Page 177 of Cast in Conflict

Don’t talk to me—don’t listen. I don’t think it’s safe. Mandoran is alive, tell the cohort—but he’s trying not to communicate with them until we’re out of here. So—don’t talk and don’t listen.

Silence. Severn withdrew, and only when he did did she realize he’d been in the background all along, so much a part of the way she viewed the universe that only in absence was she aware of it. But Mandoran was afraid for the cohort, and he wasn’t an idiot. Well, no, he was an idiot some of the time—but so was she. And he had a better sense of the risks. What he wasn’t willing to risk, she shouldn’t be.

She wanted to ask Severn where Hope was or what he was doing. She didn’t.

She had found Mandoran.

Given that she was physically attached to him, this shouldn’t have made sense, even to Kaylin. But she could now feel the strands of Mandoran as distinct and separate from strands of Shadow. The Shadow felt more solid than it had the first time she touched him, and she began to pull at it, to attempt to rip it out.

Mandoran snarled, his fingers tightening around hers as he uttered a string of Leontine. She stopped, and he uttered a different string.

“You’re not cutting out anything important,” he snapped. “Just keep going.”

“You’re stuck in a wall—”

“I’m almost unstuck. Whatever you’re doing—keep doing it.”

She—like most sane people—didn’t like causing pain. She could do it, was doing it now, but her hands and teeth were clenched, almost locked, with the effort. Even if she felt it was necessary, she hated it.

“We don’t always get to do the things we like. Unless we’re Terrano.” More cursing.

The Shadow entwined with Mandoran was not inert. It fought her, and the battleground was Mandoran himself. But she’d done something like this before, in the Aerie that seemed farther away at the moment than the West March. She couldn’t physically mime the motion of wrapping, of spooling; her hands were locked in place.

No, she thought. One hand was locked in place. She had always given preference to her left hand when it came to door wards or Shadow—the consequences of which were unpredictable. But she had a suspicion that the clarity of Shadow came from the new mark she’d gained.

Her right hand was dominant; she didn’t want to risk it. Didn’t see that she had a choice. She pulled on Mandoran with both hands; he didn’t budge. But he didn’t seem to be moving forward, either. She could risk weakening the brace her weight provided.

She lifted the right hand, pulling it slowly back; she could see it rise, a nimbus of dark light enfolding it. Shadow? It looked wrong for that, but the light here wasn’t normal light.

“Keep going,” Mandoran said.

“Can you even—” she grunted, her feet moving against what she hoped and assumed was stone “—see where you are?”

“I can, now.”

“Good. Can you leave it?”

“I...don’t think that’s what we want.”

She used perfectly functional Elantran cursing. He laughed. The sound was weak and shaky, but the amusement in it was genuine. “What are you looking at?”

“A library.” Mandoran’s tone implied he’d seen enough libraries for this lifetime.

“You’re going to make me hate books.”

“What can you see?”

“Shadow. A hall of sorts—the one we were walking down before you touched the wall.”

“No doors?”

“No doors.”

“There’s a door here, farther in. I can see it.” His words were interrupted by grunts and the occasional single-syllable curse.

“You are really, really making me hate libraries.” She bit her lip. “Fine. You’re sure?”

“Here? I can’t be sure of anything. But...I don’t think it’s an illusion.”

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