But at the same time, it was true. Even if they’d been thrown away—or eleven of the twelve had, because Sedariashad wanted to take the chance to become more powerful—they’d found each other. They couldn’t get out of being sent to the green, but the choices they’d made while huddled together had been entirely their own. And because of those choices, they were here. Sedarias had survived her siblings and was An’Mellarionne. Serralyn was a student, with the much more quiet Valliant, in the Academia.
And Terrano was Terrano.
“Would your former allies have killed the Consort?”
Silence. Teela’s eyes were midnight, her pallor off.
“We were not informed of their intentions,” Sedarias said, her voice as stiff as Teela’s expression.
Kaylin’s frown, half aimed at herself, found a more comfortable target. “If they want to get rid of the Consort, why would they start this up only when they have a new potential Lady as guardian of the Lake?”
“Do you think they told us what their plans were?” Terrano asked with obvious disgust at Kaylin’s line of questioning. “This isn’t some garden-variety crime. That’s the right phrase?”
“It is, if you mean normal, petty, unremarkable.”
Terrano shrugged. “I got bored sometimes, and I listened in. Barrani Lords weren’t the only lords involved in this. Mortals don’t like being mortal. If someone offers them credible reason to believe that they can become Immortal, they might be suspicious, but they jump on it like starving cats.
“My guess? If the Barrani could convince the humans that a flaw in their initial creation led to the condition of mortality, they might be moved to support the Barrani endeavors.”
“Let’s leave the humans out of it for now. What, exactly, did the Barrani think they could do to wake their children?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t intend to let the children sleep eternally. I think Yvonne is a blind, if we’re being honest. It’s a way of garnering political support from those powerful families who have no interest in the family line of the current HighLord. Sayingwe’re going to destroy the Lakeis likely to be met with more than resistance. Saying they’ve found someone more malleable who can become the Lady? That’d get support.”
Logia left her position by the wall. “What did you say?”
Terrano frowned, because Logia, if not Bellusdeo, was still a Dragon. “What did I say?”
“They had a different source of wakefulness, a different source of life?” Logia’s eyes were now blood red, the shift happening almost in an instant, as if she were Bellusdeo and Shadow was in the room.
“They weren’t big on details when I was eavesdropping.” Terrano shrugged as if it were someone else’s problem.
Kaylin deeply resented that one of those people was her. But Logia’s eye color and her expression were far more troubling than Terrano’s attempt to ditch homework.
All of Logia’s facial movements stilled; her eyes reddened further, which should have been impossible. Kaylin guessed that the sisters were having an emergency meeting behind Logia’s eyes. She wondered if it would be Logia who continued, or if one of the sisters would step in instead.
Logia was the one who resumed talking, but she spoke carefully, her gaze intent. If Logia wasn’t as trigger-happy at the mention of Shadow, something Terrano had said had pushed buttons.
Logia didn’t take a seat, but she approached them as she spoke. “Bellusdeo says she mentioned the gaining of her adult name after you first met.”
Kaylin nodded slowly. “The Outcaste. The Outcaste helped guide her. And the rest of you.”
“And the rest of us. As you know—as we now know, who were motherless due to the wars—that was not the method by which our adult names would, or should, be gained. But it gave us a measure of freedom and selfhood, and it allowed us, finally, the use of our draconic forms.”
“The Outcaste—the male Dragon—didn’t know how female Dragons achieve their adult names,” Kaylin said, frowning. “They’re born with draconic form, and they find their True Names in a different way.”
“A way very much like the way in which we found ours.”
Silence.
She’d thought Bellusdeo peripherally involved because she was a fieflord and Shadow had been implicated. But she knew the involvement of these draconic sisters was now far more personal. “The Dragons don’t have the Lake. I’ve never really understood what finding an adult name meant. I mean—aren’t you born with names?”
“We’re born, in theory, with half of our names,” Logia replied. “Dragons weren’t a native species in the world in which we landed; there was very little research we could do there. We could rely on personal history and overheard anecdotes—all young Dragons are very interested in adult names.
“But it wasn’t a surprise to us when we met the Outcaste. We didn’t know he was outcaste. We assumed—wrongly—that he had been displaced, just as we had, a casualty of war.”
None of the Barrani in the room, with the sole exception of Teela, looked comfortable now.
“He guided us.”