The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence by Michelle Sagara Page A

foot, and found that it wasn’t as loose as it had looked. The pain was almost a relief, it was so mundane.
    “But then?”
    “I wanted to kill you.” She stopped walking and turned to face him. What he saw in her expression made him look away. “I wanted to be able to kill you. I thought, if I did, it would end the nightmares. It would somehow let Steffi and Jade rest in peace.”
    In the muted streetlights, she could see his face; it was shadowed, and it was stiff. She searched around for another stone to kick, because it was better than looking at what was—and wasn’t—there. “It was the only thing I could think about, when I could think at all.” She lifted her hands, found they were almost fists, and lowered them again.
    He watched her. He said nothing.
    But he didn’t turn, didn’t walk away. She would have. She knew she would have. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
    “Don’t,” he said, his first word. He lifted a hand, palm out. “Don’t apologize to me. What you did, what we did, is in the past. Leave it there, Kaylin.”
    “I did. I thought I did,” she added bitterly. She lifted Barren’s missive and waved it in the air. “But it’s here . Again.”
    “Ignore it. Walk away. Don’t walk back.”
    She knew, then, that’s what Severn would do.
    And what could she say that wasn’t pathetic? I don’t want Marcus to know .
    “Marcus will understand, Kaylin. Trust him to do that much. Given a choice, he would never, ever have you walk back into Barren.”
    “I do trust him,” she said quietly. “I want him to keep on trusting me .”
    He nodded, as if he’d never really expected her to say anything else. Maybe he hadn’t. “Take me with you.”
    “No.”
    “He didn’t tell you to go alone. Take me with you.”
    “No. Because—” she stopped. Looked at his face, at the lines that had hardened in his expression. Closed her own. “Severn—I don’t want you to know, either.”
    And then, before he could answer, she did what she had often done—she turned and she ran.
     
    There was no light in her apartment that wasn’t supplied by moon; it was cheap, and all she did here at night was sleep, anyway. She checked the mirror, but it was dull and silent. No messages. No other emergencies. Tonight, for a change, one would almost have been welcome.
    Her hair fell as she pulled out the new stick that bound it; she struggled out of her tunic and dumped it on the chair that served as a closet. It’s not your fault, she told him in bitter silence, because he couldn’t hear her. I didn’t know why. I didn’t stay to find out. She believed it, now; those deaths weren’t his fault. But she had run to Barren, numb and terrified, and when the terror had finally lapsed, the guilt had almost destroyed her.
    It was a slow, slow destruction, and she ached from it, from the memories of it; they were almost physical. What she’d told him was true: she had only wanted one thing. To kill him. To be able to kill him. She’d been thirteen; it wasn’t hard to be focused, to let desire consume everything, overshadowing all but the need to eat, and the need to sleep.
    She grimaced. It wasn’t hard to be that focused now. But she no longer wanted to kill him. The years with the Hawks, with the foundling hall, and eventually, with the midwives, had given her other things to want, other things to live for. The first time she’d set eyes on Severn in the Hawklord’s tower had been the first time she’d thought about killing him in months. Maybe a year.
    And what had she done then?
    Cringing her way out of her leggings, and struggling with laces in the dark, she closed her eyes. She’d tried, of course. In front of the Hawklord, in his Tower, as if all the intervening years had never happened. She’d managed to pull back, but it wasn’t the last time she’d tried, and the last time?
    In front of the foundlings. In front of Marrin.
    Lying back in bed, she reached for her sheet and the blankets that