Page 151 of Cast in Conflict

“You don’t have to answer that. The answer is no. The answer would be no if I asked it of any of my friends. Any of them. They’d say no for different reasons. Some because they think I’m incompetent, some because they think I won’t survive the situations I’ll get into because of the marks. If I surveyed people who aren’t my friends, most would think I don’t deserve them. I can’t even use them. I’m lazy, I’m not interested in magic. I’m a waste of the marks.”

He nodded.

“And you know what? It doesn’t matter. Did I want the marks?”

“No.”

“Exactly. But I have them. I can’t peel them off my own skin. My ignorance, my weakness, my mortality, didn’t make a damn difference. I have no idea why I was Chosen when Nightshade was standing right there—but I was.

“And I can heal with them. I’ve done good with them. I’ve done things that maybe people who understood them better wouldn’t have done—but I don’t consider those things a waste.

“I didn’t choose. I was chosen. And guess what? You’ve said—and I think you’ve always meant it—that Bellusdeo gets to choose.”

“She has never said—”

“No, but she wouldn’t. You know that. You could ask her. She wouldn’t answer.”

He said nothing.

“Unless your life was on the line, and even then, she’d find it embarrassing. But if Karriamis is actually right—and I think he might be—you’re her choice.”

“I’m her choice because I am the least offensive choice she might make?”

Kaylin stepped back, because that’s exactly what she’d been saying, and she realized that in his position, she’d feel what he was feeling. Being chosen because you were the least offensive, the least undesirable, was not the same as actually being wanted. The lack of negatives wasn’t a positive. “I didn’t say she was madly in love with you, no. But you’ve all been saying this is a necessity. You all agree.”

“And you?”

“Since when have you cared about my opinion?”

“Very recently.” His smile was wry. “I am not certain you will be able to leave this place; I cannot.” The smile dimmed. “Do you understand anything I’ve told you?”

This was annoying. She understood it all.

“I do want this, as you called it.”

“And you’re afraid to want it.”

“It is difficult to give one’s life to someone—to something—that does not want it in the same way. To know, when making any decision, that were there others, I would not even be considered. She asked permission to wake those who chose the long sleep—it is not death, as you perceive death, but it is not exactly life—and it was denied her.

“I have considered doing what she asked, but I swore oaths to the Imperial Flight; I could not easily break them, not even for the sake of a choice she does not want to make. There is a reason that the long sleep was chosen; the disruption to the Empire would be significant.”

“She understands that, as well. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“Which question?”

“That was a poor attempt at avoidance, even for you.”

Kaylin, we have an angry Dragon here.

Karriamis let her in? Did she actually come up with an answer to his question?

Not the time for that.

Do we also have angry Sedarias?

We do. Her anger is nothing to Bellusdeo’s. Things here could get...interesting.

Tell her that Emmerian is fine. I’ve found him. He’s fine.

---