Page 176 of Cast in Conflict

“I really hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.

She failed to kick him.

It was dark. Thinking this, Kaylin raised her arm—the free arm—and opened her hand; the hall lit up. She hadn’t summoned light, hadn’t dragged a mark off her skin, suspending its considerable weight in order to be able to see. She’d lifted her arm in order to do just that.

But light had appeared. It was purple-white, a color that wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as green to the eyes. It was uncomfortable in other ways; it appeared to match—exactly—the colors of her marks. The color of her new mark. She wondered if there was a place to leave this word here; she really didn’t want to carry it back with her.

If back was even a possibility.

“Was that your stomach?”

“Shut up.”

This hall—and it seemed to be hall, of a kind—continued, but seemed to end in a wall. All of the walls were oddly shaped; they weren’t completely flat, but seemed to bulge outward, as if something was straining to get through them to the two people within. Not a comforting thought.

“See any doors?”

Kaylin shook her head. “Do the walls feel solid to you?”

“They look solid.”

“Not what I asked.”

“Why don’t you touch one and find out?”

“Because I’d either have to let go of your hand—and that’s not happening unless someone cuts my hand off—or I touch it with this.” She lifted her palm and waved it in front of his face.

He looked at the mark. “Your skin looks burned.”

Which is what it felt like as well.

“Did any of the other marks cause that?”

“No. Not even the ones I picked up later.” She hesitated, and then said, “But...it’s the same color as the rest of the marks, currently. I think we need to get out of here.”

Mandoran exhaled, lifted his free—and unmarked—hand and pushed against one of the walls.

Kaylin was not terribly comforted when he practically fell through it; her grip tightened to numbness as she tried to yank him back.

“Sorry—something’s attached itself to my hand.”

“What—again?” She grimaced and pulled. She wanted Hope, here; the sense that he could instantly protect her from malevolent magic had become so much part of the way she walked in the world she felt almost naked without him.

But she’d spent almost all of her life without him. What she had right now were the marks of the Chosen—in a livid white and purple—and the hand that gripped Mandoran tightly. She added her free hand to gain more leverage—and found that here, at least, the grip was solid in a way it hadn’t been when they’d been suspended in mid-sky in an aerial battlefield.

“Mandoran?” He was stiff, tense, rigid. Kaylin went from worried to terrified in the time it took to see his profile clearly. “Are you still in there?”

“Yes—but I think things are going to get difficult.” His voice was strained.

Kaylin was holding on with both hands. She reached out for him as if he were injured—and she found what she’d feared to find in the open streets. Shadow. She remembered that the right hand bore an entirely new mark. She could hear a voice she recognized—a voice she was now certain wasn’t Mandoran’s.

Kill me.

Free me.

Killing was not what she wanted, now. What she wanted was to pull Mandoran out of the wall and find some way of leaving this place as soon as humanly possible. The strongest voice she could now hear wasn’t Mandoran’s. It was the other. And her own fear. She could lose him here. He was in her hands—and it wouldn’t matter.

Kaylin!

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