“Well...” She watched the Dragons cross paths. It was almost playful.
“They are conversing,” Tara said, her voice softer. “My Lord worries about Bellusdeo.”
“About her decision?”
“No. He trusts that she will accept the responsibility of being, of becoming—however temporarily—the mother of her race. But...he does not think it will make her happy.”
“You think he’s right.”
“I don’t know for certain,” Tara replied. “I don’t know what makes people happy or unhappy. I don’t know why some children can be happy in my garden, and some resent being forced to be here—it is the same activity for both. I understand that there are variances in personality, but I don’t understand what creates those variances.
“And no, Kaylin,” she added, although Kaylin hadn’t spoken a word, “I don’t think Dragons are more complicated than humans,Noranniror Barrani. They have different concerns.”
“And can hold longer grudges.”
Tara shook her head. “I think very few can hold a grudge as intensely as Morse can.”
“Yes, but that’s decades—that’s all we have.”
“Is that how you see it?”
“That’s not how you do?”
“No. I think Morse can hold a grudge for the entirety of her life.”
“Which is shorter—”
“I’m not sure it feels different from the inside, but I admit that I know far fewer Immortals.”
Morse cleared her throat. “I’m standing right here,” she told them both; the sharp edge of her glare was aimed at Kaylin.
“We know,” Tara said.
Morse snorted. “She forgets a lot, doesn’t she?”
“You’re going to criticize her manners?”
Morse chuckled. “Not hers, no.”
Right. “Do you understand what Bellusdeo needs?”
“I have been trying,” Tara confessed. She didn’t look up to the sky, but it wasn’t necessary; she could see what was happening. If Helen was Kaylin’s House, Tara was, in some fashion, the fief itself.
“My powers at the edge of my borders are very weak,” Tara then said. “If Bellusdeo were a Hallionne or a Tower, I would have far better guesses. But even the Towers and Hallionne differ. We have one imperative; that imperative produces necessary rules. But beyond those? Happiness is just as elusive as it is for you. Or Morse.
“And sometimes, in our attempts to find that happiness, we make mistakes; we confusewantwith happiness. We discover that they are not the same, often at our peril.”
“She wants to be here.”
“She wants to be fighting Shadow. She wants to be part of the council of war that is concerned with Shadow, yes. But she wants that, I think, because she is confident that she has much to offer in that regard. The only other thing about which she can be certain is the continuation of her race.
“She is lonely.”
Kaylin opened her mouth and shut it again.
Tara nodded anyway. “Hatchlings might make her life busier, but I am not at all certain they would make it less lonely.”
“What would?”
