Page 18 of Cast in Atonement

“They wouldn’t have stayed if they had the choice,” Mrs. Erickson said, voice firm. “They didn’t. They couldn’t pass on until Azoria An’Berranin was gone. I have tried all my life not to be a harsh, judgmental person, but I do believe I hated that woman in the end. I was happy she had died.”

Kaylin didn’t understand the guilt Mrs. Erickson clearly felt; her words were a confession. Kaylin was very happy that Azoria was dead—well, dead and gone. She didn’t consider herself a terrible person for feeling that way.

Maybe that was why she found it impossible to dislike Mrs. Erickson. All of the Hawks did. She was a truly gentle person. Kaylin didn’t have that in her.

“And my sisters?” Bellusdeo whispered.

Mrs. Erickson’s brow furrowed. “They’re bound to our world, as the children were bound, but in a much more restricted space. They can’t see each other. I think, had each of my four children been isolated that way, it would have been much, much harder for them.”

“Why could your children see each other, then? If my sisters can’t see each other, if they can’t tell you what they want—”

“They can’t, yet—but I’m sure they will,” Mrs. Erickson replied. “But I do agree. If they could be made aware of each other in the way my children were, they would be happier.”

“Can they—can they see me clearly?”

“Yes, dear. They can see you. They can see the world around you. One or two have distinctly unkind opinions about that world or the people in it.”

“Can they see Lannagaros now?”

“I believe they can—but they’re looking at me because I’m present and I can hear them clearly.” Mrs. Erickson then looked at the wall, or rather, at the Wevaran stuck to it.

“We wish to know how I can better use the gift I was given. I can see these ghosts, but I cannot touch them; they can hear me, but they cannot hear each other. It must be possible to create a space where they could at least have that. But I don’t think Jamal, Katie, Esmeralda, or Callis became ghosts in the regular way.”

“Neither did Bellusdeo’s sisters.” Kaylin’s voice was soft.

Bellusdeo, pale, eyes fully copper, said, “They did. They died. My sisters weren’t bound by enchantment. They were lost in battle, devoured by Shadow. They weren’t like the children.”

“How much did Helen tell you?” Kaylin glanced at Mrs. Erickson.

“She answered all my questions. She was hesitant. The privacy of her tenants is something she guards—but Mrs. Erickson didn’t want that privacy, at least not with me.” Bellusdeo swallowed. “They died in Shadow.”

“You were absorbed by Shadow, but you weren’t killed by it; I would never have found you, otherwise.”

“I was the last,” was the bitter reply. “The last and the strongest. I was the perfect warrior for Shadow’s cause. I could go where they could not. Even here. The Towers could prevent my entry into your city because I bore the taint of Shadow, but not completely; I had the right to walk the streets of Elantra, as any other living being does.”

“So they didn’t transform you.”

Bellusdeo nodded.

Starrante began to click as he spoke to himself. “Apologies, apologies,” he said, in Elantran. “I forgot for a moment that you couldn’t understand me. Shadow is corrosive. For Immortals, Shadow can blur the words that give life, rewriting them in subtle—or obvious—ways. When Shadow touches mortals who carry no such words, the transformations are writ in their flesh. It is not always so with the Immortal.

“Bellusdeo does not bear the taint of Shadow. If she did, she could never have become the captain of a Tower; the Tower itself would reject—or destroy—her.”

“Perhaps,” the chancellor said quietly, “this is a topic that could be discussed at a different time. Starrante is correct; Bellusdeo is free of even the hint of Shadow. She is not, apparently, free of the dead. Corporal? Your frown has been deepening enough your face may be frozen in that expression.”

Kaylin shook her head. “Sorry, I was thinking about something.”

“And that?”

“Bellusdeo once told me her sisters were killed by the Outcaste. He could travel to the empire she ruled before her adopted world fell to Shadow.”

The chancellor’s eyes were now orange. Kaylin considered her options. She understood that Lannagaros didn’t want the discussion to touch on Shadow, Bellusdeo’s long enslavement there, and the possible consequences; he did not want to deepen the gold Dragon’s grief.

Given the existence of Mrs. Erickson and the existence of Bellusdeo’s dead sisters’ ghosts, Kaylin thought it was unavoidable. And she had questions that she felt, instinctively, were necessary to ask. But maybe they didn’t have to be asked right now.

Bellusdeo said that her sisters had been killed on the world she’d once ruled. But their bodies had been found in Elantra.

Why had their corpses appeared in Elantra? The identical bodies had caused a stir, but they were the essential clues that led, eventually, to the gold Dragon’s escape from Ravellon.

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