“You can do both, but only one is guaranteed to annoy me.”
Kaylin exhaled. “I can see your name. It’s sitting in the same direction as your voice.”
“Can you see mine?” Mandoran asked. Sedarias said something in very curt—but very well-pronounced—Leontine.
“No,” Kaylin said, answering him, anyway. “But... I haven’t been looking.”
“Stand in line,” Bellusdeo snapped.
Kaylin was almost afraid to take a step, and not only because the table was in the way. She couldn’t see the table, but knew it was there. Her steps were slow and hesitant, and...there were too many of them.
Too many not to strike the table.
“I’ve changed the nature of the table slightly,” Helen said in her most comforting of voices. “It should not impede your progress.”
Please, Kaylin thought.Please, Helen. Don’t let me hurt Bellusdeo.
“I won’t, dear. I understand what you fear—and I think you very wise to fear it. But Bellusdeo is not a child; she was once an empress. And I have been reminded that this is, in some fashion, the war, to her. She will not allow the cohort to take a risk she has decided it is strategically necessary to take—and this is now the only thing she can do for both you and them. If you cannot trust yourself, trust her. Trust me.”
Kaylin nodded.
She understood that the Emperor’s desire to protect Bellusdeo was one of the biggest sources of conflict between the two Dragons. The Emperor was trying to protect Bellusdeo from everyone who wanted her dead because they didn’t want more Dragons to exist. Bellusdeo understood this, even as she resented it. She would never,everaccept that Kaylin wanted to protect her from...Kaylin.
When she reached the word, she recognized it. It felt so familiar half of her fear dissipated. She heard nothing, and felt no visceral need to attempt to find some sort of pronunciation for what she saw; she was certain it would take hours, possibly days. She raised her left hand out of habit; it was the hand she used to invoke door wards when she was forced to touch them.
“You’re sure about this?”
Bellusdeo growled, a very Leontine sound.
Kaylin reached out and placed her left palm against the nearest flat surface—a long, single line that seemed to anchor everything else about the word’s form. She hoped that that hand had not encountered any inappropriate part of the Dragon’s body on the way to the word itself, not that Bellusdeo was likely to care. Much.
“Breathe,” Bellusdeo said, the word underlined by that almost Leontine growl.
Kaylin exhaled, chagrined.
“Well?”
“I’m—Can you feel anything?”
“Irritation—but that’s mine, not yours. Are you touching the name?”
“Am I touching you?”
“No.”
“But I—”
“You’re standing about six inches away from me.”
“But my arm—”
“You haven’t moved your arm, or anything beyond your mouth, since you walked through the table that Helen obligingly cleared.”
“I’m touching your name.”
“And?”
“I don’t know how to describe it.”
