"But clearly you've grown very attached to him in that time," Mauren said, "which is part of the reason we're here."
Cart shot a glance at Harkin, who was leaning back in his chair, legs crossed, hands folded on one knee. He didn't seem inclined to betray Ashara's lie, but he wasn't leaping to Cart's defense either. His face had a bemused expression, as if he were interested to see how Ashara would worm her way out of the situation.
"You're here because I've become friends with a warforged?" Ashara said. "Surely the Sentinel Marshals have more important things to do with their time than chase down every soldier, artificer, and dockworker who's struck up a friendship with a warforged."
"We're not interested in every soldier, artificer, and dockworker, Lady Cannith," Mauren said. "We're interested in you."
Gaven awoke to sunlight streaming through a high window he hadn't noticed in the dark of night. He felt rested, for the first time he could remember. He wondered whether Senya had used magic to knock him out, and how long he'd slept, but he decided it didn't matter. He stood and stretched, and even then the complaints of his cuts and bruises were diminished, if not entirely absent. He felt good, and ready for what fate had in store for him.
He pulled his chainmail shirt back on and slung his scabbard over his back, wondering where Senya might be and whether his emergence from her room might arouse scandalized speculation among the other residents of the temple. As he stepped forward and reached for the door, though, glowing red lines flashed across his vision, part of his dragonmark as it appeared in the shard. He paused, trying to sort out a vague sense of imminent danger and make sense of the pattern he'd seen.
He felt a presence behind him an instant before he heard the soft rustle of silk, and he spun and ducked away. A blot of shadow in the streaming sunlight slashed past him, and a black blade cut across his arm, drawing a thin line of blood that burned even as icy cold spread from the wound. The shadowy figure spun to follow him, relentless in its attack. He yanked his sword from its sheath on his back as he dodged again and his eyes struggled to pierce the shadow that cloaked his assailant.
The figure lunged again, and Gaven tried to bring his sword around to block the blow. His left hand, though, was numbed by whatever toxin coated the assassin's dagger, making his grip on his own sword unsteady. He banged his elbow against the wall as he maneuvered his sword in the tiny room, and the black dagger slipped past his guard and toward his neck.
His attacker's face was close enough that Gaven could see through the veil of shadow. "Phaine," he breathed.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the point of the elf's dagger touched the skin of his neck and pressed inward. Then a burst of blinding white light drove away Phaine's cloak of shadows and threw the elf back as a crack of thunder exploded between the two men. Gaven and Phaine slammed against opposite walls of the room.
Phaine struggled to his feet, his breath rasping. "The power of the storm is still with you after all," he said, scowling. His eyes ranged over Gaven's body, lingering at the pouches at Gaven's belt. "So you must have the bloodshard."
The cut on Gaven's arm was on fire, even as his hand grew increasingly numb and cold, and the toxin spread up into his shoulder as well. His heart pounded in his chest, which he knew would just send the poison coursing more quickly through his veins.
"Isn't that why you're here? Malathar never did give you a chance to study it, did he?"
"He didn't," Phaine said. "You have disrupted a great many plans."
"Considering that those plans involved torturing me and stealing my dragonmark, I can't say that I'm sorry."
"You will be." Phaine's shadow-filled eyes were fixed on Gaven as if he were watching the poison spread through his body, waiting for him to keel over. As if in response, a sharp jolt of pain stabbed through Gaven's chest.
Gaven fumbled with his numb left hand at the pouch that held the dragonshard, then shifted his sword to that hand and reached for the shard with his right. Phaine chose that awkward instant to leap at him again, his dagger poised to swing in a broad arc across Gaven's neck.
Gaven's fingers touched the smooth crystal and lightning gave shape to his fury and hatred, leaping out from him to engulf Phaine. The elf's black eyes shot wide as twisting tendrils of lightning suspended him in the air between floor and ceiling, with a stream of blinding light connecting him to Gaven.
Gaven withdrew the shard from his pouch and shook it in Phaine's direction. "Is this what you came for?" Sparks danced in his mouth as he spoke. A second bolt of lightning shot from the shard to spear through Phaine's middle for a moment, and smoke started to billow from his scorched clothes and hair. "Here it is, you bastard. Want to take it from me?"
Gaven was a pillar of crackling lightning. It coiled in arcs around his body and cascaded down his outstretched arm, and tendrils of it danced over the walls of the room. He was more than the storm-he was destructive energy barely contained in mortal flesh, annihilation he couldn't restrain.
"Gaven?" The door swung open, and a tendril of lightning leaped to course over Senya.
"No!" He let go of the dragonshard, but it clung to his flesh as lightning continued to flow through him and dance across the walls, up to the high window and the ceiling, across the floor, and over the still forms of Phaine and Senya where they hung suspended in the air.
A sharp crack that sounded like thunder, muffled but not distant, caught Aunn's attention as he hurried toward Chalice Center. He slowed his steps, trying to determine what he had heard and decide whether to investigate. He scanned the sky, but it was clear and cold with winter's approach, with no sign of a brewing storm, either natural or sprung from the twisting lines of Gaven's mark.
He heard some commotion, distant shouts and running feet. Clearly, he hadn't imagined the sound. He was in a part of the city he didn't know particularly well-he remembered a tiny enclave of Aereni immigrants nearby, elves who clung to the ways of their ancestors, unlike most of the urbanized elves of Khorvaire, who worshiped the Sovereign Host and fit in smoothly with their human, dwarf, and gnome neighbors. What would Gaven be doing in that neighborhood?
A chill ran up Aunn's spine as he remembered the undead thing Senya had addressed as a revered ancestor, and he shuddered. "All right," he muttered, "I'm coming." He listened for the nearest sounds of commotion and followed them.
"Who you are now is who you have been and who you are yet to be."
The cold, clear voice of Senya's ancestor echoed in Gaven's mind as he hung suspended in time, lightning like the twisting lines of his dragonmark binding him together with Phaine and with Senya. Pain seared along his every nerve, power too great for his body to contain.
"You are Gaven. You are the Storm Dragon. You are a dishonored child of Lyrandar, cut off from your line but still a product of it. You are Shakravar, and you are the murderer of the Paelion line."
I've killed her, he thought. He tried to shake the dragonshard from his hand, but it was a part of him. He struggled to lower his hand, to bring it in to his chest so his other hand might pry the dragonshard free, but the lightning was like a swift-flowing river that would not release his arm.
"However, you are also, in this moment, who you will choose to be, and that is a far better thing."
And so, Gaven thought, I now choose this.
He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. The air, heated by lightning, seared his throat and lungs, but he focused his thoughts on the dragon-shard in his hand. He saw the lines of the Prophecy winding within its rosy heart, and words formed in his mind-words he might have known once, in this life or another, but which were now part of his destiny and part of himself: