seemed, for a moment, to sparkle. His face lit up with an incandescent smile; it took her breath away. It took all of their breaths away. He began to fade. Even before he was no longer visible, he was no longer Barrani in appearance, but the warmth of his unfettered delight lingered like a pall.
When Kaylin opened her hand again, she wasn't surprised to see a mark there. A red mark, much like Mandoran's had been. It was a less complicated letter form, but it was thinner and paler.
She approached Sedarias next, because Sedarias was the de facto leader of this group, inasmuch as it could be led. As she'd done for Terrano, she pressed her palm against, and then into, her heart.
"And so, all our years of waiting and planning have come, in the end, to this? We are to be diminished and returned as a curiosity to the Courts that were willing to sacrifice us?"
The familiar roared.
She raised both brows in a look of autocratic outrage that was nonetheless cool and contained. "Oh?"
"He speaks only the truth," a familiar voice said.
Kaylin was surprised, because it belonged to the brother of Alsanis. She couldn't remember the moment at which he'd disappeared; maybe he hadn't.
"You have been part of Alsanis for a long time, even in the reckoning of your kind. You might remain as guest. Or as ward. He has heard your voices when ours were lost to him. If you make this choice, he cannot compel. He will not be your cage, Sedarias. But if you allow it, he will be...your brother."
"My brother," Sedarias said grimly, "attempted to kill me four times in my childhood." But even saying it, she smiled. "Yes, Lord Kaylin. Terrano found ways to leave us. It was not Eddorian who approached Iberrienne, but Terrano. He was always ambitious, always precocious.
"I will accept what you offer."
Where Terrano had faded, Sedarias grew more solid. Kaylin's hand was pushed out; she didn't withdraw it. She saw the faint tinge of purple to eyes that then shaded green as they widened; she smiled. She didn't speak. But she looked at Teela and Mandoran, and then turned back to Kaylin. "Will I remember everything?"
Kaylin was surprised. "Yes. At least-I'd bet money on it. Mine, even."
Sedarias looked confused, and then looked up at Teela. Kaylin left them and moved on. She offered them all the choice, and they accepted what Terrano had rejected. But when she approached Annarion, he frowned. "The mark you bear-"
She had forgotten about the mark. These days, she almost always did. It was now just part of her face. The High Court more or less accepted it. The Vale? Maybe that was part of the reason they had been so unfriendly-but maybe not. They were Immortal; she wasn't.
"Yes," she said tersely. "It's your brother's." To her great surprise, he looked concerned, not disgusted.
"You must be mistaken-"
"Believe that I know where it came from. It's on my skin, remember?"
He glanced at the rest of the marks on her skin, and she grimaced. "It is not like those."