Page 7 of Cast in Conflict

“Where is she going?”

“Tiamaris.”

The fiefs. “Is she staying in Tiamaris?”

“Harder to say.”

“By harder you mean?” Kaylin frowned. “You can’t follow her without being detected. Tara can see you.”

“Pretty much.”

“Were you trying to practice moving without being detectable? Is that why you’re in the training room?”

Mandoran grinned. “Terrano can sometimes slip by undetected—but it’s work. He has to kind of walk sideways.”

Terrano snorted.

“What? I’m trying to explain it to someone who can’t do it and has never seen it.”

“If she’d seen it, it would mean we failed.”

Kaylin exhaled and managed to keep words out of it. “So, as far as you know, she’s just heading into the fief of Tiamaris?”

More silence.

“Guys, I’m getting pressure from the new Arkon, and I do not want the follow-up to be ‘concerned’ Emperor.”

“She’s a Dragon, in case you forgot. There’s precious little that can actually kill her, and anything that can will flatten the rest of us, starting with you. She’s not a hatchling. She’s got an eight-foot-tall giant as a trained puppy.”

Kaylin did kick Mandoran then. He dodged.

“—and she sure as hell doesn’t need us.”

“And you’re following her because you’re bored.”

The Barrani shrug was almost a fief shrug; clearly Mandoran had spent too much time with Kaylin. “Mostly bored.”

“Mostly?”

He now looked distinctly uncomfortable.

Kaylin folded her arms. She couldn’t actually hurt Mandoran—or any of the cohort—without Helen’s help, and Helen was disinclined to give it.

“Because you don’t really want to hurt him, dear,” Helen’s voice said.

“You wouldn’t let me even if I did.”

“I feel that you’d regret it, yes.”

“Eventually. Spill.”

“She’s been avoiding you,” Mandoran finally said. “She’s come down late to breakfast every morning; she won’t enter the dining room until you’ve run out the door. She comes home late for dinner, if at all. She’s been in a terrible mood—”

“She hasn’t been angry,” Helen added, skirting the edge of her rules about privacy. “I would say she’s been unsettled since Lannagaros took the chancellorship of the Academia.”

“Has she been visiting him?”

No answer.

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