Page 123 of Cast in Atonement

Hope dug his claws into her collarbone, as if bracing or anchoring himself. Kaylin winced but said nothing; she understood that her familiar was both alert and worried. The flowers she could see were pale ivory, but in shape they were similar to the flowers that had adorned Mrs. Erickson’s hair in the portrait Azoria had painted.

Flowers that grew nowhere but the green. “Can you see the flowers?”

I see them.

Do they look like the flowers Mrs. Erickson wore?

They do. He stopped walking and attempted to free his hand; Kaylin tightened hers. He accepted the constraint and sheathed the second blade. He then reached out to touch a flower. He made no attempt to pick or uproot it. It’s the same, he said, voice flat.

She didn’t ask him how he was certain; she accepted that he was.

He rose, and once again unsheathed one of the weapon’s blades; she could see the chain extending from the hilt. In this light, it did not look metallic; it looked like the very essence of the color green, but brighter, almost too bright to look at.

Mrs. Erickson had said that she couldn’t look at Severn’s waist for long without squinting—which the old woman clearly found rude. Kaylin wondered if this was how she always saw it. The light was the same brilliant color through Hope’s wing.

Azoria did have some entanglement with the green, with the essence of the green. Severn’s voice was grim.

Kaylin couldn’t see the flowers with her own eyes. She could only see them through Hope’s wing. Severn and his weapon were clear when viewed through either eye, but the flowers didn’t exist without Hope’s wing. She could see the outline of the path they walked, but it was blurry, inexact. If something grew here, it grew in the folds of those clouds.

He fell silent.

This path, through grass and flowers, opened up as they reached its end—or its beginning. In the distance she could see two figures; one immense—as he had been the first time she’d encountered him—and one so diminutive she might have missed him had she not been looking.

Evanton.

She sped up, half dragging Severn; he adjusted his pace. Hope was rigid.

“Go to Evanton,” she told her familiar. “I’ve got Severn here. I can see what he sees if I try hard enough.”

Squawk.

“I mean it—Evanton has to survive this. If it’s something you can’t do without a sacrifice, name your price. I’ll pay it.”

That is not wise, Chosen.

She looked up as the figure turned toward them.

“If we lose Evanton, we’ll lose the world. There is no replacement for him. The people I care about, the people I’m responsible for, live there. I’m willing to pay Hope’s price because the alternative is the loss of everything. Hope. Go.”

Hope squawked like a localized storm before pushing himself off her shoulder. He flew toward the Keeper, and as he did, he grew, shifting from the tiny winged lizard into the much more majestic Dragon. His form remained translucent.

I have not harmed your friend, the Ancient said. He has harmed himself and continues to do so.

She picked up speed, dragging Severn into her pace. She was afraid to lose him here; he wasn’t afraid to be lost. She slowed as she reached Evanton; Hope towered above him, standing between the Ancient and the Keeper as if he intended to be a wall.

Evanton didn’t look in her direction, but his words were definitely meant for Kaylin. “It is about time you arrived.” His tone was waspish, but weak.

“What are you trying to do?” she demanded.

“What I do in my garden,” he replied. “This being is not unlike your Devourer.”

“So not mine.”

“The Devourer sleeps the sleep of the exhausted. It dreams, and its dreams cause fluctuations in the elements; they do not sleep, but they can hear his dreams when they grow turbulent.”

“And this being is like that?”

“No, not in that sense. It is more subtle than the Devourer, but it is newly wakened. By, I assume, you.”

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