Cast in Peril

## **Blurb**

It has been a busy few weeks for Private Kaylin Neya. In between angling for a promotion, sharing her room with the last living female Dragon and dealing with more refugees than anyone knew what to do with, the unusual egg she'd been given began to hatch. Actually, that turned out to be lucky, because it absorbed the energy from the bomb that went off in her quarters.…

So now might be the perfect time to leave Elantra and journey to the West March with the Barrani. If not for the disappearances of citizens in the fief of Tiamaris—disappearances traced to the very Barrani Kaylin is about to be traveling with…

## **Plot**

After a tough day, capped by learning the Hawklord has agreed to 8 weeks vacation for Kaylin to go to the West March with Nightshade, Kaylin and Bellusdeo return to her apartment only to have an arcane bomb tossed through the broken window; the egg hatches on detonation, and the hatchling "glass dragon" familiar inside saves them, then eats one of Kayin's runes. The Hawks rally around her, but Marcus sends her right back out to investigate a kidnapping in Tiamaris. Tara maps the ambits of several people who walked out of her fief into Nightshade, and they stop another from crossing, magically confused by an arcanist. He is nearby, and casts fire at Kaylin before vanishing via a portal to the Outlands in a local tenement bearing two signatures matching the arcane bomb.

Kaylin's guilelessness gains her the forgiveness (though not friendship) of the Barrani Consort despite having defied her to bring the Norranir into this world, but her familiar and Nightshade's insistence she attend naming ceremonies in the West Marches infuriates everyone else.

On the long trek west, the Barrani nobles stop at sentient inns called Hallionne, where Kaylin picks up a magical dress, two dubious blessings of "enlightenment" at their portals, learns their True Names, keeps Severn and Nightshade at arm's length as she deals with memories of Barren's sexual abuse, and learns that Teela's father killed her mother while trying to magically enhance a whole generation of Barrani children in one of these Regalia gone very wrong. They are attacked by the shadow-tainted and forest ferals, but reach shelter in Hallionne Bertolle. Caught between the dangerous forest and unreliable Outland paths, Kaylin wakes six brothers of the Hallionne, including one particularly helpful one she names Winston. He guides them along the Outland paths. They are again attacked, apparently by a duplicate of Lord Iberrienne. Kaylin looks through her familiar's wing to find new paths, talks to a fire elemental to clear the way, and finds the kidnap victims. They were forced to stand barefoot on a ritual stone that took their lives to make new Names, and forest ferals had their Names corrupted by carefully constructed racial lies told to Barrani with True Words; she and her little dragon free the surviving kidnapped members of the Cohort, consume the corrupted rune Names of the ferals, preserving the corrupted Barrani from total oblivion, gaining control of Lord Ynpharion, and remaking the tower of Hallionne Orbaranne so the regalia can continue.

## List of Characters

1. Kaylin
2. Bellusdeo
3. Sanabalis
4. Teela
5. Tain
6. Grammayre
7. Marcus
8. Severn
9. Hope
10. Clint
11. Caitlin
12. Diarmat
13. Lannagaros
14. Tanner
15. Kelmar
16. Morse
17. Tiamaris
18. Tara
19. Yvander
20. Andellen
21. Nightshade
22. Darrowelm
23. High Lord
24. Consort
25. Evarrim
26. Joey
27. Feluann Harcastle
28. Kariastos
29. Iberrienne
30. Terrano
31. Bertolle
32. Wilson
33. Ynpharion
34. Orbaranne
35. Miccha Jannoson
36. Lirienne
37. Corvallis
38. Landaran