As she spoke the names, the members of the cohort who owned them appeared, just as Terrano had done. It was a calculated risk on her part; she knew, intellectually, that they weren’t physically here.
Ah.
That’s why Helen had had difficulty preserving Severn.
“Yes, dear. You are here the way the cohort is here. You just don’t realize it. You are not part of them; you could not be here at all if you weren’t part of me.”
Serralyn said, “I’d prefer not to sit on the ground, if it’s all the same to you.”
Sedarias said nothing. Loudly.
Serralyn exhaled and sat practically on top of Terrano. Valliant said nothing, but joined her; they’d sat this way in the dining room, admittedly with more pillows and a rug.
Kaylin was surprised to see Teela, and by her expression, so was Sedarias. She was warier, but that made sense: Teela had killed her father, had taken her family line, and had obliterated its name. She wielded one of The Three. She had fought in the wars that had been the sole reason for their exile in the West March, wars the rest of the cohort hadn’t seen. She was a power. She was recognized as a power, even by the former An’Mellarionne. No one messed with An’Teela unless they had a death wish.
She was what Sedarias saw herself as.
Was there envy? Probably some. And that was the thing with the cohort: they saw and heard it all. There was no privacy, and they’d grown up together in such a way that privacy was almost foreign.
Except for Teela.
Sedarias met her gaze, held it, and did not tell her to sit on the floor. Kaylin scurried out of the chair she occupied because she wasn’t certain that Sedarias making a chair specifically for Teela wouldn’t cause problems for the rest of the cohort.
Teela took the chair Kaylin had just vacated.
“I did not mean to endanger Kaylin,” Sedarias said.
“No. I know. So does Kaylin. If Kaylin weren’t so compulsive, there would have been no danger.” She spared Kaylin a side glare, but most of her attention remained focused on Sedarias. “I apologize for my absence; it took me a while to find a way in, and I had to have Helen’s aid—aid she was not immediately free to give me.”
Kaylin said nothing much more quietly.
“She was taking care of Severn, because someone brought him in here,” Terrano said.
Kaylin was pretty certain Teela already knew this. She really wanted to kick him, though.
“Please do,” Sedarias said. “It will save me the trouble.”
“We’d welcome being kicked,” Terrano shot back, “compared to what’s been happening for the last several hours.”
Mandoran had taken a seat beside Terrano, and he nodded, but said very little. If Terrano accepted this as business as usual, Mandoran didn’t.
Neither did Teela.
“This is where you need to be,” Teela said softly. “Not the rock and the remnants of a battlefield. You must see that.”
Sedarias said nothing.
“I didn’t grow up with you,” Teela continued. “Perhaps that’s why I can see it more clearly. I did not give you my name out of fear. I was not afraid of you, then. I am not afraid of you now. You might believe it’s because of what I’ve achieved in the interim, when you all went on without me and I could no longer hear your voices, even if I knew you were still alive.
“You would be wrong. I did not have Mellarionne. I had my mother’s family, considered irrelevant and insignificant in the High Court of the time. They were not my father’s family; they were not Mellarionne. My father would have approved of—did approve of—Mellarionne. He was wary, of course, but he considered them powerful and therefore worthy of respect.
“I did not believe that you could control me. I did not give you my name because of that fear. I did not believe you could kill me—although we must be grateful that was never put to the test.
“I cannot speak for the others.”
“You can.”
“I can’t. You know what they remember. You know what they felt. But what I have discovered about memory is this: it is selective. If we truly look, we can see the truth, but we revisit the memories that we choose to visit.
“You remember the fear. But you remember it in a slanted fashion. I was not afraid of you.”
“Then why?”
“Because I wanted hope,” Teela replied. “I wanted to believe it was possible to trust others of my kind. I wanted to choose a future that my father would never have chosen for me. It was a pathetic act of defiance.” She looked around the table, met Terrano’s gaze and nodded.
All of the cohort materialized. Annarion. Allaron. Torrisant, Fallessian, Karian. Last came the physically distant Eddorian.
“I was afraid,” Serralyn admitted, although her expression was far too sunny to contain fear now. “I haven’t been afraid of you for centuries. I admit I’m a bit afraid of this, but that’s because I’m sane.”
Sedarias turned toward her, and then, at last, toward Mandoran.
Kaylin realized they had all spoken out loud. All of them. “Teela came back for you,” she said quietly. “She had everything she was supposed to want—everything you’ve said you wanted—but she came back.”
“You’ve never tried to use our names against us,” Serralyn continued, when Sedarias remained silent. “Until now.”
Kaylin closed her eyes. Closed them, and then forced them open again. It was wrong. It was wrong on every level. But Sedarias wasn’t trying to do that now. She offered no defense. She offered nothing.
No, Kaylin thought, they were still in this odd garden and not on the plane of stone and rock.
“It must be hard,” Kaylin finally said. All of the cohort turned toward her. “There are days when I hate my job. Days when I want to strangle my coworkers or scream at Marcus. There are days when I want the midwives’ guild to just leave me alone and let me sleep.”
Sedarias raised a brow.
“I can keep all of that to myself. I don’t have to act on any of it. What defines me isn’t how I feel on those days. It’s what I choose to do. Emotions aren’t a choice. They’re emotion. They’re a response. Maybe I’m hungry. Maybe I’m exhausted. Maybe I’m angry at myself because I made a stupid mistake and other people are going to suffer for it.
“I have privacy. None of you do. You’re more like the Tha’alani in that regard. But the Tha’alani were raised—from birth—to seek the Tha’alaan. To trust it, to find comfort from it, and to seek knowledge in it. Not to own it. There is no chance that they’ll leave it. No chance that it will leave them.”
“They don’t have any choice,” Sedarias said, but her voice was a whisper.
“Neither do any of you. There’s no way to let go of a name. If there was, I’d’ve done it. I asked. If I can’t kill the person in question, we’re bound for life.”
“Do you think they’d all be here—” they, not we “—if they had any choice? You’ve seen what I’m like. You know what I’m like. You know—she just told you—what I tried to do.”
Kaylin exhaled again. It felt like all she did was exhale here. “Severn tried to take control of me.”
The silence that fell in response to those words was almost the entire reason she had never, ever mentioned it to anyone but Helen—Helen, who wouldn’t judge Severn by anything but Severn himself.
Teela’s eyes were blue, but they hadn’t descended into midnight. “Why?” The word was a demand, a command.
“He wanted to stop me from doing something he was certain would kill me.”
“Was he right?”
“I don’t know. I understand a bit more about myself and my marks and the way I move through the world now. It was instinctive—it was like grabbing my shoulder or arm to pull me back or keep me still.”
“They aren’t the same thing at all—as you well know.”
“He couldn’t reach my arm or shoulder—he wasn’t there.” She looked down a moment, remembering. When she lifted her chin she said, “He was angry at himself for weeks. He avoided me for weeks after. Because he’d thought to manipulate me. It wasn’t me he was angry at. He didn’t try to justify it.
“I knew why he’d tried. I think I’d have done the same thing, if our positions were reversed and he wasn’t listening.”
“I don’t,” Mandoran said.
“Yeah, me either.” That was Terrano.
“I think she might have,” Serralyn chimed in.
“Don’t look at me.” This was Eddorian. “I’ll just say that I’m really appreciating Alsanis at the moment.”
Sedarias looked to Teela.
“Kaylin is just idealistic enough, just determined enough, that if she were panicking she might. But I doubt it. You said Severn tried.”
Kaylin nodded.
“Did he succeed?”
“No, he stopped. He stopped himself. But...we both knew.”
“And you were not angry.” Teela had chosen to speak in Barrani, unlike the rest of her cohort.
“No—why would I be? I understood why he did it. He was angrier—at himself—than I was.”
Teela then turned to Sedarias, and as one, they all did. “You are afraid of many things. Becoming your monstrous brother was—no, is—one of them. He would not have hesitated. Had he been in your position, either you or Mandoran would now be enslaved. Mandoran would likely otherwise be dead. You fear many things.
“So did I. But—we were taught to fear, in the end. We were taught that there was only one way to be fearless. Power. And even that was defined very, very narrowly. My father killed my mother.”
They knew.
“I will not become my father, but I am afraid to become my mother, as well. It is why I will never have either spouse or children.”
Kaylin had never heard this before. “There’s no way you could become either your father or your mother, now.”
Teela lifted a hand, palm flat, in Kaylin’s direction. “I think it is past time for you to leave.”
“I vote against,” Mandoran said.
Both Sedarias and Teela turned to glare at him.
“...but she could try harder to stay on topic.”
Terrano snickered, and Kaylin understood that the storm that had been Sedarias had passed. It had quieted.
“It is not quiet enough, dear, but yes, you are right.”
“It’s never going to be enough, though,” Kaylin told Helen. “I didn’t really think about it, but: this is all inside all of them. What happens here—it can be unpleasant or terrifying—but...” She stopped, because in answering Helen she had drawn the attention of the cohort. She reddened.
“You accept things from each other that I would never accept from other people. If someone tried to kill me on a battlefield, I’d assume that person hated me. Or wanted me dead. I’d assume one thing, one motivation. But if I daydream about strangling Marcus, I accept it because everyone does that on his bad hair days. I mean, everyone. No one says it. No one has to say it.
“But—you have to accept it. Because you’re on the inside of each other’s thoughts all the time.” She turned to Terrano. “It’s why you weren’t surprised, just exhausted.”
He winced but nodded.
“Look,” she said, to Sedarias, “I understand your fears. All of them. I’ve had them. I get it. But: they know you. You can’t tell yourself if they knew what I was really like, they’d hate me, because they do know what you’re really like. They’ve known it for centuries. For practically ever.
“They’re not trying to escape you.”
“Serralyn and Valliant—”
“Serralyn was born for the Academia. You can’t not know that. Valliant isn’t as obvious, but my guess is he wants what the Academia offers as well. You didn’t rage at Eddorian when he chose to remain with Alsanis and his brother.”
“Oh, she did,” Eddorian said.
“Fine. You raged at Eddorian. But you didn’t try to force him to come to Elantra.”
“No. She didn’t try to force Annarion and Mandoran to wait, either.”
“I wanted information,” Sedarias snapped. “They were coming to Elantra. They’d be in reach of the High Halls.”
Allaron said, gently, “You accepted that as the silver lining. But you didn’t want them to leave until we were all ready, either. Not really.”
The wind began to move.
Terrano rolled his eyes, but his jaw tightened.
“I was right,” Sedarias said, voice low. “I was right.”
The wind increased in strength; the trees above their heads began to lose leaves. Without thought, Kaylin stepped forward and caught Sedarias by the arm, her own arms glowing a brilliant blue. “Cut it out. Cut it out right now.
“You were wrong. I mean, I wish you’d succeeded—I lost friends and compatriots to the Barrani Ancestors when they attacked the High Halls. Even Bellusdeo was badly injured. But you were wrong. They don’t love you less because Annarion came for Nightshade. You knew he would because you know Annarion as well as he knows you. Mandoran only came to keep an eye on Annarion and to back him up if it was necessary.
“You don’t want the Tower because the Tower protects the rest of the world; you want it because it’s another place you think you can build safety in. You want it because all of you would live there, not here. And there’d be no Bellusdeo there, no me, no Helen—no outsiders, nothing to disturb the family you’ve built.”
“It’s not family.”
“To me, in every way that matters, it is. But you don’t need the Tower for that. I don’t know what your argument with Mandoran was. I can guess but I don’t know for certain.”
“He tried to commit suicide by Dragon,” Terrano then said.
“He did not. He tried to protect the Dragon from herself. It’s something we all need from time to time—ask Teela about me. No, ask her when I’m not here. Someone like you really needs it. When you can’t completely control the impulse or the anger, having people who love you who can remind you of the truth is a gift. It’s a gift most of us don’t have, or never had.”
“It’s only a gift if she listens,” Terrano muttered.
Sedarias stood. “I have had almost enough of you.”
His grin would have melted ice. He walked straight to where she was shaking, her eyes midnight blue. Ah. Blue. They were blue again. Before she could say anything else, he wrapped his arms around her. “I missed you,” he said, voice soft but still audible. “I missed this. I missed all of it. But I came back because I was worried.”
“That I would harm everyone else.”
“That you’d do everything you possibly could to isolate yourself.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. You think you’re holding on—but you drive people away by holding on too tightly. We know it. And we know you’d die for us.”
“I would not be so ineffectual as to die. Dying is for our enemies.”
“We are never going to be your enemies.”
Mandoran’s shoulders relaxed, but he gritted his teeth as he gazed at the sky. “None of us are afraid you’re going to abandon us for Mellarionne.”
Sedarias’s head whipped around to glare. “No one sane would abandon anyone for Mellarionne!”
“But...you want it. You know it’s a risk, and you’re willing to risk everything to take it. To prove something to dead people.”
Kaylin exhaled. There went peace.
“Yes, dear,” Helen said softly. “But that is the nature of the cohort. I think it is time you left. Why do you think Mandoran understood the true danger to Bellusdeo? He is an independent person who is nonetheless part of Sedarias. The cost to Bellusdeo would be the same as the price Sedarias, unleashed and enraged, would later pay.
“Come.”
“That was well done,” she said, as she led Kaylin to the door that had disappeared when she’d entered it. “I am sorry I could not speak; I did not have time to warn you not to take Severn with you.”
Severn would have listened.
“Yes. You are not happy.”
“I just—” Kaylin exhaled. “I remember when I was afraid of how the existence of, the freedom of, the cohort would affect me. I mean—would affect Teela. She’s an important friend. One of my first friends here. I understand Sedarias’s fear. And...I don’t really like it when I look at it from the outside.”
“No. But you don’t feel like that now.”
Kaylin snorted. “No. Now I’m just worried about what the cohort will do, period. I was afraid Teela would have less time to—to think about me.” She shook her head. “Sedarias is afraid of the same thing. But I had my mother. I don’t know what Sedarias’s mother was like. I don’t know if she survived, or if her father killed her—or, given her brothers and sisters, someone else in her family did.
“And I don’t really want to know. But Mandoran likes Bellusdeo—and Bellusdeo has had a really hard life.”
“It’s not a competition.”
“No, I know. But I think Mandoran’s been important to Bellusdeo. I mean, she’d never say that; she’d probably die first. But...”
“Yes. But that is now for the cohort to resolve. Thank you.”
“Why couldn’t they have done that in the first place?”
Helen was silent for an uncomfortable beat. “I try not to interfere, dear. I try not to ask intrusive questions. I know much of your life and your day—and I do strongly agree with Lord Nightshade—Karriamis is extremely dangerous, and I would vastly prefer you avoided his Tower. But you must make your own decisions, and I accept that.”
“We weren’t talking about me,” was the uncomfortable reply.
Helen continued as if Kaylin hadn’t spoken. “However, I have lived with you—with your words, your thoughts, your dreams and your nightmares. Let me ask you just one question. Do you remember what you did on the day you discovered the people who were kidnapping and selling children?”
Kaylin blinked.
“You used the power of your marks. Do you remember what you did? No, do not answer. It is not necessary. You do. Do you think that Teela or Tain could have stopped you?”
“They didn’t care.”
“No. Do you believe they could have stopped you?”
Kaylin looked down at her feet.
“You have very little in common with Sedarias,” Helen continued, her voice much softer. “But not nothing. This is the danger, always, of power; if you lose control—and we all lose control some of the time—the damage done is far, far harder to recover from. What you did for Sedarias, you believe I could do. I could not.
“To Sedarias, I am a building. She would hear the words, but she would not listen, would not absorb them.”
“But she lived with Alsanis for centuries!”
Helen nodded. “Alsanis was, in some fashion, the strict and severe parent that she had never had before. You think that her parents were both strict and severe. They were not. Alsanis was parental; he was old. He interfered. He decided what was best for the children in his care.
“In her own fashion, and as she is capable of it, she cares deeply for Alsanis—but she wants him at a distance while she finds her own feet. I am...a building. I am not Alsanis; she knows that. She trusts me to keep the people I choose to offer shelter safe. But she cannot listen to me; she could not listen to Alsanis.
“She could only barely listen to you—but she could and did. You are part of her family, even if she’s afraid that in remaining here she will lose that family.
“I think it is good that she stays here and makes peace with the fact that they are all conjoined and they are also all separate. They are not Sedarias. The fact that they are not, and that they are still and will always be part of the cohort, is something she must face and accept.
“But as you have noted, it is not easy. You were afraid that you would personally lose Teela. But you also understood that these long-ago friends were a source of grief and pain, and you wanted Teela to be happy. Both of these feelings were true; they were both yours. You chose. Sometimes it is hard to make the right choice—but life without such conflicts does not exist.
“Sedarias is very strong, but she is also—as you have seen—fragile. Fragile in ways that you no longer are. Yes, she has had much longer—but not in this world. I will not call it the real world; her time in Alsanis was real. But there, no strangers intruded, no responsibilities to others had to be borne; they couldn’t be.
“They thought of Teela as lost. They focused on trying to reconnect with her. But even that was not thinking of other people; Teela was a part of them.
“Now, they have left the nest. They are interacting with other people. They are taking on other responsibilities, or exploring possibilities that did not exist for them for almost the entirety of their lives. They are looking outward, not inward, because they can.
“Your fear of losing Teela was small, compared to Sedarias’s fear. The cohort are the first people Sedarias dared to openly care for. She is afraid that now that they have choice, the only thing she has to offer is power. The power of Mellarionne, if she can hold it. It’s what she was raised to believe and to value. She is of course wrong. But she is not good at listening, at hearing.”
“She has to know they’re not lying—they’re talking, all of them, through the bond of their True Names.”
“What she knows, what she feels, these are not the same. She could listen to you because you are an outsider. But not so much of an outsider that you have a vested interest in placating her, in pleasing her.”
“So...if she liked me more, she’d listen less?”
Helen chuckled, but her mouth, when it came to rest, was drawn down in the corners. “Yes. But if you really think about it, you’ll probably understand it.”
“Will it make me any happier?”
“Probably not. You’ve often wondered why Teela cares about you. And sometimes you tell yourself it’s only because you have the marks of the Chosen. Not often,” she added softly, “but sometimes. You do not think as compulsively as Sedarias is wont to do, and you don’t dwell often on the fears. But if you did, you would be far more like her.
“But what you said is true: she would die for them. They are her family in any way you define family. They will stand with or beside her against any enemies. But not against each other, not that way. She did not take control of Mandoran. She did try.”
“But Severn—”
“It was not quite the same. But it’s the same impulse, writ large. You weren’t horrified at what Severn attempted.”
Kaylin had already said this, but nodded.
“He was. It is Sedarias’s own guilt and self-loathing she must work through. But this is a start: she has stopped making any attempt to justify the actions to herself. Severn never made the attempt—but his action was instinctive, primal. Sedarias has a singular ability to make the instinctive and the primal work for her, rather than against her—but there are snarls and pitfalls.
“I believe they will be talking for some time. You wanted to ask me something, and we began that discussion before it was so perilously interrupted.”
Kaylin was exhausted. And hungry. She could barely remember what she’d wanted to talk about; it seemed like she’d been flying above rocks for a week. But Helen led her out of the basement, and back up the stairs to the long hall which led, at its end, to an open-air patio. Severn was seated. And eating.
He looked up as the two approached, setting fork aside.
“Sedarias is fine, for now. I used to envy what she built—but another day like this anytime soon would probably kill me.”
Helen nodded. “Now, what did you want to discuss?”
It was Severn who answered. “Karriamis.”
“Ah. I know very little about Karriamis’s history. I understand what he now is—inasmuch as it is possible to understand a person one has never met. He is the core and the heart of the Tower he became to stand against Ravellon.”
Kaylin nodded. “He wouldn’t tell us why he chose Candallar. He wouldn’t discuss that at all—he implied that you wouldn’t either, but...that you might if I asked persistently.”
“Pestered is an unfortunate word,” Helen replied.
“It’s probably deserved. I know better than to interfere in an argument between angry Dragons—but I did it anyway.”
“You are young. It might be hard to believe, but ten years from now, twenty, you will find it much easier to do what seems pragmatic. You react emotionally. I trust your reactions. But you do not always see all of the context for any given set of emotions that others experience.
“You are mortal. You know that I choose mortal tenants.”
Kaylin nodded.
“Some small part of you believes it’s because you will die of old age, and if I have somehow made the wrong choice, I won’t have to suffer with it for long.”
Did she? Maybe. Maybe she did believe that. But...she didn’t. She didn’t, not most of the time.
“Exactly. But you wonder, don’t you?”
Kaylin nodded.
“What is your answer, right now?”
“You wanted me because what I wanted from a home, you wanted to give.” It was a practiced answer; she had said it to herself many times.
“But?”
“I don’t give you anything.”
“This is not true, but I understand the concern. You feel it often: you have taken so much, you have been given so much, and you have given so little in return.”
“It’s true.”
“You fail to understand what it is you can give; you think of giving as work, as something that takes effort and will. You think of it as transactional, but only in relation to yourself. You can tell me, clearly, what Teela has given you. You can tell me, just as clearly, what I have given you. But you feel on some level you have done nothing to deserve it. You believe that you belong with the Hawks in the Halls of Law—and you can point to the many things you’ve done because on some level, those are worthy work.
“I like your openness. Teela could not give it. Bellusdeo could not give it. Severn?”
He shook his head.
“No. You are not a child, Kaylin—but you are not yet fully adult. You retain some of the impulsiveness of youth, some of the joy—and the despair and the anger, because nothing is unalloyed. When you are tired, when you are trying your hardest, we feel that we can give something of value to you. Perhaps what you give us is intangible: you appreciate us.
“You love us.”
“But...”
“Love means different things to different people, yes. But even Sedarias understands why you are my tenant, and why she could not be. What she needs is so complex I cannot give it to her. She is not jealous of this. She understood, and understands, why Annarion and Mandoran are fond of you. It is Bellusdeo’s interaction with Mandoran she finds difficult.”
“Because our association will pass in a few decades.”
“Yes, dear. She can be patient. She knows how to wait. Bellusdeo, however, is a Dragon, and if Sedarias accepts this—and she does—it goes against the brief childhood she spent in the real world.” Helen exhaled; breeze came. Dishes vanished.
“She is angry because Mandoran and Annarion, in her view, have thrown away the entirety of their life experience in order to befriend her. Even Terrano has grown to like her—but he is similar in many ways to Mandoran. She is afraid. It is a fear you understand. Do you think Karriamis would accept her?”
“I don’t know.”
“No?”
“He accepted Candallar.”
“Yes.”
“Would you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I could not ever give Candallar the home he wanted. I would always be a resting place while he looked toward and yearned for his real home. But you are not, I think, wrong in that one regard. He had nothing when he arrived in Karriamis. Candallar was made outcaste—and you must be aware of what that means to Dragonkind. You cannot imagine what Candallar was, when he first arrived.”
“Why can you?”
“I have had experience with many, many people during the entirety of my existence. You think you are Kaylin, and you are. And you will remain Kaylin—but experience, for better or worse, will change you. Things that you feared once, you no longer fear. You do not fear starvation; you do not fear the Ferals. You know what you’ve done in a desperate, terrified attempt to survive. You know the moment you decided that survival was not worth the cost you had paid.
“You are not, now, the child you were seven or eight years ago. You will not be the person you are now in a decade. Some parts of you will remain, and perhaps you will think you have not changed much—but I will know. I will know this Kaylin, and I will know the Kaylin you will become. And perhaps what you will become in the future will not be the person who wanted what I have to give.”
“That’s never going to happen.”
Helen smiled. “I will not discuss all the details, but will say it has happened before. What I offered was not, in the end, what the person I sheltered grew into wanting. Ah, no, perhaps needing is a better word.”
“They left you?”
Helen nodded. “With my blessing,” she added. “Sometimes a person needs a nest, but they may not remain wingless; as they gain strength and confidence, they need to fly.”
“But...but...what about you?”
“I cannot be a prison. Ah, no. I can be a prison, but a prison is not a home. It is not the same with a Tower.”
“Why?”
“Because the Towers understood that they would be under attack—and they could not anticipate all of the forms of attack; as Bellusdeo said, Shadow is subtle and subversive. The captains can command the Towers.”
“Not according to Karriamis.”
Helen said nothing.
“You think he can be commanded.”
“I do. And perhaps that is the other reason he chose Candallar. Candallar, Barrani and alone, would instinctively avoid offering commands to a Dragon.”
“Bellusdeo won’t have that problem.”
“No? Perhaps not. But Karriamis chose to test her, to destabilize her, in order to claim the opposite. She is uncertain,” Helen added, a rare intrusion into Bellusdeo’s privacy. “The reason she is driven to consider the Tower is her personal war—and its loss. As if captaining a Tower will allow her to redeem herself from her failure.”
“That wasn’t her failure!”
Helen smiled gently. “Karriamis, I’m certain, does not agree. But failure defines and shapes us—and not solely because we did fail. How we deal with failure, how we deal with what it means about ourselves and our own capabilities, says more about us than almost anything else could. He does not know who Bellusdeo is, in the wake of catastrophic failure. But dear, neither does she.
“And while they may have similar goals in regard to Shadow, he is not meant to be a tool of vengeance. If that is all she has to offer, I do not believe she can take the Tower.”