“He’s lonely.”
“I don’t think Gibert gets lonely the way we do.”
Kattea folded her arms, her fear turning to annoyance. She radiated anger at what she assumed was condescension—and to be fair to her, it kind of was. “I think I know Gilbert better than you do.”
“You’ve known him for what, three weeks? Maybe four?” Kaylin bit back more words. “I’m sorry. I’m worried, and I’m cranky. Gilbert isn’t human. No, more than that, he’s not like any of the races you know. From what he’s said—and you’ve heard him say it—he was built for a purpose.”
“So?”
“What kind of crappy god builds loneliness into something that doesn’t need others to survive?” Her brain caught up with her mouth and shut it down.
Helen had been built with a specific purpose. Some of that purpose, Helen no longer remembered. Helen had never described herself as lonely, in the years—or centuries—before Hasielle, her very first tenant, had arrived. She hadn’t used the exact word, no. But she’d been drawn to Hasielle because Hasielle was the type of person to make a home of wherever she lived. To bring warmth or light or life to the space, just by being in it.
To keep Hasielle, Helen had destroyed parts of herself. She wasn’t, hadn’t been, in love with Hasielle—but the yearning for her had been visceral.
For how long had she observed Hasielle, without even speaking to her? For how long had she noted Hasielle’s cleaning and humming and cooking?
Kaylin looked at Gilbert’s profile. Gilbert might have been a cleverly painted statue. For how long had Gilbert been aware of Nightshade, in the dim recesses of an ancient building in the heart of the fiefs? At the beginning, he hadn’t even been aware of Nightshade.
But at some point in Nightshade’s captivity—and Kaylin could think of it in no other way—Gilbert had chosen to speak with, to communicate with, the fieflord. To do so, he’d had to invert himself. What inversion meant, Kaylin still didn’t know. She understood only that it was risky and voluntary.
She closed her eyes.
Gilbert is lonely.
Yes, only idiots would create something that got lonely. But...weren’t the idiots in part created because something wild and ancient and world-devouring...had been lonely? Maybe it was part of the essential nature of anything in the universe. Nothing existed in isolation. And maybe nothing wanted to. Not if it could think, move, feel.
Helen had observed Hasielle for a very small fraction of Helen’s overall existence. Thirty years? No. Less. Her decision to damage herself, to cut off her figurative limbs, had been arrived at without consultation with Hasielle. She had not, in any obvious way, revealed her presence, her sentience. She had gambled everything on Hasielle, on the hope that she could become the home in which Hasielle wanted to live.
Gilbert had actually spoken with Nightshade. He’d done so continually for three or four decades—if that was even accurate. And Gilbert had found Kattea; had rescued an orphan from the fiefs. A little girl whom he had not been built to even see—all because of that time with Nightshade.
“I’m sorry, Kattea,” she said—meaning it now. “I think you might be right.”
Kattea was young enough—barely—that the genuine apology made up for Kaylin’s earlier doubt. Kaylin turned to Gilbert, and the feelings of guilt evaporated as Ybelline’s knees buckled.
Chapter 21
She was there to catch the castelord; Gilbert hadn’t moved an inch.
It was hard to remember that they had anything in common; for one long moment, she wanted to deck him. But she didn’t have more than two arms and needed both. “Ybelline,” she said, urgent, her hands brushing the Tha’alani’s forehead.
Gilbert blinked. Well, he blinked with two of his eyes. The third eye, which had been more or less closed, snapped open.
“Yes,” he said, to thin air. “I see.”
Ybelline’s eyes were almost always gold; it was easy to think of them as normal—or normal human, at any rate. But when her lids fluttered open, they revealed irises of hazel. Kaylin could not remember what hazel meant in the Tha’alani; she imagined it wasn’t good. “I am...uninjured, Kaylin. Help me stand.”
Kaylin did so. Severn helped unobtrusively; Gilbert continued to stand, unmoving, as if people generally collapsed in his presence as a matter of course. Ybelline was not steady on her feet; Kaylin shifted position, sliding an arm under her arms and around her back, to brace her. Although she didn’t always notice this, Ybelline was not small.
“Come with me,” the Tha’alani castelord said. By default, this would have happened anyway, given that Kaylin was most of the castelord’s locomotive force at the moment. “Gilbert,” she added.
“Yes?” He didn’t actually look at her. Kaylin wasn’t certain what he was looking at, but whatever it was, he stared at it intently. The small dragon whuffled, apparently unconcerned.
“We’re leaving.”