Page 91 of Cast in Conflict

Kaylin poked her familiar, who squawked softly. It is her choice, he said. She will endure.

“I don’t want her to have to face this alone.”

You did.

“I wasn’t alone.”

She is not alone in the same way you were not. I do not understand. The Towers test. As did I.

“You didn’t.”

He squawked in frustration. I did. The Tower will do the same.

“Tara did this to me, and she didn’t want me as lord. And not because I failed her tests; I didn’t. There was no point to it, in the end.” Lifting her face, she glared at the ceiling. “Are you listening, Karriamis? This is pointless—it’s just proof you can cause pain. You’re a Tower; you’re a sentient building. We already know.”

Emmerian placed a gentle hand on Kaylin’s shoulder.

“You can’t think this is right?”

“It is not a matter of right or wrong,” was his soft reply. “You know the generalities of the war she fought—and lost. If you pause to think, you will understand many of the probable events and consequences. You know that that war and its loss affect her daily.

“But the choice you made in the High Halls, Bellusdeo could not have made, not then. You believe that she is right for the Tower because of her dedication to fighting this war—continuing this war—with Ravellon. But think: Candallar’s Tower allowed a shadow to be removed from Ravellon. Candallar’s Tower, if I understand the chancellor’s view correctly, preserved the Academia—and there were risks in that. It was an outlay of power that was not turned toward, devoted to, its reason for creation.

“Were I Karriamis, I would need to know what I believe he is attempting to learn.”

“And what would you do with what you think he’s learning?”

Emmerian shook his head. “You cannot hear him. You can’t help but hear her, but you can’t understand what she is saying.” His eyes were a dark, dark orange, but he had lifted his inner eye membrane to mute the color. To Kaylin’s lasting surprise, he turned to Severn. “It is not as easy as you make it look.”

Severn’s lips tightened in a grimace.

“What? What’s not as easy?”

“Staying at a distance,” Emmerian replied. “Allowing the pain to infect and influence someone that you care about.”

She blinked. “That you care about? Is that what you just said?”

He failed to reply.

You heard him. This is a good time to pretend you didn’t, Severn said.

Kaylin shook Emmerian’s hand off. “We can’t just let her—” The words, the rest of the words, were lost to the sound of Bellusdeo’s voice as it cracked. The Dragon screamed.

Maybe, Kaylin thought, as she practically knocked the much heavier Emmerian off his feet in her haste to cross the room, they were right. Severn. Emmerian. Maybe this was a test that Bellusdeo had to pass on her own.

But she couldn’t just ignore her. Not when the pain in the strained, loud cry was so obvious. Kaylin was certain that nothing physical could cause the Dragon to scream like this.

And what are you going to say? Hope squawked, in clear agreement with Severn and Emmerian.

Something is better than nothing, she replied, and shoved him off her shoulder. He held on by virtue of claws now digging through cloth into her collarbone.

“Bellusdeo!”

Her arms—or the marks across them—began to glow a blue that implied lightning in an otherwise clear sky. She raced across the shaking stone and saw, as she drew closer and closer to the Dragon’s side, that a glimmering of red, like cracks, had started between the scale’s plates, running down Bellusdeo’s side like bright blood.

She had healed a resentful Dragon before.

Her hands, palm out, reached for Bellusdeo’s side, and she was instantly lifted off the ground before she could make contact.

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