Read Online Cast in Ruin by Michelle Sagara - Free Book Online Page A

across the fucking border is puking out whatever it can. Nothing small and easily killed, either; apparently the bigger one-offs can survive the ‘transition’ with some of their power intact.”
    Kaylin sucked in air. “When the hells did this start happening?”
    “Pretty much the same day they did,” Morse replied, jerking her thumb in the direction of the strangers.

    “Believe,” Kaylin said after an uncomfortably sharp silence, “that they didn’t bring the Shadows with them.”
    “Oh?”
    “If I understood what was said correctly, they were fleeing from them.”
    “And being followed.”
    “I was there, Morse. If great chunks of Shadowy one-offs had followed them into Elani, believe I would have noticed.” But she hesitated. Morse, no fool, noticed. “What?”
    “When they arrived, they did this funny thing with a bunch of drums and a lot of loud chanting. It was supposed to be some sort of purification ritual, but the end result? The Dragons—all four of them—took flight over the city while they did it.” Kaylin shook her head, glancing briefly at two of those four: Tiamaris, in full scales and wings, and Sanabalis, in slightly drab but official clothing. “And…the chanting was magical, somehow.”
    This admission of the use of magic by obviously dangerous giants did nothing positive for Morse’s mood.
    “But…something answered them. Something in the fiefs. If I had to guess,” she added quietly, “something from the heart of the fiefs.”
    “What, it was some kind of fucking challenge? ” Morse’s brows rose toward the nearly shaved dome of her head. “Are they insane? ”
    From a fief perspective, there could only be one answer to that question. But…this fief had become, almost overnight, an exception to the rules that generally governed the fiefs. Kaylin glanced at the large huddle of strangers—she’d have to ask Sanabalis what their own name for their race was because “strangers” wasn’t going to cut it—and said, “Not insane. I think they’re used to fighting a war with the Shadows, rather than locking the doors and praying a bunch.”
    “Great.” Morse glanced at Tara, who seemed to be involved in a serious discussion with Sanabalis, while Tiamaris, over her shoulder—well, part of his jaw, at any rate—looked on. Severn was beside the older Dragon, listening intently.
    Kaylin frowned.
    “What?” Morse said sharply.
    “There’s something I don’t understand.”
    She was rewarded by something that was halfway between snort and grunt; the sarcastic comment that would have usually followed failed to emerge. For Morse, this was a big improvement. “What?”
    “Tiamaris is fieflord in a way that Barren wasn’t.”
    “You can say that again.”
    Fair enough. “Barren didn’t hold the Tower. Tiamaris does.”
    “And?”
    “Holding the Tower at all should prevent your one-offs from getting through.”
    Morse shrugged. “The Ferals get through.”
    “I know; they get through everywhere. I’m not sure why.”
    “Time to find out?”
    “Well past.” Kaylin turned toward the discussion that was even now taking place without them, and as she did, Tara froze. It was a very particular stillness, and it reminded anyone who happened to be standing close by that Tara’s physical form, the form of her birth, was made of stone.
    It was warning enough for Kaylin, but if it hadn’t been, there was another one that followed less than thirty seconds later: the strangers began to shout, and weapons began to catch sunlight and reflect it in a way that spoke of movement.
    Morse swore. Loudly. But her brief word wasn’t equal to the task of carrying over the cries and shouts—directed, not panicked—of the strangers. “Kaylin!” she shouted.
    Kaylin turned.
    “Incoming!”

    Sanabalis’s eyes turned instantly orange as Tiamaris swiveled his head and roared. Kaylin’s ears were still ringing when the fieflord spread wings, bunched legs, and pushed himself off the