Chapter 27

27

Kaylin had already accepted that she couldn't see as Mrs. Erickson saw; she certainly didn't see the odd, shaky light as tears. "What about the other ghosts?"

"They were unhappy with me, and I don't blame them." The reply was gentle. "But they're much calmer now. You can see these as words, can't you?"

Kaylin nodded.

"Can you see the Ancient that way?"

"I didn't, before," Kaylin began. She stopped as she considered the question more carefully. To her eyes, the Ancient had looked like a giant—taller than even the Norranir. But it was the words that Azoria had bound, and the words from which she had drawn power, attempting to force them into shapes that weren't natively theirs.

"I think, if you can, it's important," Mrs. Erickson continued. "I can't see them the way you do."

"If you couldn't see them the way you do, I don't think any of the rest of us could do anything," Kaylin said softly. She closed her eyes; it had always been easier to see words with her eyes closed. Her own marks had always been clearest that way, but she found that the ghosts she'd carried with her could also be seen clearly, where they rested in Mrs. Erickson's hands.

What was less clear to Kaylin was the dead Ancient. Because she could see the Ancient with closed eyes; the irregular light that had made her uneasy was gone. What remained was a pale blue-gray glow, roughly in the shape of a giant; she could see arms, legs, the outline of chest, and even head. The regular features of a face were lost—those weren't visible behind closed eyelids.

But in the pale blue-gray glow, she could see, if she focused, differences in the light; brighter objects interspersed with emptiness. She could see words, but they weren't very clear to her eyes. She frowned. The ghosts from the palace hadn't been clear, either. They didn't glow; they looked like words written in smoke or mist, wavering like a mirage if she approached them too closely.

The Ancient was far more solid than the ghostly words had ever been to Kaylin's eyes. She could see, as she approached, that the interior of the shape of the body was composed entirely of words; they formed the bulk of the body. At first, she thought they were like her marks, but as she drew closer, she realized that was wrong.

The Ancient's words were far, far more complicated in shape and structure than the marks of the Chosen, taken individually, were. She had seen similarly complex words before, although she'd never made an attempt to speak them, to pronounce them. In at least one case it wouldn't have been safe.

She didn't have safety concerns in the same way now; she simply accepted that the Ancient's words were beyond her immediate grasp. But if they remained that way, she wasn't certain she could be of any help to Mrs. Erickson.

She turned back to look at Mrs. Erickson, wondering if she'd actually moved from the old woman's side at all. The space here was so distorted, she couldn't tell—and after a moment, she forgot. The flowers that decorated Mrs. Erickson's wrists and fingers seemed to be growing as Kaylin watched, and the wreath that sat upon her gray-white hair had become a crown of platinum and emerald. She could see trailing filaments, like very delicate vines, growing out of those flowers; it made her distinctly uncomfortable.

Azoria had bound one flower into the twelve-year-old Imelda's hair, braiding it in a specific way that Serralyn had said was once used for binding ceremonies in the West March; Kaylin had assumed she'd meant weddings. She wasn't nearly as certain of that now.

When the vines touched Mrs. Erickson's face, Kaylin reached out for them almost without thought. She'd meant to stop them from sinking into the older woman's skin; she hadn't intended to uproot them or remove the wreath from where it now sat.

But the moment she touched them, they thickened, they gained substance, if not weight. She could feel their texture, and she could smell newly turned earth.

Oh. The plants that had seemed to uproot themselves in an attempt to adorn Mrs. Erickson hadn't actually uprooted themselves at all. They were still planted in the green, still connected to it. Just as the single flower Azoria had twined in Mrs. Erickson's hair decades past had somehow maintained a very slight, very shallow connection to the green.

Kaylin gently separated out the disparate tendrils; she placed one root against each of the ghosts and was only a little surprised when they wrapped themselves around the body of the words, made manifest and physical by the power of the green—or the power of the Chosen. The words became brighter, the gold edging growing over the green until they seemed all of gold.

She could see the words more clearly than she had before, even when they'd been attached to her skin. They looked, to her eyes, like her own marks sometimes did when they lifted themselves from her skin, but these words were trailing slender vines.

Kaylin took the vines that remained in one hand, and approached the dead Ancient, and the dead Ancient's complicated words. She had, in the past, intuited meaning from the marks of the Chosen—but it had taken hours, and it had started with her need to find words that resonated with words she both understood and used. She'd found the right marks, but she had never been able to speak the words they represented; she'd chosen them entirely by instinct, by feel .

In just that fashion, she now stood in front of the Ancient, who was a quivering pile of words, a structure that seemed unstable and likely to fall apart without intervention.

When Tiamaris had attempted to teach her some of what he knew about True Words, he'd spoken of harmony, of cohesion of form and shape; he could see the way Shadow could twist or break the forms of True Words, attempting to change their meaning, their dictate. Kaylin had wondered at the time how he had been so certain, but he had more knowledge of Shadow, more knowledge of the fiefs, than most of the Dragon Court. At the time, she hadn't questioned it. He had stood beside her, he had encouraged her to actually read and pronounce the words at the heart of a Tower: the Tower he now captained.

She missed that, because she couldn't even form the syllables that were necessary—and she felt the necessity keenly.

In the absence of Tiamaris, she stood, vines in hand. She began to attach them to the words she could see shining faintly beneath what she assumed was skin; it felt like stone to the touch; the tips of her fingers were cold. Still, the cold was far less intense than it had been before Mrs. Erickson had called the ghosts—commanded the ghosts—back to her hands.

The vines that had grown from the wreath had wrapped themselves around the ghosts Mrs. Erickson once again carried; the vines in Kaylin's hands couldn't find purchase in the words of the Ancient. But she could see those words waver and push toward either her hands or the vines—it wasn't clear which, to Kaylin.

Something was in the way. She couldn't push through it to reach the words. She could see them; she just couldn't touch them. Not yet.

But the green's power wasn't the only power she had access to. She reached for the Ancient; she'd done it once before. The Ancient was dead. Healing shouldn't work. But she'd never fully understood the power of the marks of the Chosen, and she'd never actually tried to heal a dead person before, because death rendered healing irrelevant. Healing, for Kaylin, was as instinctive as any use of the marks of the Chosen; the body knew its correct shape, and she poured power into the body to allow it to heal itself.

She'd poured power into the words Azoria had attempted to transform, as if Azoria herself were just another aspect of Shadow.

She twined the roots of the green's flowers around her fingers, and then spread the palms of her hands against the stone; it was much colder than she'd anticipated. As cold as the ghostly words had been. But the dress she wore radiated heat and warmth; her hands remained steady.

She inhaled.

When she exhaled, she exhaled words. Unintentional words. Words in a language that felt familiar to the ear but were in no way familiar to the tongue—or at least not hers.

Oh. The green. She was here in part as a representative of the green's will; that was what the dress meant .

The green was here, she was wearing the dress, and she was beginning to tell the story the green wanted told. The regalia , or perhaps something similar. She couldn't ask the green, or perhaps she could—but she wouldn't understand the answer, if she could even hear it.

The marks of the Chosen resonated with the voiced words. Maybe Kaylin's role here was to serve as both Teller and harmoniste. That was what she hoped.

And she hoped it until she heard Mrs. Erickson's voice: it was strong and clear—certainly stronger than it was during their various day-to-day encounters.

The wreath of flowers was the crown of the Teller, possibly in its purist sense.

Kaylin hadn't understood the role of the harmoniste in the green, not fully, until now. She'd understood what her role was; she'd understood that in the moment Nightshade began his long and complicated story, he could smooth out the flow of the narrative strands, weaving them together. She couldn't come up with the story herself—she didn't have his history, didn't have Barrani memory. But in the memory, in the narrative, she found her role. She had brought Hope fully into himself, had named him, had finally fulfilled the role of midwife. And she had healed the injured, almost insubstantial names of the cohort, lending them the power to become what they once had been: the source of life and self to the eleven friends Teela had left behind almost a millennium ago.

She understood that controlling the narrative, presenting it properly , required both intent and power. The power to hear the various strands of story Mrs. Erickson now offered the dead Ancient. The dead Ancient was the target of this regalia , this offering of the green.

It was to the Ancient she therefore looked. To the Ancient, and to the ghosts that rested now in Mrs. Erickson's hands. What she had done for the cohort in the green, she now attempted to do for these two: Ancient and ghosts.

She understood that the Ancients weren't alive in any sense of the word she understood. They couldn't be healed in the same way living beings could. The Barrani were alive; they had bodies, they bled, and they died; their words did not die with them. Instead, they returned to the Lake of Life—created by the Ancients—to await another chance at rebirth.

These words were not words meant for that Lake, but they were like, very like, the names of the cohort had been—thin, transparent, far too extended. She had infused the names of Teela's friends with the power, with the shape , True Words required to support life, to be alive, and she'd offered them, name by name, to the cohort who had every reason to despise their kin—living or dead—and possibly the world into which they'd been born.

She had seen and held those names, had rekindled their purpose, but still didn't know them, couldn't speak them, couldn't see them as she had when she last wore this dress, guided by the unknown, unknowable will of the green.

Teela had been chosen as harmoniste once; Teela had worn this dress. But whatever Teela made of her role in the green had not managed to liberate her trapped friends; she hadn't even managed to reach them, to hear them, although she knew their True Names.

Kaylin listened to Mrs. Erickson. She listened to Mrs. Erickson speak to the Ancient about his future—him, not they or it—and the finding of precious purpose; she listened as Mrs. Erickson offered advice, comfort, and understanding. Mrs. Erickson was mortal, had been born mortal, would die as a mortal. The Ancient was not. But Mrs. Erickson's signal strength was her ability to find small, genuine bridges—and to walk across them, eyes open.

She did that now.

Kaylin continued to speak in a language not her own, even if the words were literally attached to her skin, because it was Kaylin who was the translator here. Kaylin who chose which strands of Mrs. Erickson's advice would resonate and which were too mortal, too personal, to do so.

She began to sweat. The ice of the ghosts had left her, and she almost regretted it; she was hot now, and her arms were trembling not from the weight of the ghosts, but from the flow of power. The marks on her skin had risen, brilliant green, edged in gold; they started to spin slowly in place. Slowly became quickly as she began to choose the story itself; to knit disparate parts into a whole that the Ancient could understand. She didn't choose the words that conveyed the story the Teller was offering, but she did choose the commonalities between a lonely old woman whose purpose had vanished when Jamal, Katie, Esme, and Callis had finally been free to pass on and a godlike being whose purpose had likewise ended.

Only Jamal had insisted on remaining until he knew Mrs. Erickson would be safe, and safety, in the eyes of the perpetual child Jamal had been since his death, meant that someone else would look after her. Someone else would go the distance to protect her. Kaylin was better than Jamal in Jamal's view because Kaylin wasn't trapped in a building; Kaylin wouldn't scream in an agony of helplessness if Mrs. Erickson fell and broke a leg. Kaylin cared about the old woman. Not, of course, as much as Jamal, in Jamal's opinion—but it was as close as he could get.

For some reason, this strand of Mrs. Erickson's story seemed viscerally important; Kaylin couldn't elide it, couldn't set it aside. Nor, when it came to that, could she edit out Mrs. Erickson's daily life: the baking for the Hawks, the telling of her life to the children who now had no life of their own. She was the window through which they might seem or feel alive, and she was grateful to them, loved them, wanted to give them at least that much for as long as she could.

She had always regretted that the food she baked couldn't be eaten by the dead, but she understood that new stories, new adventures, came only in her contacts with the living. On good days and bad, she therefore made the trek to the Halls of Law. She might have chosen different venues, but she heard such interesting things while waiting for her turn to approach the public desk and make her report, and some of those things amused the children endlessly.

No, she continued, she hadn't always been alone with the children. She'd been married, too. Kaylin almost stopped speaking at that point, because the word marriage didn't come easily to the green. There were clearly similar concepts, but it wasn't the concept that the green—through its harmoniste—had trouble conveying; it was the love that led to marriage. The green understood Mrs. Erickson's sense of responsibility for those dead children. Marriage, not so much. But Kaylin chose to keep that thread, because it led to what followed.

Loneliness. Longing. Despair. Certainty that her life was over. Mrs. Erickson had been old enough that she felt she would never meet another partner. Who else would love a woman who could see and talk to invisible people? Who else would believe her and trust her? Who else would accept her care and concern for those invisible children, and help her fashion as much of a life for them as she possibly could?

Marriage to Mrs. Erickson, to Imelda, included those children and her sense of duty to them. She'd been lucky to find one person. She'd never been so lucky before, and she knew luck was something she couldn't rely on. She had no idea how life could continue.

But the children, the weight of duty to them, forced her to find her footing. Helped her to continue to put one foot in front of the other. And time slowly did the rest of the work. Helped her to understand that love didn't die. Love—the ability to love—had not abandoned her. Was it the same love? No. But in her grief, she had all but forgotten the strength of it.

And it returned. It returned first in unremarkable things—baking, needlework, interacting with the children. It returned as she realized she had to do something , had to have something that would take her out of her home. Happiness had dwelled there when her husband had lived; loss and despair, a reminder that he was dead, had been what remained.

The Hawks provided the external world. Their tolerance became a grudging acceptance, and the grudging acceptance became, over time, genuine affection. Genuine protectiveness.

This was the life Mrs. Erickson had built for herself after catastrophic loss.

But the children became her fear as she aged. Age was inevitable if one lived. Injuries became easier to inflict, took longer to heal. She would not live forever, and the children would be dead forever—dead, trapped, and isolated.

But ghosts had become her anchor, even then. The ghosts that she now had with her. And the Ancient himself, dead, bound, trapped in this space just as Jamal had been trapped in hers. Yes, he wasn't mortal, hadn't lived a mortal life—but perhaps he was the ghost that inhabited Azoria's home, just as the children had inhabited Mrs. Erickson's.

Kaylin felt the flow of words, the invocation of the green, die. Her mouth was open, but no further words came to occupy it. She turned to look at Mrs. Erickson then.

"I want for you what I wanted for the children. I want you to be free, to move on to a better place than this. I don't really understand what your purpose was. I'm an old woman. I'm used to being mostly invisible—but maybe it was easier for me because even as a child, I had only the love of the dead and my parents. People outside of my home avoided me.

"Because I'm alive, I found purpose. I found a new home. I found new friends. And I found new ghosts, people my power might be able to help." She stopped speaking, her gaze focused; clearly the Ancient was speaking to her now. Kaylin could no longer hear its voice at all.

"I'm mortal," Mrs. Erickson replied. "I never had a grand purpose. I never had the powers you naturally have. For me, a small purpose was what I needed, and it's all I could handle. But you're not me. What you were and what I am are so completely different, you can't live the life I built on the foundation of loss. I'm not sure you'd want to, either.

"But if death for you is an end to purpose, you can build a life around a new purpose. These," she said, her hands moving, "are my friends. But they are, I believe, more like you than like me. And they will stay with you." She lifted her hands, cupped around the ghosts of words; as Kaylin watched, the physicality of the green marks dwindled.

No, that was wrong. The gold edging grew, spreading across the surface of each different component until the ghosts looked like every other mark Kaylin had carried.

Kaylin understood then. The words approached the Ancient; the threads around them followed. They didn't struggle, didn't attempt to pull away, to draw back; they seemed to speed up until they touched the Ancient's current body. Her hands were still pressed to the Ancient's skin; she felt the moment they joined with him.

Had felt something on a much smaller level before, exactly once.

Bellusdeo.

Yes , Hope said.

Mrs. Erickson was not yet finished. Kaylin had finished with the duties given her as harmoniste, but she had only barely begun the duties of the Chosen. As the new words joined the complicated, messy symbols that comprised the Ancient, their gold coloration began to spread across what they touched. She could now see the pattern, the sense of the broken bits; could see how the new words must be placed, or how components of each ghost fit into the gaps that had existed.

"It's very difficult for me to do this," Mrs. Erickson said, continuing. "But you won't have any peace unless I do. If I understand what you used to be, you helped to create the world. Helped to create all the people who populate it. Everything we are comes from your people. We are all, in some sense, your descendants, your children.

"Therefore I command you: protect your children, where it is possible. No, not every one of them; they are no longer small and in need of a parent's guidance. I think you understand my intent, and it is intent that is important here. They cannot be worth more than your new life; Azoria was also a descendant of the Ancients. She attempted to harm you, attempted to control you—and you must not let that happen.

"But you might find, as I did, that there is purpose in such protection, and you might find an end to death, just as I did. That is what I command of you." Her voice trembled at the very end, but Kaylin felt the steel in it, the command in it, even as she worked.

Severn slid an arm around not her shoulders, but her waist, as if to carry her weight for her. Oh. Her knees were sagging, her hands trembling. She lost Mrs. Erickson's voice as she worked. Lost everything but the Ancient, the new formation of words, the rightness or harmony of their full joining.

And she understood, as she did, what had gone wrong with Bellusdeo's sisters. Understood how she might give Bellusdeo the same unity, the same wholeness.

"Yes," Mrs. Erickson said, surprising her, because she hadn't thought she'd spoken the words out loud. "Yes, in this moment, I think you can do exactly that. I wish you could see what I see," she added, voice continuing to tremble. "But it doesn't matter. I know you'll take my word for it.

"Severn, be a dear, and get Bellusdeo?"

She spoke as if Severn were Jamal. Then again, she talked to Kaylin as if she were Jamal as well.

"Can it wait?"

"No, I don't think it can. When the Ancient is reborn—and he is being reborn now—we won't have his power. And I don't think we'll have the power of what the Keeper called the green, either. I believe Kaylin can ultimately help Bellusdeo, but it must be now."

The arm around her waist left then.

"The Ancient—or the green—will allow Bellusdeo's passage; it won't build a wall that can't be surmounted."

Kaylin didn't open her eyes. She didn't need to. Bellusdeo's voice, she could easily hear. The Dragon was panicked and infuriated. Kaylin knew what the color of the Dragon's eyes must be; seeing them wouldn't change anything.

But when Mrs. Erickson, whose hands were now empty, reached for Bellusdeo's, Bellusdeo became visible. Bellusdeo and all eight of her sisters. None of them spoke, but Bellusdeo didn't, either. They had accepted possible eternity as invisible ghosts the moment they understood the damage the Ancient could do. Because they had all served a vanished kingdom in a dead world.

It was Bellusdeo herself who was the shattered wreck; Bellusdeo who had felt the deaths of all her sisters as the permanent loss it had become. Bellusdeo who had—what did they call it?—survivor's guilt.

Mrs. Erickson was a font of affection. Bellusdeo was older by far, but to Mrs. Erickson they were all children. It was no surprise that she'd come to care so much for Bellusdeo in such a short time; Bellusdeo had been entirely open with Mrs. Erickson. Far more so than she had with any other person she'd encountered.

The flowers of the green did not disconnect from Mrs. Erickson; the almost imperceptible roots the green had bound around the words of the Ancient remained there. But some of those slender roots spread from the rings on Mrs. Erickson's fingers, trailing between the hands of the old woman the green had chosen as the Teller to the Dragon whose hands she had clasped.

Kaylin turned to Bellusdeo, letting one of her hands fall away.

"Do not stop," Evanton said. Or shouted. She felt his voice as an earthquake.

But she heard the rumbling of a different tremor, and heard, for the first time, the almost living voice of what had once been dead. It was striking, and very different. The Ancient understood what Mrs. Erickson desired for Bellusdeo, and it seemed as if the green did as well.

The Ancient spoke.

Let her do what she must; she is Chosen for a reason. And I am no longer what I was; what she needed to achieve for our sake, she has achieved. This is my gift of gratitude to her, to Imelda, and to the boundless green.

Kaylin therefore placed the one hand she'd freed from the Ancient's skin against one of Bellusdeo's hands. They formed a triplet: Imelda Erickson, Kaylin Neya, and Bellusdeo.

She could feel Bellusdeo's True Name. The True Name she herself had helped Bellusdeo and Maggaron form. A name that would not be encumbered by the Outcaste, who had played a part in the loss of her sisters.

She had forgotten at the time what a True Name was. What the essence of a True Name meant. She knew now. She knew that Bellusdeo's name had not been fully whole. Here, in this space, wearing this dress, attached to an old woman whom the Avatar of her home had loved instantly, she could sense the subtle nuance, the subtle absence.

The name itself would not change; it was what it had always been meant to be. Just as True Names did not entirely define the character of the Barrani they brought to life, the True Name of the gold Dragon did not entirely define who she had become. It should have, because the spirits of the women who had lived with their partial names should have been part of Bellusdeo from the beginning of her adult life.

Sensing the dead, sensing the living, seeing the connection, Kaylin worked. The Ancient was no longer her concern, and Evanton would be very angry about that later. But Bellusdeo was one of Kaylin's people, and if you couldn't make time for your friends, if you couldn't reach out to help them when they needed you most, what did friendship mean?

Bellusdeo didn't argue. Maybe she couldn't. Two of her sisters did immediately.

But they were dead, and they couldn't actually harm Kaylin, who otherwise would have been smart enough not to anger a Dragon. Nor could they persuade Bellusdeo, because the gold Dragon couldn't hear them, no matter how very desperately she wanted to.

Losing her sisters was like losing limbs—and given what Kavallac had said about the birth of an adult female Dragon, it probably was. She was both Bellusdeo and at the same time incapable of being, or feeling, whole.

Kaylin saw the ghosts of her sisters begin to shimmer, even the ones who were mouthing dire warnings, saw the way their growing lack of visual substance followed the binding threads of the green, and poured as much power into Bellusdeo as she could access. This wasn't healing in the traditional sense. It required focus and intent, just as healing the Ancient had. This wasn't about what the body needed. The body had always known its correct shape, its healthy state. Kaylin had healed the gold Dragon before, and she'd done it the normal way, if healing could be considered normal.

This was nothing like that, because it wasn't the body that was damaged, torn, broken. This required deliberation, understanding; maybe there was no natural shape for a living person's soul. A body could live without its soul—Jamal's had, even when he had been shut out of it by Azoria.

Kaylin froze for one long moment. What she was doing—was it different? In the end, she wanted Bellusdeo to be happy . To be whole. To finally become what she should have become. And that meant the touching of the ghosts that were already attached; it meant the knitting of the disparate sisters—two of whom thought this was far, far too risky—into that whole.

It is not the same , a familiar voice said. Hope. If you cannot trust yourself, trust those who can. This is healing of a nature that I have never seen attempted. I lend you now what power I can—but it is limited, as it always is, by what you are willing to sacrifice.

You will be the first person I have ever served who is unwilling to sacrifice anything; your greed is boundless, but it never reflects your desire for power. You are healing Bellusdeo. Mrs. Erickson saw the sisters as ghosts. But, Kaylin, remember: she considered Amaldi and Darreno to be ghosts as well.

Kaylin exhaled. She now had hope, which could be bitter if it failed to blossom into reality.

She understood that she was running out of time; that the green and the Ancient could not remain in this place, and if they could, she couldn't. Mrs. Erickson couldn't. But regardless, she listened to the two who were afraid that the cost of integration might be the stability of the entire world into which they'd been born, and from which they'd been sundered.

"I can't force this on you," she told the two, whose birth names she didn't know. "I won't. I understand what should have happened to all nine of you: you would have merged into one person with many, many facets."

They knew. They had heard Kavallac.

"We can't leave you here," another sister said. "Knowing what we've suffered, knowing that you'll suffer it alone for the rest of our natural lives—we can't do it. At least we have each other now, even if we can't interact with the wider world."

"She's far too reckless. We might not even live for that long."

"Caution was never her strength—but we'd be with her, we'd be part of her. Maybe she'd live longer if we were there."

"Maybe she'd actually have children , which the race needs if it's to continue," a fourth sister said. There was a surprising amity between these eight. "But we'll never know, because if you two insist on remaining behind, so will we."

It occurred to Kaylin that these eight were very much like the cohort in that regard—but of course they were. The partial names that had animated them from birth had been known to each other. They had lived with the name bond.

"We can't take the risk. The Keeper made clear that we could be looking at the end of the world if the Ancient is not somehow settled. This is far, far too selfish."

"Mrs. Erickson has made that decision. Kaylin has accepted it. But if you stand and argue, the time will pass, the opportunity will be lost. Look at Kaylin: she's not leaving us here, and rejecting her aid just does what you're afraid of: it wastes more time. But if time is of the essence, we will all step back. We will all refuse what she offers."

"It's all or nothing, everyone or no one," one of the other sisters said. "Shall we vote?"

Another sister rolled her eyes. "Because that always worked out so well."

A cheeky smile was the response. "Try hitting me. Just try."

"Vote," Kaylin told them, the sound of her own voice almost surprising. "Vote and agree that the results will be binding. Because if you don't, there's no point. We only have this moment, and you're all wasting it ."

One of the sisters raised a perfect, gold brow; of the eight, she had not raised her voice once. Until now. "Rejoin." Even the sound of the syllable somehow felt elegant, elevated.

The other seven voted in short order. Two voted against—quickly—and six for.

"What are they doing?" Bellusdeo asked, her voice shaky.

"Arguing," Kaylin replied. "I don't know their names—but two of them think we're putting the entire world in jeopardy over one single person. You, in case that wasn't clear."

The gold Dragon's smile was tremulous. "I bet I can guess who."

"They'd be arguing until next year if they had the time. Are you sure you want this?"

"If I could listen to them argue until next year—if I could experience that again—I'd give up almost anything."

"You heard her," Kaylin told the sisters.

She then continued the work she had begun. It was not easy; she was trying to evaluate the shape of a soul , and she knew—better than anyone—that she had no standing to do it. She wanted Mrs. Erickson to make the decision, to find a place for all of these people without prioritizing one over the other, to find room for so many lives in one body. Mrs. Erickson could give weight to each of them, could care for each of them, could listen to the needs they were willing to share, and somehow make them feel equally heard, valued, and seen.

Kaylin could walk into moving wagons if she was overfocused on a case.

Mrs. Erickson said, "I'm sure you need to think very carefully when you're investigating, dear. But you are Bellusdeo's only friend in this place; if you can't do this, no one can. Bellusdeo can't do it for herself; if she could, she would have already done so, a thousand times over."

The sisters began to fade. "Can you still see them?" Kaylin asked Mrs. Erickson.

"Yes, but they're becoming quite transparent—like storybook ghosts, not like real ones."

"At the same time?"

"At the same time."

She continued then. Her power flagged as the green glow of the marks of the Chosen dimmed. The marks returned to their place on her skin, as if spent. She hadn't finished. She hadn't finished yet.

Steady , Hope said. You have the power to finish. You are almost done; can you not see it?

Had she the energy, she would have snapped at him. No , she couldn't see anything but words; her eyes were now closed.

"I can't see them at all," Mrs. Erickson said softly. "Kaylin, I think Evanton wishes for you to stop now."

She shook her head. She wasn't done.

"Corporal," Evanton snapped. "You are done. Stop this—there is only so much power you can channel and you have reached your limit ." Kaylin heard his cranky voice at a greater and greater remove.

But she could hear one sound so clearly, it might have been the only sound left in the world:

Bellusdeo began to sob.

Kaylin had never, ever heard that sound from a Dragon before, but didn't find it awkward. Those tears were the tears that fell in both relief and joy, when the strain that had forced people to hold back was suddenly gone.

Mrs. Erickson's hand tightened around the gold Dragon's; Kaylin's did the same.

And when the last of this knitting, this healing, was done, Kaylin was very glad for Severn's presence, because she did what she often did when she'd overextended herself: she collapsed. As consciousness faded, she heard Evanton arguing with the Ancient. Or maybe arguing with the green. She was almost grateful to leave him to it.