without thought and in a rush, and they were the names by which every other member of the House now knew them. They weren’t demonic names; they weren’t calling cards by which the cats could be magically summoned, but they didn’t have to be.
He growled, his larger throat emitting a much deeper sound than it ever had before. But he turned as Shadow stalked across the grass.
Shadow, she thought, was the hardest of the three; the least frivolous, the least easily bored—although boredom was his anthem, when he chose one. Snow and Night came to stand to either side of her, but she sent Night to guard Adam; he went without complaint. Not a single word. Even in the dreaming, it felt unnatural.
Shadow was canny; he did not spring, the way Night had, and he avoided the branches of the tree of fire.
Without taking her eyes off Shadow, she said, “Snow—the Warden.”
Snow leaped, silent, streamlined. Fire flowed off his back as if it were colored water; it was her fire. The Warden of Dreams raised wings; they sounded like swords leaving sheaths. More than that, she didn’t see, because as Snow leaped, Shadow did likewise.
His claws were not diamond, not ebony; they weren’t solid at all. They passed through the flame that enveloped her arms and her chest. Adam cried out; she bit her lip to prevent joining him as she brought her hands forward to touch the third cat.
He was clever, this cat; her hands passed through his body, touching nothing; the same couldn’t be said for his claws; she felt them shred dress and skin. Adam cried out in Torra; a warning and a curse. She stumbled; his palms caught the back of her neck—the only exposed skin a formal dress of this nature allowed.
“Adam—don’t—”
It was like telling the waking cats not to complain.
“You named him,” the Warden of Dreams said; his voice surrounded her.
She’d named Night as well, but Night was, and had remained, solid. Shadow bit her arm, forcing her back; she stumbled, her hand leaving the anchor of her tree. Fire guttered around her.
Adam’s hands were warm. She felt pain in her arm and across her lower abdomen; she felt heat rush from the back of her upper spine toward the wounds she had taken from this nightmare version of Shadow. They met, each diminishing in the contact. Night leaped on Shadow—and fell through him. Both cats hissed; it was as close to their normal voices as they’d yet come.
“No—Night—”
Only Night bled.
Jewel threw herself to the side, breaking Adam’s contact as Shadow leaped again, claws extended. She felt the warmth of tree, but it was out of her reach, and she knew that without the fire—
No. No, she didn’t. Her eyes snapped open. It was like a second waking. The landscape hadn’t changed; it was night, contained Night, Shadow, Snow, and the Warden; there were trees that the darkness made gray at a distance, and one tree whose light, red and orange, couldn’t be dimmed. She wasn’t touching the tree, but it burned at the heart of this forest, and if she was in these lands, the fire was hers.
She lowered her arm and turned as Shadow landed. His tail twitched, his ears were high; his fangs glittered, wet and red. He was beautiful. She heard growling in the distance; Shadow was silent; he watched her. His fur rippled as he shifted position; she knew he would leap again.
She shook her head. In the dreamscape, her hair didn’t fall into her eyes. It was such an odd detail to notice while facing death. But she’d seen death so often, now; the death that Shadow offered wasn’t new. It was cloaked in magic, in mystery, in things that were older in all ways than Jewel herself—but it wasn’t new.
“You were right,” she told the cat as his wings flexed. “I should have named you something different. But none of the names I have would suit you, and you can’t name yourself.”
The moment the words left her lips, Shadow left the ground; they were both significant, but only one of the two would kill her. She leaped to the left—farther away from the tree of fire. His claws clipped her arm, but the dress was already ruined; he cut skin as neatly—as cleanly—as the sharpest of knives before he landed again.
He stood between Jewel and her tree; he meant to herd her. She didn’t tell him it was pointless, not in so many words. She couldn’t change