If you believe that that makes no difference to Lord Nightshade, you fail to understand the kinship they had in their youth. It’s not your fight, Kaylin. It’s not your responsibility. Nightshade is guilty of everything that has so disappointed his younger brother. Youngest brother, and only surviving one. So many of us,” she added, voice softening as she fixed her gaze on the flame of a candle at the center of the table, “slip away from the ideals and the dreams of our youth.
“Many of my kin are raised without them. My mother—” She shook her head. “Those ideals, those beliefs—they’re tested. They’re broken. We accept their loss because we wish to survive. And perhaps we accept their loss because they’re onerous, in the end. It is hard to live up to a dream, a daydream. We surrender, then, the beliefs. We tell ourselves that those beliefs were proof of our naïveté, our foolishness. We deride our youthful selves, because we’ve faced the reality, the truth. We all do this. You did.”
“I—”
“You thought that when you crossed the bridge, when you left the fiefs and the Ablayne behind, you would find paradise. A place where everyone was happy, where people were free, where starvation was impossible, where people would be kind and accepting.”
Kaylin flushed and closed her mouth. All of this was true.
“Experience robbed you of that belief pretty quickly.”
Kaylin nodded, squirming a bit in her chair.
“Not all of our early beliefs are simple naïveté, simple daydream. But it is sometimes hard to differentiate which are true, or possible. It is impossible for you to have the world-across-the-bridge that you daydreamed of with such visceral longing, because Elantra is occupied by actual people. People cannot be that perfect, even if every one of them had the same dream that you once had.
“We dream smaller dreams,” Teela continued. “Nightshade is being reminded, in a way most of us will never be, of what he’s lost. No; of what he surrendered. It is not comfortable. And Annarion is coming face-to-face with that loss, as well. The brother of his memories is not the Nightshade of today.
“But it’s possible that enough of what Nightshade once was remains, somehow; Annarion believes that.”
“You don’t.”
“No, kitling, I don’t. My cohort accepts me because I was their equal, their companion. I was as helpless as they were, and was given as much choice as children generally are in my own future. They didn’t dream of me.”
“They did,” was Kaylin’s soft reply. “Terrano came for you. They were waiting.”
Teela’s smile was pained but genuine. “They didn’t dream of me the way Annarion dreamed of his brother. The way any of us dreamed of our brothers,” she added, remembering. “Annarion practically worshipped Nightshade in his youth. He knew that Nightshade would not abandon him; knew as well of the bitter, bitter fights between Nightshade and his father. Those fights were not enough to free Annarion, of course; Nightshade was much younger then, and much less powerful.
“Annarion isn’t disappointed because Nightshade is outcaste. The Barrani are largely political when it comes to that designation, and some of our historical outcastes have been figures of great drama, great heroics. No, it’s what he chose to make of his life, of the fief of Nightshade and even, in the end, of you. You’re the harshest divide because Annarion actually knows you. He knows that you freed them—us, really—and that you risked your life, multiple times, to do so.
“He knows about your work with the foundlings. He knows about your work with the midwives. And he knows that being a Hawk isn’t just a job for you; it’s a vocation. He knows that you’re Chosen,” she added. “He looks at you, and sees someone who is mortal, but who is trying, constantly, to be more than the sum of her parts.
“And he knows that had his brother asked you, you would have done what you could to help.”
“Asked me?”
“If Nightshade had told you about Annarion, if he had told you that he suspected Annarion was still alive, if he had told you that so much of his adult life involved attempts to reach him.”
“I’m...not sure.”
“Ah. A pity. Your opinion is noted.”
“I mean it, Teela.”
“I’m certain you do. In this, however, I concur with Annarion. Tain?”
Tain shrugged. “Not that I care one way or the other, but Teela’s right.”
“You have to say that—you’re her partner.”
Moran, minding her own business until now, jumped in. “I’m not her partner, and I agree with Teela’s observations.”
“Helping orphans and mothers is not the same as helping a fieflord.”
Teela’s eyes were green. She was both amused and relaxed. “Kitling,” she said fondly, “there is a reason that people actually like you. To go back to my previous comments about daydreams and harsh reality, you want to be helpful. To be kind. You have learned from the things that have hurt you—but you haven’t learned the same lessons that either Nightshade or I learned.”
“When Nightshade was young, there was no Elantra.”
“No.”
“And mortals were pets. Or slaves.” Or worse.
Teela nodded.
“Mandoran still talks about us as if we’re trained rats.”
“Mandoran enjoys baiting Dragons,” Tain pointed out. “If you have to choose a Barrani example of wisdom, look anywhere else.”
Bellusdeo snickered.
“My point is, Nightshade didn’t make my choices. And Annarion wouldn’t have made them either. Whatever he’s done, it’s what the Barrani of that time would have done.”
“Yes. But Annarion doesn’t see you as mortal, not really. He sees you as Chosen, but more. You held what remained of his Name. Of all of their Names. Only mine was absent. And you returned that knowledge without ever absorbing it first. You did what only the Consort could have done. It is difficult for the rest of them. They’re not what they were, and they know it.
“But it’s that flexibility that allows the difference in the way Mandoran views you and the way Annarion does.”
“He’s expecting too much from his brother.”
“Of course. But, kitling, would you rather he expected too little?”
* * *
She had no answer to that. Breakfast finished; the Moran escort formed up: Bellusdeo, Teela, Tain, Kaylin. Severn didn’t show up at the front door. The familiar lounged, as he usually did, across Kaylin’s shoulders.
Only when they were at the halfway point between Helen and the Halls of Law did she answer Teela’s question. “...I think so.”
“You would rather he had lower expectations?”
She nodded, pensive. “It’s the expectations that are killing him. Helen says he’s very unhappy. I know Nightshade’s unhappy as well, but in some ways I kind of feel like he’s earned some of that. I like Annarion. I hate to see him so miserable.”
The usual rejoinder failed to emerge, and Kaylin remembered that Mandoran was stuck in a wall in the basement somewhere.
* * *
Four city blocks from the Halls of Law, the familiar suddenly stiffened. He sat bolt upright, and this time, he spread a transparent wing across Kaylin’s eyes.
“Moran!”
Moran moved instantly. She also tried to lift her wings, and failed with the injured one. It didn’t matter. Kaylin threw her arms around the Aerian’s waist.
Teela