The Emperor's Wolves (Wolves of Elantra #1) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,139

their thoughts entirely to themselves. There are things that they won’t share with even the Tha’alanari.”

“Yes.”

“You think I’m a threat.”

“I do not believe you bear us any malice, but in my experience the most dangerous of threats can come from a place of genuine affection. A place of hope.”

“If you can keep your thoughts to yourself, is there any record left when you die?”

“There is. And those memories will be given to only one person upon my passage.”

Ybelline.

“The memories and experiences I have shared with the rest of my kin will become—have already become—part of the Tha’alaan. No doubt some of the witnesses here search it as we stand in the street and speak.”

“Forgive me,” Severn replied. “I am—as any other person—reluctant to walk peacefully to my own death.”

“You are so certain that that is where we walk?”

Severn said, “No—but I’m certain now that that’s your intent. Does Ybelline even know I’ve arrived?”

Adellos said, “Come. I would not have the rest of this discussion in the open streets.”

“I almost prefer the witnesses.”

“Do you? I know why you are here. I know why you are a Wolf. I know of your past, just as Ybelline does.”

Severn’s breath was singular, sharp, the sound similar to the drawing of a dagger.

“I am castelord, boy. Did you think she could protect her experiences from me?”

“I didn’t think about it at all,” Severn replied, voice even.

“Your expression says the opposite.”

“It’s nothing.”

“No, it is not. It is hope. It is the death of hope. Hope is perilous, Severn Handred. We take risks because we have hope. We extend ourselves. We fail to understand too much because we look only to a bright, shining future, a place different from the one we now occupy.”

“What did Random tell you when you visited her?”

The castelord frowned. The frown seemed to be his natural expression, given the way the lines of age fell perfectly into place around it. “Random?”

Severn stilled again. This time he fell silent as he met the castelord’s stare. He said nothing else. He knew no thought was safe from the castelord if the castelord touched his face with the racial stalks of his people; he calculated that even with few witnesses in the open street, Adellos would not make the attempt against Severn’s will.

He suffered no other illusions. But if hope was deadly or dangerous—and it had been, he couldn’t deny it—it was also necessary. Painful or no, it was the dream of a brighter future that allowed some people to crawl out of the perpetual shadows of the present.

Adellos did not immediately know who Random was. Adellos did not know that Ybelline had gone to visit the Oracular Halls—with Severn.

If she had not guarded her thoughts, if she had seen no reason to guard them before, she was doing so now. And she could, or she would not be heir to the castelord.

Severn lifted his chin, swallowed air, and expelled it in three syllables.

“Ybelline!”

“She cannot hear you.”

“No, of course not,” he replied. “But they can. They are not Tha’alanari. They are not castelords or castelords in waiting. If she did not know, she’ll know now.”

“You are certain of that?”

“I’m not certain that this visit—my visit—will remain within the Tha’alaan, no. But neither do I understand how such memories are excised. I can’t imagine that it’s done quickly. Apologies, castelord. I cannot die here, not yet.”

“Oh, child,” he replied, the benign expression once again molding the contours of his expression into something less harsh. “Not even you believe that.”

Severn moved; he rolled to the side. He couldn’t break line of sight easily, but he made the attempt. Those few witnesses in the street scattered, as if Severn was the threat, not the castelord, who had not moved more than lips.

If he had wondered—if Elluvian had wondered—how the witness had died while guarded by Barrani Hawks and surrounded by civilians, he had his answer: his lungs began to fill with water. He opened his mouth, but those lungs had no room for something as petty as air, and without air, he couldn’t form words.

He couldn’t shout for help; couldn’t ask for mercy; couldn’t tell the castelord that this death in this place was as damaging to the Tha’alaan as the other deaths had been, decades past, when fear of humanity, fear of outsiders, had taken permanent root in the Tha’alani.

He thought of Ybelline as the world began to blacken.

And Ybelline heard him. He felt her wordless discomfort sharpen into horror, into visceral fear. He couldn’t see her,