Sanabalis clearly intended to skip all of it. Because of Kaylin. Was she nervous? Yes, a bit. But she knew what she’d seen, and she knew Mrs. Erickson wasn’t, as most assumed, crazy. She wasn’t hallucinating. Yes, she might be lonely, but her visits to the Halls of Law weren’t about her loneliness; they were about the isolation of four young ghosts.

Ghosts of children who had, in theory, died at the age of twenty-five.

“Mrs. Erickson, please stand here, in the center of the cavern.”

She did as bid immediately.

Sanabalis began to chant, the words low and sonorous, the voice tinged with a hint of Draconic rumble. The hair on Kaylin’s arms began to rise as her magic allergies kicked in. She kept the usual grimace off her face because Mrs. Erickson—in the presence of a Dragon—continually glanced at Kaylin to make sure Kaylin was all right.

When the light at the top of the altar flared to life, becoming an almost blinding white, Sanabalis’s syllables broke in what Kaylin assumed were the middle of words. He turned from Mrs. Erickson toward the altar itself and exhaled a steady stream of smoky breath.

“Corporal,” he snapped, “go get the ladders.”

There was no question about which corporal he meant.

11

The ladders in the cavern were against the walls—but the light, which hadn’t dimmed at all, made them easily visible to Kaylin’s vision. Teela had probably seen them instantly. Kaylin trudged across the cavern’s stone floor. The ladders had wheels—Kaylin wasn’t entirely certain she could have lifted them, given their heavy construction. Even rolling them across the floor here was a struggle because the floor wasn’t entirely flat.

She might have resented it more, but Hope snapped to attention on her shoulder. He squawked loudly.

Sanabalis wheeled then, his eyes passing from orange to red—never a good sign in Dragons. Teela’s eyes were indigo, although they weren’t glowing, so they were harder to see at this distance.

“What is it?” Kaylin demanded. “What’s wrong?”

In reply, Hope lifted a wing and slapped it across her face. Kaylin, attached to the ladder, froze.

Mrs. Erickson was standing in front of Sanabalis. The altar above them continued to glow a blinding white. But with Hope’s aid, Kaylin could see that that light was not the simple illumination it had first appeared. There was form and shape in the bright miasma, lifting itself from the surface of an altar that remained, without the positioning of ladders, invisible.

Kaylin’s arms began to glow; she was certain her legs, her back, and every other inch of her skin covered with the marks of the Chosen, were glowing as well.