Page 149 of Cast in Atonement

It was an intensely private moment, or it should have been—but as Bellusdeo spoke, Kaylin could hear them as well. Could hear them because she could see them.

Eight women, of a height, of a color, with the gold Dragon; they wore the same armor she now wore, and they stood, four to each side of the woman whose body they had been trapped by, trapped in; none of them were crying now. They did glance at each other, and Kaylin thought one whispered to the sister beside her, although the sister didn’t reply.

“Can you see them?” Kaylin whispered.

Bellusdeo shook her head. “I can’t. You can?”

Kaylin nodded. “They all look like you. They’re even wearing the plate armor. One of them just whispered something to the sister beside her—she’s on your left. Oh. She just glared death at me. I guess I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

Bellusdeo nodded. “I heard it. I heard them. One of them likes your dress and wants me to wear one just like it.” She grimaced.

One of the eight laughed.

It was impossible to believe that they were dead; impossible to believe that any of these eight had drawn Mrs. Erickson’s attention because they were weeping. But Mrs. Erickson had said she had worked with them until they could at least see or be aware of each other, and that had made all the difference.

She remembered Arbiter Kavallac’s story about how draconic mothers were born, and if she’d had any doubts, she repented.

“I have to go,” she told the gold Dragon. “Do you want to take a moment?”

“I want to take a year. Maybe a decade,” Bellusdeo replied. “But...they know what’s at stake now. They died protecting a world, after all.” Bellusdeo lowered her chin for one long breath, before lifting it. “Let’s join the others.”

Mrs. Erickson could always see Bellusdeo’s dead; Kaylin could now see them as well. She wasn’t certain why, but accepted that this space, built by Azoria, amplified the existence of the dead. She’d been worried about Bellusdeo’s short fuse and emotional desperation; she’d thought it might be better if Bellusdeo had remained behind. She’d been wrong.

Kaylin thought that hearing the voices of the sisters she had loved and lost had steadied the gold Dragon, as if that had been her only wish, her desperate prayer; as if being granted even this much had been something she could not believe in but could not let go.

But it was clear to Kaylin that the sisters, the dead, had wanted that no less desperately.

They should have been one.

They should have been one being, all nine of their childhood experiences a weave of experience, of steadiness, of knowledge, part of a single, inseparable whole.

Bellusdeo’s name was the combination of the names of her sisters; the adult name taken from the childhood names—names large enough to wake them from birth, but too small to form the soul of a Dragon.

Eight sisters.

Eight. What mother, what queen, might nine daughters have become? How strong? How significant? How powerful?

Nine children in total. Nine, who might once again begin to rebuild their race.

But there was something she didn’t understand. Bellusdeo had the nine names. Kaylin knew; Kaylin had helped to fuse those names into a single name, a single word—a word untainted by, unknown to, the Outcaste who had led them to take names for themselves in defiance of a truth none of the nine understood.

Those names had not been theirs, but they had carried them, used them, communicated with each other through that bond.

It was not from those so-called adult names that Bellusdeo’s adult name, Bellusdeo’s current name, had been built, fused, made whole. It was the earlier, childhood names that she remembered.

She had carried and held those names. Somehow. How else could they have been there, waiting?

Kaylin, emergency midwife, couldn’t save a baby or a mother if they were already dead.

She couldn’t lift her arms, couldn’t reach for Bellusdeo or her sisters, but she understood something, in this place, that perhaps Mrs. Erickson had always understood on a visceral level.

What had Mrs. Erickson done? What had she attempted to do? She tried to connect the dead sisters to each other. So that they wouldn’t be so isolated, so alone.

That was half right, Kaylin thought.

Half right.

The sisters were dead, but they weren’t dead; their names were in the right place. Mrs. Erickson might be able to command them to leave—not that she would ever even consider trying—but Kaylin wasn’t certain she would succeed, even if she did. And if she did, what would that do to, or make of, Bellusdeo? What would it mean for her name?

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