The Emperor's Wolves (Wolves of Elantra #1) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,91

there. That parents didn’t disappear.

But the sting of an envy he thought long dead touched him anyway. He let the envy be; he didn’t try to suppress it. There was no point. Ybelline would see it, know it. It would become just another guilty secret.

Or not; when he reacted, she’d already begun to show him other memories, other lives, small glimpses of similar envies, similar sadnesses, all from the viewpoints of children. She didn’t tell him he wasn’t alone, because she didn’t need to tell him that. She let him feel it, know it, experience it.

And he took, from those experiences, dropped so casually into his thoughts, what she’d intended—or perhaps what her own young kin took, time and again: that it was natural to feel envy, that it didn’t make him somehow a terrible person. It was just one of many feelings in a stream of feelings, some better than others.

He had always desired privacy. Had always kept his thoughts to himself when sharing them served no greater purpose. In the Tha’alaan, there was no privacy, ever. He wondered again what it might be like to grow up with no privacy. Where there was no privacy, it seemed that there was no judgment.

He righted himself with her silent help, and she once again returned to the three children. They weren’t fearless, but the giddy daring that characterized the young and secure brought them a measure of joy and pride; they looked over their shoulders as they walked away from the Tha’alani quarter, muting their thoughts, highlighting their emotions.

Everyone who belongs to the Tha’alaan has access to every other person. We know we can keep no secrets, she told him. But we, too, must turn our thoughts towards those secrets. We must pay attention. It is different from the way you guard your children, but not so different.

It was very different.

Secrecy for our young involves the ability to whisper, not to shout. These children, these three, were clever—they focused on each other, and on their delight in the escapade. They did not focus on their fear of getting caught. Those who minded them—and they were not so young that a minder was required—would not be alerted if their attention was elsewhere. Not in time, she added ruefully. I am certain harsher words were spoken when it was too late to stop them.

He saw the city streets as they had seen them thirty years ago. Forty, perhaps. The shape of the streets hadn’t changed, nor had the cobbled stones, the buildings that stood on either side of open road. There were wagons; he could smell the passage of horses. But if Elantra was his home, it hadn’t always been his home. He had to make the effort to orient himself to understand where they were.

Their first surprise—more fear here than instant delight—was the Leontine quarter. That quarter, unlike their own, was not walled in any way; the open streets led to it, and eventually through it. But there were people in those streets with golden fur, and the livid eyes of Dragonkind. Taller, wider, with fangs that suggested their origins, they had looked at the Tha’alani children, growling their questions.

Do not touch any who are not of the people. All three thought it. All three understood the unspoken law. Only one wanted to break it—curiosity drove them like a whip. But the Leontines were so visibly different from the people, even that girl couldn’t find the courage to do more than mumble a response.

“You are lost,” a Leontine man said. He was gray around the muzzle, his ears irregular in a way that spoke of physical combat decades past.

If the girl wasn’t brave enough to touch the white-tinged fur, she was brave enough to speak, and in the end, staring at her, he had given her directions. “If you do not have an appointment, you will not be allowed entry—and I very much doubt an appointment has been made on your behalf.”

I’m certain very harsh words were spoken. They made it all the way to Elani.

They hadn’t stopped there. They had a location in mind—a mythical location, a place where magic happened. They had been startled by the Leontines, although they had, of course, heard of Leontines; the boy continually looked up at the sky, hoping against hope for a sight of the Aerians; the skies remained disappointingly empty of all save sun and scant clouds.

They had the good sense to understand that Elani didn’t house what they sought, but their