Page 124 of Cast in Atonement

“I didn’t waken him—I freed him. Azoria had him bound.”

“It was a captivity of which he was only peripherally aware. You do not understand the Devourer; no more did I when first he entered my garden. But he could not devour the garden; it is not that kind of place. Look around you, Kaylin. Understand what this small space is, what it signifies.”

“I don’t see a small space. I see...flat mist. Fog. It’s like the outlands. But the land surrounding it or leading to it...that was like Shadow to my eyes.”

Evanton frowned. He looked up to meet Hope’s eyes, each almost the size of the old man’s head. “An interesting observation,” he finally said. “I see grass. I see flowers. I see something akin to sky above the head of the Ancient. You are not looking at the land in which I stand. I invite you to do so immediately.”

She would have argued, but Evanton’s exhaustion wasn’t feigned. She looked, far more carefully, at the ground upon which Evanton was standing.

Or in which Evanton was planted; she couldn’t see his feet. She could see that he wore the robes of his office—robes that he seldom wore in the store, but often donned in the garden. He hadn’t carried them with him when he’d arrived at Helen’s, but now wore them, regardless.

She knelt to examine the ground more carefully.

The marks on her arms—the ivory-edged green—began to rise; as they did, their light brightened. She hadn’t seen this color before, but it blossomed in the area Evanton occupied. The colors reminded her of the flowers that Severn had identified.

Yes, he said. It is almost an exact match. His tone was neutral; she could sense his growing worry.

She regretted the absence of Hope, but couldn’t call him back now. The marks that rose from her skin rose in a wave, becoming fully dimensional; she felt them as a weight. It was almost a struggle to lift her arms. She could feel the back of her neck growing heavy in the same way. The marks there were also rising. Rising and growing in both size and subjective weight.

Chosen.

She recognized the shape of the marks, although they looked different when given a third dimension. She didn’t know their meaning; the Arkon had implied that careful study of the tongue of the Ancients was beyond the span of her life. Even his knowledge, having spent centuries in study, was meagre; he could decipher words, could even, with will and intent, speak them—but he could not speak them as he spoke his mother tongue, or any of the languages Kaylin knew.

All of her understanding was instinctive, just a grade above frantic and baseless guesswork.

But she understood on some level how to use the powers of the marks—she had used them to heal, to save lives, even when she’d lived in the fiefs. The marks hadn’t glowed then. They hadn’t come to life the way they now did. She hadn’t needed to know them, to understand them; she’d only needed to understand the injuries she sought to heal. That had been a miracle: that she could see, feel, and understand what needed to be healed in order for a person’s life to continue.

She had resented the marks. She had hated what had become of people she knew in the fief of Nightshade. But she had taken the healing power that had come with the marks as compensation. She couldn’t remove them. She could—and did—hide them; she’d become so used to hiding them she wore long sleeves even in the privacy of her own home.

But this wasn’t her home. In this space, before all of these people except maybe Severn, the marks were not a terrible secret; they weren’t the cause of unjust murders; they weren’t a curse. They were part of this odd space, this hidden world, this place where a dead god stood and spoke before a man who had once, many, many years ago, been human, as he attempted to keep an Ancient constrained.

Kaylin had never asked Evanton what mysteries, what ceremonies, conferred the responsibility of a Keeper; she had never asked him why he had chosen to become the Keeper. Maybe he’d had as much choice in his position as she’d had in hers: marks of the Chosen had appeared across half of her body without her conscious leave.

But he was what he was, and he was good at it.

And she was what she was: Chosen. She didn’t know what that meant—or what it had meant to the others who had borne these marks. She didn’t know if they had used them as intended. At first, she hadn’t asked because she hated them; she hadn’t cared what use was made of them. But as time passed, as she accepted their existence, she hadn’t wanted to know. She was uneducated, poor, an orphan—things that people already looked down on.

She couldn’t help but be certain that she was doing it all wrong. That smarter people, people with families, people with education, would have been a better choice. Anyone would have been a better choice. The healing, she grew to love.

But it wasn’t only healing that she’d done.

She’d once, at the age of thirteen, skinned a man alive—without restraining him first, without a skinning knife or a dagger or any other weapon. Just rage, murderous rage. It had caused a lot of trouble for Teela and Tain, and that trouble had extended to the rest of the Hawks—of which she wasn’t, in any official way. Not then.

Healing was better.

Healing would always be better. If there was desperation and panic involved in healing, there was no rage; she was in control of her power; her power was not in control of her anger.

Here, she felt no anger. The marks rotated, growing in size until they couldn’t possibly fit on her skin. Can you see them? she asked Severn.

I can. Through your eyes, they’re quite impressive.

And through yours?

They’re flat against your skin, as always, but they’re glowing.

The same colors as the flowers from the green?

The exact same colors, yes. What do you mean to do?

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