Page 46 of Cast in Atonement

Bellusdeo was silent. When Kavallac’s voice died into stillness, she continued to listen, as if clinging desperately to a glimpse of a vanished, lost home.

It was Kaylin who was therefore left with questions it was awkward—or worse—to ask. She would have waited, would have asked them of the chancellor later, when Bellusdeo was absent. But the chancellor wouldn’t have answers.

She swallowed. No one wanted to talk about their own mistakes, but especially not the life-altering tragedies. And Bellusdeo had been the queen of her empire, a ruler who could not display weakness or uncertainty where it might be seen by her subjects.

Kaylin cleared her throat. She could ask to come back to the library later. She could. But while it was far safer to ask the questions behind Bellusdeo’s back, it felt wrong. How, she didn’t know. Safety was best, and it wasn’t like she’d be using any information against her friend.

She decided on a half measure. She tapped Bellusdeo on the shoulder. “Can I speak to you in private for a minute?”

Bellusdeo frowned. She was no doubt considering what might require privacy. But she was unsettled, enraged, and there was only one thing that could cause that. She might have made a good Hawk. She understood, and nodded.

They stood surrounded by books about three city blocks away from the library’s only other occupants.

Kaylin inhaled. She was afraid of angering Bellusdeo, and she was afraid of causing pain. Had she not felt viscerally certain that her unasked questions were important, or would be, she would have shut down the line of thought and walked away from it permanently.

“I don’t have Immortal memory,” she began, speaking slowly. All of her possible words seemed like the wrong ones, but that was the topic, not the words themselves.

“Stop it.”

“What?”

“Ask. Just...ask. I obviously trust you enough that I won’t assume malice, and I am an adult. I ruled an empire, a world. I was not in the habit of torturing or murdering my counselors when they brought up unpleasant topics.”

“It’s about the names. You said you were guided in the creation of, the finding of, your adult names.”

Bellusdeo nodded.

“All of you? Were all of you guided the same way?”

“Yes.”

“But you had names. Not adult names, but names?”

“We did.”

“And you were namebound.”

“Mortal memory cannot be this bad. Were you not listening to Arbiter Kavallac?”

“I was—but she never did what you did. She never met the Outcaste. She was never a denizen of a world that was falling to Shadow. I want to ask her how...how that might have affected you. How having something that could be a placeholder for an adult name—while you were all separate individuals—could have affected the...merging.”

“Did you know?”

“No, not before—not before your True Name fully emerged. But I understood it while I was—while I was helping you. I understood the rightness of it. I understood what had to happen.”

Bellusdeo, pale, looked up.

“I want to ask her what might have happened had you and your sisters—without the guidance of a mother—found adult names and forms individually.”

Silence. Bellusdeo closed her eyes, her hands by her sides. They weren’t fists, but fists might have been better; there was so much unsaid it felt like an unbearable weight had descended on the Dragon. Kaylin had no way to carry it.

“What answers? What answers do you think she’ll have?”

“I don’t know. But... I’m a Hawk.”

The sentence made no sense to the Dragon; her eyes opened, her brows folded, and she turned to Kaylin, eyes orange. “Believe that we all know that. What does that have to do with this?”

“Sometimes the questions we ask—the incidental questions, the unrelated questions—lead to answers. If Kavallac has no answers, she’s a Dragon, she was raised differently, she understands adult names. The possible ramifications might lead her to questions we’d never even think to ask, and the answers to those questions might be what we need.”

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