Page 144 of Cast in Conflict

How does that mean Karriamis didn’t do this?

The Tower has defenses, he says.

And you believe him? You believe that any part of this Tower isn’t under his control?

Severn didn’t answer. Which meant no. I believe he believes Emmerian can free himself if he so chooses.

Then what does he expect me to do?

Convince him to choose. Those weren’t the words the Tower had used.

She looked down.

Emmerian wasn’t her favorite Dragon, but he was, aside from the old Arkon, Bellusdeo’s. He was so diffident and apologetic on those occasions when he had been commanded to interfere that neither the gold Dragon nor Kaylin could take him personally.

And he truly seemed to appreciate who Bellusdeo was. What she had once been. He seemed to understand some part of the loss that the Arkon didn’t. No, she thought, that wasn’t true.

“Emmerian, listen. The Arkon—ugh, the chancellor—knew her when she was young. And there were eight more that were almost exactly like her. He understood what she’d lost when she lost the Aerie. He didn’t know her when she was a queen. He knows she ruled a world.

“But...I don’t think the chancellor can see that in her. Not even now.” Kaylin was coming to some sort of conclusion, but without any sense that it was important enough to move Emmerian. And while she didn’t believe Karriamis—he couldn’t have put himself in here—she believed, reluctantly, that he could pull himself out.

She believed it because Severn believed it.

“The entire Dragon Court knows what she was. They believe it. But they see her as a Dragon first. She loves the Arkon, because he knew her. He indulges her because she was a child the last time he saw her—I mean, before she was freed and came to Elantra. She knows it. He’s home—or what’s left of that childhood home, and we all want that some of the time.

“He knows what she lost. But he can’t see it clearly as part of who she is now. To the Arkon,” she continued, giving up on the changed name, “what she was is important. He doesn’t care about future babies. Not really. He thinks Bellusdeo will come around eventually because she was a queen. She understands responsibility and sacrifice better than anyone.”

The eye moved. Emmerian was watching her. She could feel the ground beneath her feet rumble in a way that implied breath or breathing. It was almost as if she was standing on Emmerian himself, and not the barrier that separated them.

On good days, this would have been a terrible idea. But whatever she was saying, he heard. He listened.

“I’ve been told by almost everyone in my house that I’m oblivious. I miss things that other people don’t miss. I didn’t understand the significance of the words Karriamis said the last time we visited.” But she thought, as she stared at the giant eye, which was still crimson, that she might, now.

Helen had said something about Emmerian weeks ago.

Something about Emmerian and Bellusdeo.

Karriamis must have picked up on that somehow, from someone—but she doubted it was Emmerian. What was it? What had it been?

But surely your ability to stand by while Bellusdeo is in danger makes you ineligible to be guardian of your race?

Guardian had many meanings in Kaylin’s life. Marrin of the foundling halls was guardian of all of the foundlings beneath her large roof. Guardian of the Imperial Law was just another word for the Hawks and the Swords. But both Bellusdeo and Emmerian had been angry at Karriamis’s dismissive question.

Oh.

He didn’t mean guardian as Kaylin used the word; he meant father. As in, father to Bellusdeo’s children—the children who were the future of Dragonkind. Emmerian did not step in when Bellusdeo fought. He had done it only once, and he had been embarrassed.

He understood that Bellusdeo chose—for better or worse—her own battles. She had never commanded Emmerian. He had fought in the wars that divided Bellusdeo from her people; he had been, or become, a warrior. He had—he said—looked up to the Arkon as the pinnacle of the height a warrior could achieve in his distant youth.

But the Arkon had never wanted war. He had fought it, yes. He had abandoned the one thing he did want. And he had returned to it. She didn’t know what Emmerian had abandoned, if he’d abandoned anything at all. She had the sense that he was young when he joined the war flights, young when he fought—but not as young as she had been when she had unofficially joined the Hawks.

In the Hawks, she had found what she wanted; she had found the thing she could dedicate her life to.

Emmerian hadn’t found that in war. Like Tiamaris, youngest of the Dragons, he seemed to be content to wait, to watch. He served the Emperor.

But Bellusdeo had found what she needed or wanted in war—and she’d lost it. And she’d returned to Elantra, a world that had been visited only in subtle ways by the damage that had destroyed her adoptive home. Her war wasn’t over. She was not the Arkon, to set aside the mantle of battle.

Karriamis was right—she hated to think it, but did. The Tower could not be the instrument of, the tool of, vengeance. What Bellusdeo wanted she could not have, but captaining the Tower made her part of the front line. And Bellusdeo knew, now, that it wasn’t as simple as that. Karriamis had asked her a question.

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