She remembered the eyes of the Barrani Arcanist. He would die here, no matter how powerful he was; she was certain of it. If he was forced to actually face the people in this room—the least of whom was exhausted to the point of diminished vision and apparently clinging blindly to a rock—he wouldn’t last five minutes.
But his grief—grief, not rage—cut her. She knew what would have happened had it not been for Gilbert, but she thought that maybe, maybe, the destruction the Arcanist had caused was unintentional. And maybe, if his only desire was to somehow be free, if he had somehow met Gilbert on his own, he might be at peace.
It was a stupid thought, and pointless, because he’d be at peace now, regardless.
“Kaylin.”
She tried to speak, but apparently she’d been screaming, because her throat felt raw and scraped, and she could barely hear her own voice over the rest of the almost overwhelming noise in the basement.
“Kaylin, you need to let go.” She recognized Annarion’s voice.
“Are my eyes open?” she asked him.
“...Yes.”
“I can’t see you—”
“Let go, Kaylin.” Pause. “Your cheek.”
She smiled. “Yes. Your brother is...in his Castle.” She groaned as Annarion apparently attempted to remove her arms—or her skin.
“You need to let go. The Arkon says we need to break these stones.”
She looked, tried to look, at Annarion’s face, which she assumed was in roughly the same direction as his voice. And she saw one thing: Gilbert’s eye. Gilbert’s only remaining eye; the others, she could no longer use. She couldn’t really see out of this one, either, and realized that it was probably still embedded in Annarion’s forehead.
He lifted her. He carried her. She cried the whole way because her skin hurt so much. She wished she’d removed all her clothing before she’d arrived in the basement, which was not technically legal.
The eye began to move. She could see no word in it; it was a simple, and small, golden orb, with a pupil that seemed to have depth; it reminded her, in a tiny way, of the small pond at the heart of the Keeper’s Garden.
She tried to speak, but failed. She closed her eyes. She wanted to beg Annarion to put her down, but before she could, he did—and she watched this lone part of Gilbert, whose Shadow, whose presence, she couldn’t otherwise see, move to what she assumed was the exact spot on which the Arcanist had been standing when he’d cast his spell.
She didn’t know what Annarion was doing. She’d have to ask him, later.
But the sound in the room grew sharper and more distinct—which was not, in her present condition, a gift, exactly—as Gilbert’s remaining eye grew less distinct.
She could hear Dragon roaring. She’d learned to differentiate between “discussion” and “argument” while living in the Palace. Most native draconian spoken in the Palace, on the other hand, was the latter.
And she thought, with increasing confusion, that one of the two voices—three voices—raised in argument was the Emperor’s, which made no sense.
It was the last thought she had before she slid into a very blessed unconsciousness.
Chapter 30
Afterward, she heard the rest of the story, because she didn’t really make it back in a condition to witness it for herself. The Arcanist had appeared in the center of the room. The fighting nearest the stairs stopped instantly, which did not mean that the fighting had stopped entirely. Given the other occupants of the room, the rest of the fight wasn’t particularly long.
It was Mandoran who told Kaylin that Gilbert’s eye—the one remaining eye, in Annarion’s forehead—had left Annarion. And it was Annarion who told Kaylin that he thought Gilbert had used what power he could summon, through that tenuous connection, to patch the rend in time. To change the things that had happened. To bring the rest of the city back.
Annarion very deliberately ignored Kaylin’s face for twenty minutes—or longer—of their first visit. When he couldn’t keep that up, his eyes were drawn instantly to her cheek. Which was blistered and puffy. Nightshade’s mark was, of course, still there—and Annarion understood exactly why her skin was blistered, and it reminded him of the very core of his anger at his brother.
Since his brother was actually alive, worry had given way to the usual resentment. The two of them were going to have to talk, but Annarion was unwilling to risk visiting Castle Nightshade again.
“I called him,” she said quietly. “I needed his help to keep myself...here.”
Mandoran said, “That’s better than your usual attempt at lying. Half of it is probably true.” When she winced, he added, “You’re not going to make anyone believe that he burned part of your face at your request. Except maybe yourself. The rest of us are actually Barrani. We know how it works.” She realized, with some surprise, that Mandoran was almost as angry as Annarion.
*
Tain had cracked ribs and a pierced lung. It was Teela who passed that news on. Tain was apparently recuperating in a building that wasn’t sentient and didn’t also contain Mandoran and Annarion.
“Did I really hear the Emperor?” Kaylin asked the Barrani Hawk.
“I’m certain even the dead heard the Emperor. That’s a yes, by the way.”