Page 48 of Cast in Atonement

“I am not an Ancient, Corporal. I am considered wise, but I did not design our race; I did not bring Dragons into being. I cannot, without some meditation, begin to answer that question. Were there other circumstances you wish me to consider while I reflect?”

“The sisters,” Kaylin replied.

“How so?”

“They died. They died before they could merge the nascent names to form a whole.”

Kavallac’s mouth opened soundlessly. To Bellusdeo she said, “Impossible.”

“It’s not impossible. We found their bodies—we found them here, within Elantra. It caused a bit of a stir because the bodies were identical; it was like the same person was dying over and over again.”

“Corporal, I assume you are good at the duties required of a Hawk. I am—I was—as good at the duties required of a Dragon. Bellusdeo, as she stands before me now, is whole.”

“How can you be so certain of that?”

“Lannagaros?” Kavallac said.

The chancellor was silent, marshaling words. When he spoke, he spoke quietly. “What she sees, I see.”

“And the first time?” Kaylin demanded. “When you met her again?”

He shook his head.

“But...she could become a Dragon. You saw that.”

“Yes.”

“Did you not think something was wrong at the time?”

“I sensed no taint of Shadow. I sensed no hint that she was not as she appeared to be. But what she appeared to be at that time was a child. A familiar child. I was very frustrated by her in my youth—she and her many sisters—but very fond of them as well. We assumed they were dead, and we grieved.

“It is the gifts unasked for that move us most deeply, and her presence was that. If she could not be the future of the race, she could not—but she was nonetheless Bellusdeo.” He turned to Bellusdeo then. “I wished for your happiness. Even now. We lived as a race without a future before; we survived it. I did not feel the pressure to become something other, to become something you had no desire to be, was reasonable.”

Kavallac’s expression made clear she did not agree. “What do you see when you are in her presence now?”

“Bellusdeo,” he replied.

The Arbiter’s eyes narrowed. To Bellusdeo she said, “Is your name now the one you retrieved with the aid of someone who did not understand?”

“No.”

Kavallac exhaled smoke, her eyes more red than orange. “This is not the discussion I thought we would be having; you have given me much to consider.” None of it, by her tone, pleasant. “I understand the question of Necromancy or shamanism is critical to your well-being, but there is too much now wrapped up in those questions. Allow us—or allow me—to retreat for now; there is far too much to research and consider.

“What you have asked, Corporal, is dangerous; it is possibly the reason that the Ancients, in the end, abandoned a race with the duality ours contains.”

“Bellusdeo,” the chancellor said, his voice gentle in the way it was only for the gold Dragon. “Will you not tell her the rest?”

“This is a Hawk investigation, for the moment—at the Hawk’s request.”

This was going to be a day in which Kaylin deeply and continually regretted her life choices.

“Kaylin, do continue,” Bellusdeo added, when Kaylin failed to open her mouth.

She lowered her chin, her eyes now skirting various sets of feet. It was the only way she thought she’d be able to continue under the weight of different stares.

“Arbiter, when you lived in the Aerie, did you ever have to contend with outcastes?”

“No.” The word was a vibration of sound that encompassed anger and denial.

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